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FOLKLORE:
By LISA MARRONGELLI
Daily Collegian Staff Writer
Nobody will deny that campus life has
certainly changed over the years, but
many probably do not realize the extent
of that change. At least one person,
however, former Penn Stater Donny
Kepler can tell just how radically Penn
State life has altered since the early part
of the century.
Back in those days, Penn State was
just a “farmer’s high school,” said
Kepler. Old Main was not only a class
building but a dormitory as well. And of
course, there were few, if any, co-eds.
Kepler speaks of such blow-outs as
Poster Night, on which the sophomores
gathered all the unlucky freshmen, and
after ripping down fence rails, started
huge bonfires around which the fresh
men were hazed.
“They would make the freshmen
wrestle themselves,” he said, "and
throw themselves in maybe ten different
ways. It was pretty funny really.”
To insure no freshmen would escape
the thrills of Poster Night, they were
made to immerse their hands in buckets
of violet dye.
“Then, because no freshman was
allowed to walk around campus with his
hands in his pockets, if one was seen
without purple hands, he’d be in a lot of
trouble with the sophomores who always
carried paddles,” Kepler said.
Class rivalry was high back then,
mainly between freshmen and
sophomores. Displayed on the walls of
Zeno’s are, original posters made by the
different classes, dealing with .the
superiority of whichever class happens
to be writing the dictum. For example,
the sophomores of 1912 wrote “Ye
bottle nourished, verdant young upstarts
of the yet-unborn class of 1912,
remember that the Sophomores rule in
all things around these classic shades of
Old State.”
The sophomores of 1911 remind the
freshmen to “know your masters,” and
one poster cites ten commandments for
the freshmen of 1910, one of them being
“Honor thy Lords, the 1909 men.”
Kepler said many rules were imposed
upon the freshmen. They were not
allowed to walk on the grass, to put their
Fingers making a comeback thanks to chisanbop
By MARY BETH WAGNER
Daily Collegian Staff Writer
Remember the days when children had to sit on their hands,
or worse, they got a rap on the knuckles if they were caught 1
using their hands to figure out math problems?
Now, some teachers are changing their tune about using
hands because of a new method called chisanbop.
Translated, chisanbop means finger calculation method. It
originated in Korea and has more recently been taught in New
York. That’s where, Cynthia Minter, of the learning center, 444
E. College Avenue, learned chisanbop.
Chisanbop involves counting on the fingers, with those of the
left hand standing for ten units and the thumb fifty units, and
the fingers on the right hand standing for one unit and the
thumb five units. By remembering which fingers stand for
which units, one can add, subtract, multiply and divide, just by
using one’s hands.
Minter started teaching chisanbop in State College after she,
along with thirty other teachers from the eastern United
States, went to New York for one week of intensive teaching
training for chisanbop at the Korean-American school.
The teachers at the school were taught the technique by
Hang Young Paim who learned chisanbop from his father,
Sung Jin Pai, the creator of chisanbop.
Learning from such elite company, Minter knows the
technique pretty well.
She already has a waiting list for her spring chisanbop
classes.
“I think they’re (children and adults) interested for dif
ferent reasons,” she said. “Adults are interested because it
looks fun and in hopes that it will help develop their math
skills.”
One adult enrolled in the chisanbop class said she learned
about chisanbop when she saw it on television.
“I was intrigued when I saw it on television; I saw small
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University, Indians are part of area's legends
Besides being paddled for infraction of
rules, other punishments included such
embarrassments as wearing a birdcage
over their heads for as long as a week.
Spirit Week came at the very end of
the year and was a sort of'graduating
ceremony for the freshmen. “They had
to wear green ribbons tied to the top
button of their dinks,” Kepler says, “and
the ribbon had to be parallel to the
ground at all times.”
How could the ribbon stay parallel to
the ground?
“They ran like hell,” Kepler said with
a smile.
Once a year, the student body picked
an “all-American faculty team” of the
eleven most hated professors. Mock
tombstones were erected bearing in
sultingly humorous epitaphs.
Kepler said as he remembered one
about a Professor Mitch reading,
“Mitch, Mitch, that son of a canine.”
Each Spring a contest was held in
which the students painted the backs of
their Model T’s and jalopies with
sayings, then drove them in front of
judges who picked the three best mot
toes.
“My favorite one got first prize one
year,” Kepler said. “It read, ‘This is not
the Mayflower, but many a Puritan
maid has come across in it.’ ”
Kepler also speaks of how the entire
student body would raid the movies and
candy stores every fall. “About 300 or
400 would just -go in and take slabs of
chocolate,” he said. The money for these
expeditions came out of a damage fund
that each of the undergraduates paid
when they enrolled.
There were also days when the
students would grab everything that was
on the main street and heap it all up in a
big pile. “Guys with old cars would
deliberately drive by so they could put in
a claim,” Kepler recalls.
“It was pretty crude in those days, ’' he
said.
Collegian living
the
daily
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hands in their pockets, to be seen in town
after 6:00, to talk to girls (the punish
ment for this breech of conduct being a
public haircut by the president of the
sophomore class), and beanies, or dinks
as they were called, had to be worn at all
times.
children adding large numbers and it is exciting.to know I can
work up to that,” she said.
Parents have enrolled their children in the chisanbop class
in hopes of improving their math skills.
“Chisanbop is supplementary to other teachings of math,”
Minter explained. “For pure computation alone, chisanbop is
good.”
People using chisanbop to compute a math problem, use
their fingers in much the same way as they would a calculator.
Similar to how they press numbers on a calculator, they
press the fingers that stand for the units they need to compute
a problem on a flat surface. By pessing and releasing their
fingers and thumbs simultaneously, they can compute a
complex problem in seconds.
According to Minter, chisanbop is taught in four stages. The
first stage involves learning which fingers .stand for which
units and learning how to press each number by counting the
units out with the fingers.
Stage two involves learning how to coordinate the thumb,
standing for five units, with the rest of the fingers in doing
problems that use fives.
In stage three, the fingers are pressed simultaneously to
stand for numbers of base ten and in stage four, problems are
partially mentally computed before using base 20 to compute
problems.
“Chisanbop expands the use of your fingers from ten to 99
fingers,” Minter said, and “it makes finger calculation legal.”
According to her, though, it has not caught on very quickly in
Korea where the popular mode of computation is the abacus.
Minter said in the United States, and in addition to teaching
chisanbop in New York, chisanbop is also taught to teachers in
Dallas, Texas, and Los Angeles, California. Chisanbop was
recently taught to children in the Mount Vernon school district
as a pilot project.
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But the history of Happy Valley, and
its legends, did not begin with the tiny
Farmer’s High School.
According to local historians, Indian
legends abound in Happy Valley, and the
stories explain how the area’s first
inhabitants thought the area developed.
One such legend involves the un
fortunate exploits of Malachi Boyer, who
met and fell in love with the local beauty
at the time, Princess Nita-nee.
Boyer was in Happy Valley trapping
small animals for their pelts, but when
he met the princess, the poor little devils
were forgotten.
The trapper and the Indian princess
were in heaven, but all was not well with
the maiden’s family.
Nita-nee’s father and seven brothers
(after whom the Seven Mountains were
named) were opposed to Malachi and
Nita-nee’s getting married, so in
desperation, Malachj and his Indian
lover stole away from the Indian’s camp
one night, intent on reaching the white
man’s settlement.
Unfortunately, Nita-nee’s brothers
caught up with the escaping pair early
the next morning, and after packing the
unhappy princess back off to their camp,
the brothers took Malchi and threw him
into the stream in Penns Cave, standing
guard at the entrance blocking his
escape.
Malachi finally died of starvation in
the cave and to this day people say the
wind whistling through Penns Cave is
Malachi Boyer calling for his lost Nita
nee.
Another legend about Penns Cave
deals with an unattractive Indian
maiden who went off into the mountains
because no brave wanted her as his wife.
There she dreamed of the handsome
man who would one day want her to be
his. An artist arrived one day, asking for
a place to stay while he painted.
She told him of her dream and asked
him to paint her a picture of the man who
was to come for her. The artist painted
the picture on the cave wall and when
the woman saw it she was so taken with
its beauty she began to cry.
It was the face of the artist, and in the
true happy legend formula, the two got
married and lived happily ever after.
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Mount Nittany itself got its name
through a legend according to local
historians.
It is said at one time the area now
containing the mountain was totally flat
and an Indian tribe lived there, ruled by
the beautiful and good Princess Nita
nee.
When the princess died, the tribe paid
her homage by burying her body in the
middle of the plain.
That night a terrible storm shook the
area, with an unusual amount of thunder
and lightning and the next morning, the
low grave mound of Princess Nita-nee
had risen up into a mountain, now known
as Mount Nittany.
The stone steps of Tussey Mountain
also have their origin in Indian lore.
At one time, two rival Indian tribes
lived on opposite sides of this mountain,
the Susquehannas and the
Kishacoquillas.
The Susquehannas raided the other
camp, killing their chief and carrying off
his 6-year-old daughter, Princess
Meadow Sweet, as a captive. She lived
with the tribe for ten years and grew to
be a beautiful girl.
The Indians were excellent athletes,
and the Kishacoquillas’ chief, Silver
Eagle, challenged the rival tribe to a
four-day contest of running, jumping
and wrestling.
The Susquehanna chief, Pip-siss-e
-way, son of the chief who had originally
raided the other camp, accepted the
challenge, but told his warriors to let the
Kishacoquillas win some of the events so
as to avoid warfare.
This the Susquehannas did, but they
won the contest anyway and invited the
defeated tribe to a banquet. Here Silver
Ealge saw Meadow Sweet and fell in
lover with her.
Pip-siss-e-way refused to let the two
marry however, and two months later,
he married the girl himself.
Soon lookouts from the Susquehanna
tribe told their chief the Kishacoquillas
were building stone steps up the
mountain from Stone Valley,
presumably to attack them and carry off
Princess Meadow Sweet.
Pip-siss-e-way and his men ambushed
their attackers and in revenge, they
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A weekly look at life
in the University community Thursday, Feb. 15, i!>7‘» r>
Photo by Chip Connolly
Students aren’t seen too much in Old Main these days, but back in the early
years of this century, it served as both classroom and dormitory.
threw Silver Eagle’s body into Rock
Spring, where it contaminated the
Kishacoquillas drinking water for an
entire year.
Another legend evolved around the
unusual story of Daniel Derstetter and
the Black Horseman. Daniel and his
brother Jacob were returning home
from a dance one night, and stopping to
take a rest they fell asleep.
When Daniel awoke, his brother was
gone but a shadowy phantom on hor
seback was there instead and to his
distress, the black horse rode beside him
on the way home.
After this, whenever Daniel would go
out at night, the same horseman would
accompany him, which made poor
Daniel so nervous, he gave up dances
altogether.
Daniel was a good trapper and many
were jealous of his skill. One night while
riding home, a voice called to him to
drop his gun.
Before Daniel could react, there was a
Scientists have a perfectly logical
geological explanation for how Mt.
Nittany got here, but Indian
has a more colorful one. According to
these legends, Mount Nittany rose
from the flat earth after Princess
Nita-nee was buried at the spot'where
the mountain stands today.
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thunder of hooves. There were no more
threats on his life ever again.
Another time, Daniel was up in a tr,ee
watching his deep traps when
panthers wandered into the clearing.
The two animals fought, and one 1 was
killed. ’
The screech made by the victorious
panther startled Daniel so that he
dropped his gun and in grabbing imj it,
fell out of the tree directly beside'*ilie
snarling animal.
Just as the panther was about to. tear
Daniel to pieces, the hooves again •' cn.
heard, scaring the pantocr away.
Daniel cut off the ears of the dead
panther to remember the occasion v?y,
and never again did he fear the shadowy
phantom on horseback.
These are just a few of the many
legends which have arisen out of the
settling of Nittany Valley. Whether
they’re true or not, it cannot be denied
that they add much to the local color, t