Cheers & Jeers
Courtesy of Rotary International
Stephanie Urchick will become the president of Rotary International in July 2024.
Michael Wyke/Associated Press
Michael Wyke/Associated Press
From left, Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Hammock Koch, celebrate on stage as they are announced as the Artemis II crew during a NASA ceremony naming the four astronauts who will fly around the moon by the end of next year, at a ceremony held in the NASA hangar at Ellington airport Monday.
Cheers: The world had endured a tumultuous year by the time Christmas Eve rolled around in 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated. France had been shut down due to an uprising in May. The Vietnam War raged on. The Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, ending a period of political liberalization in the Eastern bloc nation. But on that Christmas Eve, all the commotion here on Earth was stilled by the breakthrough of man traveling around the moon. The Apollo 8 mission was the first time a spacecraft manned by human beings left low Earth orbit. They circled around the moon 10 times before returning home, laying the groundwork for the moon landing that happened the following July. Now, 55 years later, the world is enduring its share of strife again, but we soon may be able to unite around another moon mission – NASA announced this week that the Artemis II mission will send astronauts around the moon again, with a projected date near the end of 2024. It will lay the groundwork for a return to the moon sometime shortly thereafter. Harrison Schmitt, a former astronaut and U.S. senator who traveled to the moon on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, pointed out, “We’re about three generations away from any experience with human beings being in deep space, and that’s probably the most important part of the mission.” We hope another moon mission will go some way toward uniting us again.
Cheers: Traveling to the Dominican Republic to help install water filters. Lending a hand with the construction of a primary school in Vietnam. Venturing to Ukraine to mentor new recruits. These are just some of the things that Canonsburg’s Stephanie Urchick has done during more than 30 years as a member of Rotary International. And, on July 1, 2024, Urchick will become the organization’s president, only the second woman to have that title in Rotary’s history. She will serve a one-year term and, during that time, Urchick hopes to add at least 100,000 new members to Rotary’s rolls, and push forward efforts to eradicate polio around the world and promote peace. The graduate of Monessen High School and Indiana University of Pennsylvania explained about her ambitious agenda, “Rotarians are up to the challenge. We want to make lasting change in the world.” We wish her the best and hope her tenure is a success.
Jeers: Like many private businesses and public agencies, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services is dealing with staff shortages. For many residents of the commonwealth, that could have real-world consequences. This week, Spotlight PA reported that staff shortages are happening just as a policy enacted preventing states from kicking people off Medicaid is about to come to an end. The rule was put in place due to the pandemic, and it’s likely that several thousand of the 3.7 million people on Medicaid in Pennsylvania will lose benefits because they are no longer eligible or meet the income requirements. But the staffing shortages could also lead to people losing out because there aren’t enough caseworkers to handle the workload. Spotlight PA noted in its story that at least a few SNAP recipients lost benefits even though they got their documentation in on time, likely because it got lost in the shuffle. According to Patrick Keenan, the policy director for the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, “We’re worried that the numbers of people losing coverage won’t become apparent right away. By this summer, we could be in a troubling situation with many more uninsured than we have today.”