Hits and Misses
MISS: Researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago announced this week that the poverty rate increased by a record-shattering 2.4% from June to November. This is the biggest increase in the 60 years that the poverty rate has been tracked in the United States, and it means that an additional 7.8 million Americans tumbled into poverty in that five-month span. The coronavirus is the culprit, of course, with jobs that were lost due to the pandemic not reappearing, and government aid running out. To provide some perspective, a family is four is considered to be in poverty if they are subsisting on $26,200 or less per year. Even as vaccines roll out, we are still months away from our lives and the economy returning to normal. This underscores the need for more stimulus money to flow to struggling Americans.
MISS: In its 30-year history, the concert venue on Route 18 outside Burgettstown has been known by six different names, with four different corporate monikers having been affixed to it in the last 11 years. Most people in this region just refer to it as Star Lake, since that was its original name, and it’s simple and easy to remember. The revolving door of names turned again this week, when the venue reverted back to being called the Pavilion at Star Lake. The switch happened less than a year after S&T Bank purchased the naming rights. A spokeswoman for the bank said it was withdrawing from the agreement “to focus our partnership efforts on other areas.” The fact that there was not a summer concert season this year due to the coronavirus pandemic undoubtedly figured into the bank’s decision, as well as the fact that the landscape for 2021 still looks uncertain at best. But rather than switching names yet again, wouldn’t it be great if Star Lake just remained Star Lake?
HIT: Katherine B. Emery will be stepping down from her role as Washington County’s president judge, but she’s hardly going anywhere. She’ll still be at the county’s courthouse in January, presiding as a senior judge and maintaining much the same workload she does now. Nevertheless, stepping down as president judge is a landmark in Emery’s quarter-century on the bench. During that time, she presided over the trial of the killers of Ira Swearingen, an Ohio medical consultant who was abducted in the parking lot of an adult book store in Somerset Township in December 1999, and a civil trial that resulted in a $14 million verdict for two victims of a furnace explosion. It’s been a storied career, and there’s still more of it to be had.
HIT: More than 300,000 Americans have died as a result of COVID-19, and one of them was Charley Pride, widely considered to have been the first Black superstar in country music. While his death is nothing to cheer, particularly since it was the result of the coronavirus, Pride deserves recognition for the trailblazer he was. It’s said that when his first single, “The Snakes Crawl at Night,” was sent to radio stations 54 years ago, Pride’s race was kept under wraps so it wouldn’t hurt his chances in the country marketplace. Pride ended up racking up many country hits over the next couple of decades, and remains a lodestar for other country artists. As writer Jewly Hight said, “His was one of the great country music careers.”