MOVERS & SHAKERS
Movers & Shakers After 25 years as executive director of Genesis Medical Associates Mark Dr. Atul since its foundKissinger Vaidya ing, Mark Kissinger will retire at the end of December and Dr. Atul Vaidya will succeed him. McAuley Ministries, Pittsburgh Mercy’s grant-making foundation, has awarded 13 grants totaling $757,000 to community partners to support health & wellness, community & economic development, and education initiatives in the Hill District, Uptown, and West Oakland communities. McAuley Ministries continues to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, awarding grants totaling $631,000 to date.
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) announced that Heritage Valley Health System has earned 2020 CHIME Digital Health Most Wired recognition for Acute and Ambulatory Care. The CHIME Digital Health Most Wired program conducts an annual survey to assess how effectively healthcare organizations apply core and advanced technologies into their clinical and business programs to improve health and care in their communities. Thanks to the Pittsburgh Gateways Corporation, TRYPO (Three Rivers Young People Orchestra) has a new home at the Energy Innovation Center for our 2020-21 Season in-person rehearsals.
From the Editor
2020 – Worst Year Ever? By Janice Lane Palko
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ere we come to the end of 2020. To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” I’ve seen many people posting Facebook memes or tweets saying that this was the worst year ever and that they can’t wait to kiss it goodbye. While this has not been the best year on record, I feel guilty for wishing it out the door. See, because I am still alive and every day on earth is a gift. So, was 2020 really the worst year ever? Not by a long shot. Have you ever heard of the 4.2 kiloyear event? I hadn’t. There is a great YouTube channel called UsefulCharts.com, and by way of easyto-understand graphics, it explains history. A while back I came across their chart “Timeline of World History | Major Time Periods & Ages,” which illustrates the concurrent historic events of the world across time periods. Approximately 4.2 thousand years ago an event happened that experts aren’t exactly sure what caused it, but nevertheless, it resulted in 100 years of extremely dry conditions that wiped out fledgling civilizations around the world. It really was a reset. Jump ahead a few thousand years and we come to the year 536 A.D., which many historians site as the worst year ever. Europe, The Middle East and Asia were plunged into darkness. According to the Byzantine historian Procopius the sky was dark for 18 months,
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writing “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.” Without the sun, temperatures on earth fell, ushering in the coldest decade in 2300 years, resulting in crop failures and mass starvation. The Irish chronicles recorded “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Evidence found in tree rings and the polar ice caps point to a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland that spewed ash around the world, blotting out the sun and changing the course of civilization. To make things even worse, shortly after that, the Justinian plague broke out and rampaged the world wiping out one-quarter of the world’s population and hastening the fall of the Roman Empire. Skip ahead to the lovely year 1346 when the Black Death swept Europe wiping out 60% of Europe’s population. A little over a hundred years ago in 1918, we had the tragic trio of World War I, the Spanish Flu epidemic and the Russian Revolution. The year 1968 was no picnic either as assassinations, civil unrest as well as the Vietnam War raged. So yeah, 2020 wasn’t the worst, and no, it certainly wasn’t the best year ever, but as we turn the page on a new calendar, let’s acknowledge our losses, be grateful for what we brought out of the year and stake our hopes on a better 2021. Happy New Year! n
