All good things must come to an end, and this column marks the end of four years of a good thing.
After 250 columns, my time writing for The Salt Lake Tribune has concluded. I have an opportunity for full-time work that I am excited about but one that makes it impossible for me to continue with The Tribune.
When I wrote my first column in January 2017, Donald Trump had not yet been sworn in as president. Today, President-elect Joe Biden is preparing to move to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and Trump will be returning to the private sector.
I’ve written about politics on all levels a number of times over the past four years, from the food tax proposed by the state Legislature (more than once) to how to read a bill to tips on getting your emails read by legislators.
My first column was about the need for more women to get involved in politics, a theme I revisited multiple times. While there is still a lot of work to be done, I am pleased that in 2020, we have a female vice president-elect and a female lieutenant governor-elect. I am also pleased to see that, on both the state and national level, we have more women being selected for leadership positions in gubernatorial and federal Cabinets.
I’ve also written about the #MeToo movement, burnout, the need for self-care, the value of strong friendships, service to others, race, racism and the Black Lives Matter movement. I’ve written about imposter syndrome, finding your voice, women’s suffrage and domestic violence.
I have written a number of times about seeing our fellow travelers on this planet. They may be refugees or Dreamers, those with disabilities or of a different race. We must do better to see those with differences of opinion, religion or political party not as enemies, not as people who deserve our contempt, but as people with the same needs, wants and desires as our own — to be safe, for their children to be safe and happy, and to feel like they matter.
While I’ve written weekly for The Tribune, I’ve also gone to graduate school, earning a master’s degree in professional communication and have completed my coursework for a doctorate in political science. Some of what I learned ended up here, like the the No Gun Ri massacre and collective forgetting to propaganda in the age of social media to Plato’s allegory of the cave.
I have shared some tender times on these pages, sharing stories about our daughter Elizabeth, born with multiple disabilities some 32 years ago, and our daughter Angelia, whom we adopted knowing she would not live long. I’ve walked the lonely path of miscarriage as well, a number of times over, and I am always touched by your stories of loss and hope as well.
I’ve written about the pandemic multiple times and have to sad-chuckle at my column the beginning of April. I wrote about “lessons learned” from the pandemic that surely would be over soon. Sigh. Now, cases in Utah are in the thousands per day, we struggle with pandemic fatigue and outright rebellion over wearing masks. Perhaps there’s a reason one of the most used words this year is “unprecedented.” It seems history is indeed repeating itself as a new generation learns how to deal with a novel disease (that is most definitely not “the flu” or a cold).
I’ve written about gratitude every year and now is my opportunity to express it. I am grateful to former Salt Lake Tribune Editor Jennifer Napier-Pearce for taking a chance on me. I am grateful to my editor, George Pyle, for always being so good to work with. I am grateful for the many people who have shared stories with me over the past four years and most of all, I am grateful for you, the readers, who have continued to read my column week after week.
It’s been a good run.
