Opinion editor Sarah Gassen's Fave Five of 2020

Fave Five: Sarah Gassen: In these troubled times, let generosity into the heart

Everything is upside down this year and writing from personal experience about loss has helped me feel and stay connected in a very human way. While details and circumstances are individual, loss and finding our balance again is something we all share.

— Sarah Gassen

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

My late husband is starting to get mail at my new address.

He’s been gone almost nine months.

But his junk mail survives.

The first catalog arrived last week. I’ve become used to seeing forwarded mail — bills, mostly — addressed to both of us. Those are petering out because I’ve moved and sold the house. It’s not my life anymore.

Seeing his name on my solo address threw me. A gut punch and a burst of tears that felt like it came out of nowhere. But, as I’m learning with grief, it — whatever that it is — comes from everywhere.

I sent a note to the generic customer service email address on the catalog, asking them to please remove my deceased husband’s name from their mailing list.

He doesn’t live at this address because, I wrote, he unfortunately no longer lives anywhere.

A return form letter assures me my request has been forwarded on to the appropriate department. I’m sure an automatic reply, spewed out by an algorithm, will arrive soon.

Today’s mail brought a request for updated contact information from a cremation service.

The company is updating their files and asked him to please send back the prepaid postcard if “you want to know more about the benefits of cremation.”

I think he knows all he needs to know about cremation.

It’s OK if you laughed. He would have, too. Sometimes, you just have to laugh because heaven knows there are enough tears to go around.

Read the full column here.

Fave Five: Sarah Gassen: Tucson takes a bold step to help families afford childcare amid COVID

Finding ways to help families access high-quality early childhood education is a mission for me, and this column shares a big step Tucson took this year with the help of federal dollars for COVID-19 relief. Schools going remote, parents working from home or losing their jobs made it crystal clear how essential childcare is for families, businesses and our community. This is a first step on a longer road, and I’m hopeful.

— Sarah Gassen

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Writing for me begins with plugging in my ancient iPod and listening to a song I hope will guide my words toward a good purpose: “O-o-h Child” by The Five Stairsteps, a family music group from Chicago.

“O-o-h child, things are gonna to get easier, O-o-h child, things will get brighter.”

“Someday, we’ll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun.”

The lyrics remind me that good, big things don’t happen at once. Progress is progress. Steps are steps.

Tucson took one of those steps last week when Mayor Regina Romero and City Council gave final approval to a plan to spend $500,000 in federal COVID-related relief money to help Tucson and South Tucson families affected by the pandemic pay for child care.

The money, from the federal CARES Act funding, must be spent by Dec. 31. Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona administers the program and can provide up to $2,275 per child from infants to 12-year-olds. Families can apply for more than one child and payment goes directly to the child-care provider.

Romero made high-quality early childhood education a pillar of her mayoral campaign and this We Are One/Somos Uno Resiliency Fund child-care scholarship fund is a terrific step.

The Mayor and council approved the program last Wednesday, and the online application process went live on Monday. About 10 volunteers are helping process applications as quickly as possible.

By Friday, Catholic Community Services had received applications from 270 families and inquiries from 115 child-care providers.

Read the full column here.

Fave Five: Sarah Gassen: How to thank a healthcare worker amid COVID-19 outbreak

When struggle and tragedy are so big it seems we are powerless, think again. You can help.

— Sarah Gassen

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Greetings from the home office – well, from my home office.

Like most of my Arizona Daily Star colleagues, I’m working from home. And like all of my University of Arizona teaching colleagues, I’m conducting my editing course via video conference and online assignments.

Thank you, technology, and thank you, people who make it work.

Olivia the wiener dog supports my transformation into a homebody. Dorothy the desert tortoise is still hibernating but I think my two hamsters, Steve and Franklin Tostada, and my mouse François have noticed something’s up. They’re more active than usual.

Realizing I should be the same — more active than usual — I’ve been taking Olivia on walks, which, truthfully, is an exaggerated description.

She’s not big on the perambulation part of dog walks, so I’ve renamed our out-the-front-door venturing “smell safaris.”

We were standing outside Wednesday evening, me watching the clouds at sunset and Olivia trying to get away with eating something unidentifiable off the ground as I gazed upward, when a neighbor walked up the apartment complex drive and headed toward her door.

“Tired of being cooped up?” she asked. I shrugged. “A little. You?”

She works at a hospital, she said, so no. She’s far from sequestered.

As I read about the increasing number of people with COVID-19 and those who have died, and the health-care workers fighting this virus without the protective equipment they need, I’ve found it impossible not to think about the three weeks I spent at Banner — University Medical Center when my husband was hospitalized with a heart infection.

Those long days and longer nights were filled with questions without definitive answers, tests, procedures, the incessant beeping of monitors and machines, the agony of trying to find hope amid constant uncertainty.

At every turn medical professionals — to a one, a person with strength I don’t possess — cared for my husband and cared about both of us.

He died the day after Thanksgiving and late, late that night I finally left the hospital.

I went home.

And the nurses and doctors and therapists and technicians and assistants and meal deliverers and surgeons went on with their work, giving their gifts of healing to the next patient and family who needed them.

Just like they’re doing today.

Read the full column here.

Fave Five: Sarah Gassen: A guide to 2020 candidate OpEd submissions

I’m always glad to share why we in Star Opinion do what we do, and how you can be part of the public conversation, too. Here’s how we choose to publish guest opinion pieces. If you’d like to submit a letter to the editor or guest opinion, go to our online portal at Tucson.com/opinion

— Sarah Gassen

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

The Arizona Daily Star Opinion section welcomes submissions from candidates, issue organizations, ballot measure groups, their supporters, opponents and interested readers. We believe sharing ideas and information is an important function of our Opinion pages, and we seek your participation from across the spectrum.

The national political campaign season is underway and we are receiving submissions from people announcing their candidacy for local and state offices with increasing frequency.

Readers weigh in on our choice of guest opinions and letters to the editor in normal times, and that scrutiny definitely heats up in election years.

I’ve been in the Opinion department for almost 10 years and presidential election years are like the Olympics: The stakes are high, the urgency is amped up, competitors turn into opponents and it’s easy to get distracted by the drama and the horse race.

Our job in the Opinion section is to share the views of people across the community, to weigh in with endorsements where we can offer insight as election day nears, and to do our best to keep discussions focused on substance.

You may disagree with a decision we make to publish, or not publish, a particular submission, but it’s important to me that I share how we make the decisions we do. So I’m sharing our internal guidelines for selecting guest opinion pieces:

Read the full column here.

Fave Five: Sarah Gassen: McSally, Leach try to keep us in the dark

Few things tick me off more than elected officials who dodge real questions and try to monkey with people’s access to public information.

— Sarah Gassen

The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.

Arizona’s junior senator-turned-campaign-T-shirt-hawker had her media moment late last week, after manipulating her job failure into a campaign fundraising ploy.

Martha McSally, a Republican, is following former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s good ol’ boy school of campaigning:

If the people who know you don’t like you, do whatever you can to attract the attention of Republicans in other states; they can at least send you money.

And there is no surer way to become a conservative darling than to insult a journalist for asking a real question.

The query she ducked was this:

“Senator McSally, should the Senate consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial?”

It’s a relevant question we constituents should know the answer to — it’s a question every constituent should want the answer to.

Read the full column here.