Kathleen Burge

Editor's Note: This is a letter from the editors included in WBUR's weekly opinions and ideas newsletter, Cognoscenti. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here. The Iowa caucuses are over, all eyes are on New Hampshire and the Republican field — where the number of candidates vying for the nomination was once in the double digits — has shrunk to three. The general election, on Nov.

It’s always an interesting exercise for my fellow Cog editors and me to look back on the year that was, and remember where we were and what we were doing when we worked on certain pieces. In a way, it’s become part of how I mark time. I remember reading Geri Denterlein’s first draft of her beautiful essay about losing her husband, beloved Boston Globe journalist Jack Thomas. I read it around the same time my own father-in-law was entering the final weeks of his life.

Editor’s note: On a sunny September day in 2022, a group of men, women and children from Venezuela who were seeking asylum in the U.S. began their day in San Antonio, Texas. The 49 migrants boarded two planes they’d been told would take them to Miami, where jobs and housing awaited. Instead, they were stunned to land 1,500 miles north on Martha’s Vineyard. They found themselves at the center of the national political tempest over immigration, after Florida Gov.