In an era when editorial cartoonists are becoming a rarity, The Enterprise is fortunate to have one of the best.

Carol Coogan has won state and national awards for her cartoons — each one crafted with care for Enterprise readers.

While Coogan may not have the reach of, say, Thomas Nast, famous for destroying the corrupt Tweed Ring at New York City’s Tammany Hall, her art is powerful in its own sphere: local news that often isn’t covered elsewhere.

She uses her imagination as well as her artistry to help our readers see things in new ways, bringing about change for the better.

Some of our favorites for 2023 are on the facing page, clockwise from upper right:

— Stop the stigma girls suffer for wearing sports bras

Coogan captured the spirit of two courageous young women who wrote independently to The Enterprise in May. Ninth-graders at Guilderland High School, each of them were athletes on the school’s track team. (One of them said she used Coogan’s art as the wallpaper on her cell phone.)

A reader wrote that the page brought tears to his eyes. “It is something about simple truths, being called out in a measured and unassailable way, that gets me,” he wrote in a letter to the editor.

In October, the Guilderland School Board approved a policy change that will allow girls, with their coaches’ say-so, to wear sports bras without shirts for practice.

“I was really happy about it,” said Olivia Mair, one of the athletes who had pushed for change. “Other people on my team and at school are happy about it too.”

“I feel empowered and I hope other students do too,” said Angelica Sofia Parker, the other original letter writer. “If you want to change the world, you need to make noise. The squeaky wheel really does get the grease, and The Altamont Enterprise helped us to be heard!”

— Warehousing the elderly hurts us all

In April, workers rallied at nursing homes across the state to raise awareness over a gap in New York’s proposed budget. Our reporter, Sean Mulkerrin, was the lone observer of the rally in front of the nursing home in Guilderland Center, organized by 1199 Service Employees International Union.

We’d heard the request for quality care at that same nursing home for decades — before it was owned by The Grand, even before the workers unionized. Two decades ago — giving just one heartbreaking example — we wrote of a 99-year-old resident of the home who felt she was ignored when in pain. Her son described a visit where he heard eight residents seeking help, their calls unanswered.

A certified nursing assistant at the time, Antionette Robinson, told us, “We can’t even cut their [the residents’] nails. There’s no time for it.” She said workers had only 10 or 11 minutes each day to spend with each resident.

Over our many years of writing about residents’ complaints or workers’ complaints, the other side of the story came from management, which would often maintain the complaints lacked merit, or from politicians, who would say there was nothing they could do.

But this time, all of those parties were in agreement and all of them were in support of what could be a workable solution: raising Medicaid reimbursement rates.

Coogan captured the dilemma more vividly than our front-page picture of the workers’ rally. She made the imaginative leap of picturing elderly residents — each a distinct individual — living in a literal warehouse.

— Charge your car as if the world’s future depended on it

We received a letter from Tracy Mance of Guilderland detailing the difficulties she encountered getting home after a flight out of Boston to the Albany airport was canceled. The only rental car she could get was electric without sufficient charge to get her home to Guilderland.

The charging stations she could find in the middle of the night were not of sufficient power and she ended up having to call her father for a ride home.

We editorialized on the obvious solution: a better system for charging stations that is easily accessible.

Coogan made the consequences of the choice our world faces stark and vivid: We can either develop a workable system of EV charging stations or face the consequences of a scorched Earth.

— We must find common ground to stanch the needless bloodshed in our nation

Albany County held its inaugural gun buyback on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023, at the Westmere firehouse — and was overwhelmed with the response. People kept handing over guns, even after the buyback funds had been depleted.

Coogan’s drawing captured both the horror of bloodshed caused by guns and the hope on the horizon if people worked together to control them.

The editorial she illustrated told the story of one county making a difference as a local legislator, Dustin Reidy, being inspired by a student, Conor Webb of Guilderland, as two political parties worked together for the common good.

— Look to the future: Take a baby step by buying land to protect our reservoir

Guilderland residents turned out in force to protest a variance request that would have allowed a developer to build a contractor yard with storage warehouses within the 500-foot setback to the Watervliet Reservoir, the town’s primary source of drinking water.

We urged the town to buy property around the reservoir both to protect residents’ water and to improve their quality of life in the burgeoning suburban town.

Coogan created a cartoon where every detail is telling. The nursery wallpaper is patterned with a map of the reservoir. The baby is gazing at a mobile featuring the very animals residents said they valued in lands near the reservoir, which are rapidly disappearing. And the baby, representative of the future, is nourished by a bottle depicting the reservoir itself.

— You are seen. You are supported. You are wanted.

The student-organized anti-hate rally at Guilderland High School this spring stressed the importance of allies — students and staff who support those who suffer from prejudice.

Several transgender students bravely spoke about hurt they had endured — from fellow students, from teachers, from staff, from the community at large, and some even in their own families — because they were perceived as being different from or lesser than a norm.

“We, in America, are in the process of a trans-genocide,” said one of the transgender students.

“If I didn’t have allyship,” said another, “I would never have the confidence to speak what I believe or face the hate I get as a person who’s part of the LGBTQ+ community.”

Coogan captures this perfectly, showing a person, depicted in black in white, in a boy’s haircut and clothing, gazing into a mirror and seeing, in the rainbow colors of gay pride, a beautiful woman’s face looking back.

The place, tiled in gray, has the look of a student bathroom and off to the side — also in color — another student, presumably an ally, waves in support.