January is named for Janus, the ancient Roman god of transitions. He is frequently portrayed as having two faces — one looking back and the other looking forward.

At the turn of a new year, we are well served to do the same: to look back at the year just closing and to look ahead at what might unfold in the new year — possibly with some help from us.

Our readers this past year have been informed and enlightened by the original artwork illustrating our editorials each week on page 2 of our newspaper.

Elisabeth Vines stepped up to illustrate for us when she read a letter to the editor critical of our using generative artificial intelligence to illustrate one of our editorials.

Vines had been a long-time reader of The Enterprise with a home in Bethlehem and a second home she and her husband are fixing up in the Hilltowns. She taught courses in the humanities for 32 years at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Her artwork delights as it enlightens.

Here is a compendium of some of our favorites from 2024, pictured on page 2, running clockwise from the upper right:

— Our March of Progress through life should not end in mere oblivion

In October, Deb Riitano, commissioner of Albany County’s Department for Aging, announced a county initiative called Together Against Ageism. After 90 percent of the elders she surveyed said they worry about ageism, Riitano teamed up with Dina Refki, a clinical professor at the University at Albany, who said, “We would like to address prejudices, normalization of myths about aging, and how to combat stereotypes — and also address internalized ageism.”

Vines modeled her cartoon on the March of Progress, which depicted the evolution of man, but she depicted humans — both men and women — growing from a crawling infant to a walking adult and finally careening off a cliff while the background words change from “energetic” and “innovative” to “fossil” and “has been.”

— Ignoring a problem won’t solve it

In August, our Hilltown reporter, Noah Zweifel, broke the story about three Berne Town Board members abruptly and simultaneously resigning. This left the five-member board without a quorum and therefore the town without a functioning government.

As concerns abounded globally and nationally about democracy faltering, we had our own example right at home. Our queries about the town’s unpaid bills, unheeded recommendations from the state comptroller’s office, and an astronomical tax hike had long been unanswered.

While we commended the three resigning councilmen for finally speaking out about their concerns, including their inability to even see town financial records let alone oversee them, we decried leaving citizens with a functionless government.

Vines captured this in a whimsical way by portraying the Berne board ignoring its problems just as Vernon Dursley, Harry Potter’s uncle, had crouched and covered his ears as letters of acceptance for Harry to attend the Hogwarts School flooded his world. In Vines’s cartoon though, the papers bombarding the board are unpaid overdue bills

— Governor: The people of Berne need you to act now

More than a month after the mass Berne resignations, on Sept. 26, we called on the governor to restore Berne’s government.

The state Public Officer’s Law allows the governor in such a situation to either call for a special election or to make appointments to the board. We favored a special election.

We scolded the governor’s office for not answering questions about the process it was following or the reasons for the delay and also for failing to answer our Freedom of Information Law requests for any correspondence from or with Berne on the issue.

Vines captured the dilemma with verve, depicting Governor Kathy Hochul, arms crossed over her chest and a red “X” over her mouth, echoing the red “X” posted on the front door of the Berne Town Hall.

— Berne is adrift in uncharted waters, state oversight is needed

We tried again in November to get answers as the state deadline for towns to have adopted their budgets loomed. The three board members had resigned in part because of their belief that Supervisor Dennis Palow lacked financial acumen and now Palow, still without a functioning board, was left entirely in charge of drafting the 2025 budget.

His first version would have hiked taxes 19 percent, which paled in comparison to the 750-percent hike the year before, but was still over the state-set levy limit, requiring approval by a board majority. There were no public presentations of the budget and no public hearings even as a second version put the tax hike under the state-set cap — without explanation as to how.

Vines captured this dilemma perfectly, depicting Palow adrift in a tiny boat named “Berne” while menacing sharks circle the boat. On the horizon is a gathering storm while a ship named “Hochul” rests almost out of sight.

— Humans need to control tech tools not the other way around

In July, Governor Hochul, who is a proponent of banning smart devices in schools, started her statewide “listening tour” in Guilderland. “It’s a paradox: Social media causes loneliness,” our Aug. 8 editorial began. “A technology that could easily connect one human being to another has had the effect of dividing and isolating us.”

Vines’s colorful cartoon is itself a paradox, leading the viewer to wonder: Who is the prisoner? Are the cell phones and the various social-media icons behind bars because they are being locked away from students? Or are the students themselves the ones being jailed on the other side of those bars?

— Berne-Knox-Westerlo School Board is taking a ‘helluva gamble’

In May, Berne-Knox-Westerlo pierced the state-set tax cap, requiring 60 percent of the vote to pass its budget. When the $26 million budget was defeated by just a handful of votes, the school board, rather than doing without a school resources officer, put up the same budget, which was more soundly defeated, leading to required cuts. 

One parent at the meeting where the board made the decision to stay over the state-set levy limit asked the board, “How much of a gamble are we taking?” She noted her children were older and their college careers would be built on their high school success. “That’s a helluva gamble,” she said.

Vines encapsulated this sentiment by depicting the BKW budget as a slot machine — voters would be pulling the lever to see what lined up or lost out, academics or athletics included.

— By allowing the eagle to soar, we’ll be saving wildlife as well as ourselves

Health risks abound for both animals and humans when hunters use lead ammunition to hunt deer and other game. Most hunters have never used non-lead ammunition, and half of hunters are not at all or only slightly concerned about the potential impacts to wildlife.

So the drive is on to educate hunters and also to expand state-wide a study on how increased use of non-lead ammunition for deer hunting can improve the survival of eagles, which feed on the deer carcasses.

Our editorial used the bald eagle as a symbol, not just of our nation but of resiliency and of humans’ ability to learn from mistakes since the banning of DDT had earlier saved the eagle from extinction.

Vines created a powerful rendition of a bald eagle, its wings spreading entirely across our editorial page, as it clutched in its claws the very non-lead bullets that could save it.