This Thing That Usually Happens in Early November, an Election.

I know, you turn to this section each week to ponder opportunities for light diversions from your overly wrought daily lives, but this time I’m going to suggest that you shorten your planned weekend on some river or southern beach in order to do two things: 1. study the candidates and their issues in next Tuesday’s election, a very important one for Virginia and, 2. if you already know who you think needs to win, volunteer an hour or two to help that person out by making either phone calls or house calls. Then, of course, comes the biggest challenge of all, which is to get to your polling place and vote Tuesday. Regrettably, an off-year election like the one coming up always has a very low turnout, but the upside of that is that your efforts can have a relatively greater effect.