One thing this presidential election is going to produce is more losers than we have ever had: Democratic losers, Republican losers, even a libertarian loser. This may be the only positive thing to come out of a two-year slog to choose a new president. It is just possible that the losers will do more for this country than the winner.

I come from a family that gives books as gifts. Every Christmas and birthday I can count on getting at least one or two.

It was my secret. For decades no one knew that as a child I had tiptoed down the stairs in the wee hours of Christmas morning, plugged in the big blue lights on the Christmas tree and surveyed whatever I could see by their dim illumination.

We need an intervention, and it simply is not working any longer to send soldiers or politicians to do this job. We need you.

Last week I saw a student skipping. I hardly ever see anyone skip. Girls aren’t allowed to skip once they reach puberty, and boys are pretty much discouraged from skipping altogether.

The city has itself in a fine mess. The solution, however, is far simpler than the quandary over what precisely happened on Election Day and in the weeks leading up to it.

I asked my students if they had heard of the 16-page letter, “A Common Word Between Us and You,“ sent by 138 Muslim clerics to Christian leaders around the world. They stared at me blankly.

The summer after I graduated from college I went on a trip to Europe with 59 other college students. None of us was an experienced traveler. Few of us were fluent in any language other than English, so when we found ourselves in international airports where we could not even understand when flights were announced, we were a nervous bunch.

I might have numbered myself among those who questioned Columbia University’s decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak had it not been for an experience more than 40 years ago at Wake Forest University. In today’s atmosphere it is hard for me to believe that such an event ever happened, but it did, and I was there to witness it.

Larry offered to show me around the house his wife, Mary Ann, had inherited from her parents.  She had known for years it would be hers one day, but until her parents died, she couldn’t imagine why she would want it. She no longer lived in the area. This part of West Virginia is so remote it would take you an hour to drive to the county seat.  But once it had been home; seven children grew up in this little house. Larry and Mary Ann decided to return for their 25th wedding anniversary.

To raise children in today’s society, I think U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton is right. As she says in her book, “It Takes a Village.“ Her point is especially true in regards to African-American youths.

It was a little over a month ago that news about former Virginia Tech and Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and his role in a dog-fighting ring was all over television and in newspapers.

When change comes to the Shenandoah Valley, you can be pretty sure there has been a sea change in American culture. People here thrive on tradition. They have a deep and abiding suspicion that the past holds more promise than the future. So I sat up and took notice when obituaries changed the way they listed survivors of the deceased.

My first job out of college was teaching junior high social studies in Charlottesville. It was hard work.

While on the phone with an old friend who happens to be married to a man from the Middle East, she slid two sentences into our conversation about health and family: “The immigrant community is devastated by what is going on in Washington. You have to understand that they believed in this country more than anyone else.“