Should local residents like my Election Night correspondent be worried?

The 23rd District House of Delegates race was really two elections in one.

Peter Houck takes the current debate over national health care legislation very seriously. Which only makes sense, because he is both a physician and the pediatric medical director at the Johnson Health Center on Federal Street.

A few final political thoughts for election week …

They say that our favorite season is always the one in which we were born — and since my wife, both children and I all observe our birthdays between September 18 and October 15, it’s inevitable that I favor fall. Here are 10 other reasons why:

The marching orders for Saturday morning’s Memory Walk in Riverside Park were explicit: “Rain or shine.”

We’ve all been told that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. To those, let me offer a third — the certainty that politicians will use taxes as a blunt instrument to wield against their opponents.

You might call what Cheryl Burnette does “nursing nurses.”

There is an art to opening a successful gallery, and Todd Smith obviously did his homework.

An army, they say, travels on its stomach. The same might also be said of a high school football team.

Random thoughts for a Monday …

Sometime around the end of 2006, Colin Beavan heard that the polar bears in Antarctica were starting to eat each other.

Somehow, it seems like Vinny Giles should be at least 100 years old. That’s what happens when you start playing a sport in elementary school and continue it past AARP eligibility.

I was sick in bed on Monday, anxiously awaiting my next visit from Dr. Ibuprofen, when I decided to write a column about my notebook.

I haven’t decided yet who to vote for in this fall’s gubernatorial election, and it may well not be Bob McDonnell. If that’s the case, though, it won’t be because of the now-infamous thesis that McDonnell wrote two decades ago as a graduate student at Pat Robertson’s Regent University.

Here’s a news flash: Politics and governing don’t mix.

Breaking up, Neil Sedaka once told us in song, is hard to do. But not for the Lynchburg-based Blue Newt Band. In their case, breaking up was easier than finding a new lead guitar player.

What Lynchburg resident Malia King was doing in Virginia Beach on Sunday might have been quantified as half duty, half pleasure. Call it “fun-raising.”

Something about all those “health plan” meetings being held across the country is beginning to strike me as chronically unhealthy.

What do President Barack Obama and Nancy Marion have in common? An enthusiasm for change.

The main thing I remember from my Oct. 3, 1983, interview with Ted Kennedy was that he seemed nervous.

As a fierce, afternoon-long rain hammered down Saturday on Miller Park, it was a case of “Tanks, but no tanks” for the local chapter of the Radio Control Armor Club.

In the hierarchy of human needs, the bladder always outranks the stomach. Hunger, after all, can wait patiently for hours — even days — before being satisfied. An urgent need for bathroom facilities is another matter.

Civic clubs are struggling to survive in many cities these days.

The causes of their malaise have been well documented — a dwindling sense of community in our society, lack of time, people working at home instead of in office buildings, too many hours watching television. As a result, many clubs are now aging disproportionately, their numbers dropping with each obituary.

Peter Sheldon isn’t sure why he never learned to swim.

If it weren’t for the language, Rick Pillow would almost qualify as an honorary Estonian.

If Ed Embrey starts forgetting who he is, it’s not advancing age — it’s music overload.

You can always tell with kids. No matter what they might say to you, they make their true feelings clear with their faces, their body language and their tone of voice.

Are you unemployed and in Bedford? Debra Skeens would like to help (the unemployed part, at least).

What is it with Brookville High?