UP: To Belpre City Council member Susan Abdella, who bucked the trend in today’s political discourse by graciously accepting her departure from council after receiving the lowest number of votes in Tuesday’s election. “Everybody running for council is qualified,” she said. “I’m very excited for them and I’m excited for the city.” Though Abdella did not rule out a future run for office, she commented even on that possibility in a way that might seem foreign to some who appear to have come to believe the nastier the better in politics. She said simply “I love this community.”

UP: To the opening of a soon-to-be 64-bed St. Joseph Recovery Center, which held an open house this week and will begin accepting inpatients and outpatients for medication-assisted substance abuse treatment Monday. Our region is in the grip of a substance abuse plague that will take many different approaches to defeat. At this point, if it works for some people, we must try it; and it is good to know there is a step in the right direction in the effort to bring help to those who truly want it, in breaking this cycle.

UP: To today’s Stamp Out Hunger food drive sponsored by the National Association of Letter Carriers and the U.S. Postal Service. Surely local residents can surpass last year’s approximately 12 ton total in non-perishable food items left at their mail boxes for carriers to collect.