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Managing editor Michael Stowe provides an update today on our comics poll. Stay tuned for the results next Sunday and let us know here what you thought of the voting process.

It's hard to believe, but we're nearing the end of our comics poll. And, to be honest, lots of us here are looking forward to it!

That's because we were not prepared for the avalanche of ballots that people filled out, cut out and mailed out to us. This picture gives you some idea of the work we had ahead of us.

Fortunately -- thanks to volunteers from the advertising and sales and service departments as well as folks in the newsroom -- we're getting close to draining the pile.

And we've been having fun learning about our readers. For instance, we discovered one lady who's been a faithful daily subscriber for 50 years -- through the mail!

And some of the comments have been great. We did start to recognize a few common threads, such as: "Please bring back FBOFW"; "Comics are the best part of the paper/the first thing I read every day/the one bright spot in a world of bad news"; "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to vote"; and "I like comic strips that are funny, not dumb or weird."

A big thanks to all who took the time to tell us what they think. The online poll closes Sunday. We can't wait to find out the results!

The next installment of "JobQuest," the public television show on the job market in Western Virginia, will be Tuesday, April 14 at 7 p.m. It's produced by Blue Ridge PBS, with help from The Roanoke Times and several other media organizations and governmental and business groups.

One of the guests on the next show will be Chris Winston, editor of our New River Valley bureau. He'll talk about the job market in New River.

Here's a release from Blue Ridge PBS that talks about some of what the show has accomplished:

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Go behind the scenes at a photo shoot to see how photographer Jeanna Duerscherl created this photo illustration for the All-Timesland Swimmers of the Year feature that ran in Sunday's paper. You can get a peek behind the process in this video by Chris Zaluksi.