Every year about this time I make a plea in this space for you to help me fill it. Sure, all of us here at The Evening Sun (well most of us, anyway) like to write these weekly missives and tell you what we think – but really, more importantly, even – we want to know what you think.

Providing a forum for community discourse is, to me, the second-most important function of a daily newspaper (behind gathering and presenting the news, of course). And it’s on this very page that that discourse takes its most compelling and legitimate form – in Letters to the Editor.

There are many ways in which you, the reader, can interact with the newspaper. You can pick up the phone and speak to a reporter or an editor, you can send an e-mail, you can participate in the ES Forum online, you can stop by the office, you can call (or nowadays, click on) “30 Seconds,” or you can kibitz about it amongst yourselves. But the most effective way to get “make your voice heard” as we like to say, is to write a Letter to the Editor.

Letter-writing isn’t for everyone. It takes a lot of forethought. It takes time. And most likely it takes a whatever-the-price-is-now stamp. But nothing will get people talking, and thinking, like a well-written Letter to the Editor.