Good morning, RVA! It's 51 °F, and today's weather looks absolutely amazing: Highs in the mid 70s and plenty of sunshine. Best part? This weather continues throughout the weekend.
Water cooler
Ostia Iroegbu at Richmond Magazine has an excellent piece about how systemic oppression impacts Richmond's most vulnerable children. This is a really excellent piece of writing, so I'm just going to quote some of it at you right now: "As a collective, we need to dismantle policies and practices that perpetuate injustices. When violence strikes, we must tackle the underlying causes while also wrapping supportive services around the affected neighborhoods. At the same time, it is critical that we cultivate resilience in our youth, families and communities. We must build on their strengths and potential."
Michael O'Connor and Vanessa Remmers in the RTD cover several instances of racism and sexual abuse by white students at Chesterfield and Henrico County schools. Like a lot of the parents, teachers, and elected officials say in this piece: Youth see this behavior somewhere and model it in their own lives. I don't know what we do about that on larger, regional scale, but it can't be nothing. School systems need to do more than apologize and move on, and I'm for more tough conversations about the history and impacts of systemic racism in our region—like the ones Henrico County ended up freaking apologizing for last year. Kids are smart, but they need the information/background/context!
Obama came to town, and 7,500 people attended his rally for Ralph Northam at the convention center. Graham Moomaw was there, in the flesh, and if you hit up his Twitter feed and scroll back a bit you can read some of the evening's highlights.
This GrowBox thing that Lewis Ginter's Duran Chavis is putting together seems way awesome and sciencey. Sticking a garden in a trailer reminds me a lot of how the Netherlands grows an obscene amount of food on very little land. Super dense, easy to manage mobile gardens gets my brain cranking on some interesting ideas. Funding for this neat project comes from the UnitedHealthcare Community Grant Award program and some expert plant advice comes from Virginia State University!
RVA Mag points out this event, which makes me laugh: "Yell At The Lee Statue While Drinking Out Of A Container In A Brown Bag." Two things: First, if you drink alcohol out of your container you are in violation of the law; Second, I kind of love the idea of absurdist protests as a counter to the white supremacy rallies whose participants take themselves very seriously.
On Saturday, you can support two of my favorite things: science and beer. The Science Museum of Virginia will host Science on Tap, which combines a craft beer festival; beer science demonstration zone; and the classic Richmond assortment of food trucks, vendors, and live music. Tickets are $10!
You've probably read all about how Trump continues to screw up every facet surrounding the death of American soldiers in Niger. But have you read about why soldiers were in Niger in the first place, what happened, and what went wrong? I hadn't (neither has Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee), and this piece from the La Times is the best I've seen on the topic.
Sports!
VCU just announced that they'll host Liberty on October 26th at 7:00 PM in an exhibition game to benefit Puerto Rico's Hurricane Maria relief efforts. All tickets are general admission, will cost $15, and go on sale today at 9:00 AM.
- Spiders head to Delaware to take on the Blue Hens at 3:30 PM.
- Hokies host the Tar Heels, also at 3:30 PM.
- Wahoos welcome Boston College to Charlottesville at 12:30 PM.
This morning's longread
Lupita Nyong’o: Speaking Out About Harvey Weinstein
Our business is complicated because intimacy is part and parcel of our profession; as actors we are paid to do very intimate things in public. That’s why someone can have the audacity to invite you to their home or hotel and you show up. Precisely because of this we must stay vigilant and ensure that the professional intimacy is not abused. I hope we are in a pivotal moment where a sisterhood — and brotherhood of allies — is being formed in our industry. I hope we can form a community where a woman can speak up about abuse and not suffer another abuse by not being believed and instead being ridiculed. That’s why we don’t speak up — for fear of suffering twice, and for fear of being labeled and characterized by our moment of powerlessness. Though we may have endured powerlessness at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, by speaking up, speaking out and speaking together, we regain that power. And we hopefully ensure that this kind of rampant predatory behavior as an accepted feature of our industry dies here and now.