Good morning, RVA! It's 31 °F, but the weather website assures me that today the highs will reclaim their triumphant place in the mid 60s.
Water cooler
Police are reporting a murder that occurred on Saturday evening at the 5200 block of Warwick Road. Officers arrived on the scene and found Katherine A. Wigglesworth, 47 dead. This is the city's 14th homicide and the first of March.
Ned Oliver at the RTD has a roundup of "five big city projects and where they stand with a new mayor and council." Basically, where they all stand is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Personally, I would love to see some movement, any movement, on the bike share system. I'm also really interested in how New Council and New Mayor want to handle all of the stuff going down on the Boulevard—redevelopment plans for that area will probably be one of the biggest things they'll have to tackle during this term.
Duh! The special City Council meeting scheduled for today at 3:00 PM is for the Mayor to introduce his budget! This kicks off a couple months of budget process where you can listen to each and every city department justify why they exist. It's fascinating, and I love it. The City must adopt a budget by May 31st.
Katy Burnell Evans at the RTD has the list of folks vying for Jeff Bourne's old seat on Richmond's School Board. You may recognize a few of these names.
Whoa: An editorial from the RTD's editorial board advocating for adding context to Richmond's Confederate art. This is not something I expected to read today! First, I still think we need to build an inventory of all of Richmond's Confederate art. Second, if we're going to add context to these things, let's not just post up a sign or two and call it a day. What if we hired some world-class artists to create new public art in and around the existing monuments to help folks reinterpret and see the contrasts between why the monuments were originally built and the actual history behind these men?
Two quick transit updates! GRTC will host a bunch of public meetings to introduce folks to the new bus network as described by the Richmond Transit Network Plan. There are many dates and times for you to choose from. Additionally, as part of construction of the Pulse, if you take a bus on Broad Street, your stop may no longer exist this morning! A lot of these stops will be duplicative once we get the BRT up and running, but, until then, we just need to deal with walking a couple extra blocks down Broad during this transition period. You'll live! Find the full list of discontinued stops over on GRTC's website.
Don't forget! Black Restaurant Week starts today!
Sports!
- Rams finished off their regular season with a 72-60 win over George Mason.
- Spiders beat Saint Louis, 72-62.
- Hokies fell to Wake Forest, 84-89.
- Hoos handled Pittsburgh, 67-42.
The ACC and the A-10 tournaments both begin on Wednesday.
This morning's patron longread!
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From Patron Sarah comes this classic longread in the New Yorker about the Westboro Baptist Church—so classic that it may even have been a longread in the past! It's such an excellent piece and a reminder that people really can change their minds about deeply held beliefs.
But Phelps-Roper had loved Murphy in “Clueless,” and she felt an unexpected pang—not quite sadness, but something close—over her death. As she continued scrolling through Twitter, she saw that it was full of people mourning Murphy. The contrast between the grief on Twitter and the buoyant mood in the basement unsettled her. She couldn’t bring herself to post a tweet thanking God for Murphy’s death. “I felt like I would be such a jackass to go on and post something like that,” she said.
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This morning's longread
Letter of Recommendation: Subway Napping
This, but for buses!
Yet this particular brand of disconnection, I believe, implies its opposite. To ignore strangers on a train is also to pledge faith in them. We don’t watch them because we don’t think we need to, and we don’t think we need to because — for some reason — we assume they’re harmless. Sleep, as the greater withdrawal, requires greater faith. Usually we sleep in the company of those we trust most: lovers, family members, friends. To nap among fellow riders suggests there is something of the lover, family member or friend in them. It feels subversive and pleasurable, like — well, like sleeping with strangers.