Good morning, RVA! It's 55 °F, and highs today should hit...82 °F?? You should feel shame if you do not spend at least several moments outside.
Water cooler
Look at how contentious Chesterfield’s budget season has become as Vanessa Remmers reports on an actual protest ahead of last night’s public budget hearing! I love how everywhere you look across the region people are speaking up and getting involved. Keep it up, region! These particular folks in Chesterfield are upset about the plan to lower the County’s real estate tax and by the proposed Matoaca Megasite. I’m obviously bummed by the lack of any funding for public transportation, but y’all knew that already.
Richmond Magazine’s SaraRose Martin sat down for an interview with Henrico Supervisor (and Board Chair) Frank Thornton that you should read. On the proposed bus to Short Pump he says, “What we want to do is optimize the opportunity for citizens who have working skills and want to get the jobs that are there, and also people want to shop there. … And we’re getting to the point in the 21st century where some people are going to say, ‘I don’t want to drive my car all the time. I want to take good, efficient and reliable public transportation.’” 😍
Jason Roop at Style Weekly has the sad news about the 137-year-old Hearld-Progress closing up shop. Dang. Local reporting is so important, and it sucks to see it continue to slowly thin out across the region. I hope folks in Ashland will find other ways to keep their community informed.
Trademark stuff is weird. Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense has the details on some cookie-related drama that seems to have resolved itself. If you ask me, “cookie with a bite out of it as a moon” is a pretty obvious logo for a late-night cookie delivery company.
I finally got around to posting a new episode of The Boring Show: City Council’s budget work session from this past Monday. I’ve already started taking some notes for the next round of Ross’s Gold Stars For Exemplary Performance in a Budget Work Session. While we’re on the topic of boring things, a small correction: Earlier this week I said Council President Hilbert was the only member to not co-patron the sidewalk resolution I keep talking about excitedly (RES. 2018-R025). Turns out all members of Council ended up signing on. Hooray! Now we wait for the Mayor’s administration to move on it.
For the last couple of years I’ve directed your attention to Full STEAM Ahead, and this year is no exception! Full STEAM Ahead is a day-long conference held on July 19th for middle school girls focused on science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. Yes, July is a ways away, but the deadline to apply as speaker is April 2nd. If you are a woman in a STEAM field—and I can think of a ton of y’all just off the top of my head; yes, I am think about you—consider applying to lead a workshop. Just do it, spread the STEAM love!
Want a Big Bike Race™ vinyl street light banner? RVA Hub has the top secret details on how to get one for free.
Episode 50 of the Sam and Ross Like Things podcast is out! This episode Sam and I celebrate reaching a significant milestone for doing anything, let alone recording a podcast, by both talking about why we like Richmond. I get slightly emotional towards the end. If you’d like, you can point your pod thing toward this URL and subscribe.
Lol, what? From the WaPo: “Trump taps his doctor to replace Shulkin at VA, choosing personal chemistry over traditional qualifications”
This morning's longread
The Stuff That Came Between Mom and Me: A Story About Hoarding
Personal essays about moms has become a sweet spot for me.
My mother’s care packages usually reflected some little corner of a disorganized mind. She’d include a couple of candles, pretty ones — maybe hand-dipped or made with organic soy or something. But she’d send them to me in a box along with some books she’d found at a secondhand bookstore, maybe about theater or Salvador Dali, or an old, gold-leafed copy of Longfellow poems, which I knew wasn’t worth anything, but it was ornate and beautiful, and I liked that it’d made her think of me. And some hard candies. All sent lovingly, by bus if she felt manic, or third-class postage if not. From Florida. In the middle of summer. So I’d open a box with great anticipation, made greater by the lovely lavender or patchouli or lemony scent from the candles inside, only to find the hard candies less than hard, and the candles melted over the pages of the books, an inseparable ball of wisdom and wax. And I’d laugh at my disappointment, and then I’d cry just a little because I knew she hadn’t considered this possible outcome, and because I knew that I’d be the one to break the news to her.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.