Good morning, RVA! It's 49 °F, and I briefly saw the sun yesterday! You, too, will have the opportunity to do so today as we've got an excellent day weatherwise queued up. Expect highs in the mid 70s, lots of sunshine, and every excuse in the world to spend some time outside.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,235↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 11↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 114↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 62, Henrico: 19, and Richmond: 33). Since this pandemic began, 381 people have died in the Richmond region. It's been a while since I've linked to some COVID Tracking Project graphs, but look at the incredible periodicity of the hospitalization graph since April. If it weren't depicting people stuck in the hospital with a life-threatening disease it'd be beautiful. Also interesting here, compare the hospitalization graph to the death graph and see how much we've learned about treating COIVD-19 since this past spring. Locally, we don't see the same repeating patterns in the graph of hospitalizations in Virginia—ours is more like a flat line since June. I think this points to how the virus has spent most of 2020 burning through different parts of the country and then moving on. Again, it'd be a lot more fascinating and fun to talk about if it weren't folks' lives.
Tonight, at 5:00 PM, GRTC will host a community meeting about the newly improved Route #77 which just went live one month ago. The new #77 is such a dramatic improvement over the old #77! Look at this beautiful straight line that heads right down Grove Avenue every 30 minutes (PDF), connecting UR and VCU, and making it easier for folks to access all of the jobs on and around UR's campus. Compare it to the old hourly spaghetti monster (PDF) that waggled about the West End forever before eventually finding its way to DMV Drive. This new route finally fills in a major gap in bus service directly in the heart of The Fan. In fact, it's almost like an invisible white and affluent force field purposely kept bus service out of this neighborhood until now! So why the meeting? People Are Concerned! And they are, of course, concerned about the classic set of NIMBY things: lament over the loss of a handful of parking space to make room for bus stops that will be used for actual humans instead of for storing empty vehicles, ginned up "safety" concerns that have dog-whistle overtones, using the word "preposterous" with an exclamation point, and shouting about empty buses despite that just not being true (while surrounded by hundreds of empty parked cars). One person says, "We have suffered bus service on Grove my whole life." Wow, OK. There are dozens and dozens of public comments like this; you can read through them and ruin your morning if you'd like. Or, instead, you can email <planningcomment@ridegrtc.com data-preserve-html-node="true"> and tell them that you support the new, common-sense redesign of the Route #77 and welcome the new easy access to education, jobs, and housing. You could also say something about how a vocal minority of white, affluent homeowners do not have the right to undo a substantial upgrade to our regional bus system, but I'll leave that up to you.
It finally happened! Abby Church at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Hanover County School Board officially voted to change the names of Stonewall Jackson Middle School and Lee-Davis High School to Bell Creek Middle and Mechanicsville High, respectively. This took an eternity, and we should congratulate/thank all of the students and alum who worked incredibly hard for literally years to get this done. Y'all! You did it!
Mallory Noe-Payne at RadioIQ has a story about Ashley Spinks, the only full-time reporter for the Floyd Press out in Floyd County. Amazing: "Spinks’ technical title is Managing Editor of the Floyd Press, but in practicality she’s reporter, photographer, layout designer and editor. Each week she single-handedly pulls together the 16-20 page newspaper. And she does it all for $36,000." Lee Enterprises, which owns the RTD, bought the Floyd Press back in March and cut the paper's freelance budget. Then, in a shocking and hateful twist, Lee Enterprises fired Spinks after doing the interview for this very story. From her Twitter: "An update: I got fired today for doing this interview. Less than 24 hours before the Press goes to print. The paper is not finished, don’t know how it will be. On a personal level: it’s 3 days before my wedding, which my superiors knew. They couldn’t even wait for next week. I got invited to a conference call, fired while they invoked this story, and was immediately locked out of email and the network. I don’t regret speaking to WVTF for one second; I’d do it again." Kenya Hunter, a reporter at the RTD, puts it well: "Feel how you feel about the press, but if your local newspaper dies, it’s not good for anybody."
Yesterday, the last day for Virginians to register online to vote, someone cut a very important fiber optic cable in Chesterfield and a whole slew of state website went down or slowed to a crawl. This included the Department of Elections website, which means folks couldn't register to vote. New Virginia Majority has filed a lawsuit to extend voter registration for 48 hours, the Attorney General has filed a brief, and I don't know what either of those things mean if I'm being honest!
Here's a Do Something opportunity: Daily Planet Health Services will hold a supply drive for folks experiencing homelessness throughout the month of October. You can find the full list of needs on their website, but they're looking for: quart and gallon size freezer bags, men's and women's underwear, new or gently used T-shirts and socks, prepackaged snacks, and prepaid phone cards. You can drop off supplies at their 517 W. Grace Street location and even call ahead (804.783.2505) to have a team member come out and grab stuff from you in a socially-distant way. If that's still too coronarisky for you (which I totally understand), you can donate cash and tag it "supply drive." Y'all delivered, literally, this past summer when Daily Planet needed bottled water for its clients, and I hope you'll do so now as we move into the colder months.
This morning's longread
The ideological banality of #heelsupharris
This will make you mad, yell "YES, OBVIOUSLY, ROSS.", or both.
It is very difficult, in other words, for Harris to find an acceptable lane on the public stage that also positions her as a capable leader. As a former Harris aide explained before the debate, “From Day 1, the expectations for her have been stratospheric, and the margin for error has been minuscule.” Harris has thus far attempted — and, I think, largely succeeded — at forging a path forward that subverts these classic misogynoir stereotypes. But that doesn’t mean that viewers aren’t frantically attempting to map them onto her.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.