Good morning, RVA! It's 48 °F, and I think we've said goodbye to the rain for a good, long while. Expect cooler temperatures today, with highs in the mid 50s. I hope you enjoy the sunny, dry fall weekend and don't spend it crushed into a tiny ball by anxiety over the approaching election.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,429↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 20↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 116↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 51, Henrico: 52, and Richmond: 13). Since this pandemic began, 434 people have died in the Richmond region. This is the highest number of new cases reported in Virginia in a single day since the weird reporting backlog on October 8th, and, after that, you've got to go back to August 7th to find a single day with over 1,400 reported cases. Here's the stacked graph of daily reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths to give you some context on today's numbers. While the seven-day average of new reported cases is almost as high as its ever been, check out the number of daily hospitalizations. It's far less than back in the spring (however, those numbers have crept upward over the past two weeks). We're seeing a similar trend locally with new reported cases also approaching highs from earlier this summer and spring. The pandemic isn't over! Look at these graphs and adjust your personal coronabehavior accordingly!
Yesterday, I wondered aloud about what the heck was going on with Richmond's task force to design and launch our Civilian Review Board. I have impeccable timing, because VPM's Roberto Roldan says just this week City Council's Public Safety Committee nominated six people to serve on the task force—two of which are former law enforcement. I'll tell you what, I am not super stoked that the Public Safety Commission, made up of some of our most pro-cop councilmembers (committee members: Trammell, Gray, and Hilbert), get to shape the task force putting together the CRB. While I do get the need to have some form of law enforcement knowledge and expertise available to the committee as they do their work, I remain unconvinced that cops and ex-cops need to be members of the body. Councilmember Jones will suggest alternatives at the next full Council meeting saying, "If we are setting up a body that is going to do oversight of the police, I don’t know that we should have members of law enforcement, past or present, a part of that task force...That gives individuals who are not trusting of the police for their own reasons a moment of pause.”
Whoa: The Mayor announced a quasi universal basic income pilot called the Richmond Resilience Initiative. From the release, "18 working families who no longer qualify for benefits assistance but still do not make a living wage will receive $500 a month for 24 months." The cash for this program comes from both the Robins Foundation and CARES Act money, and participants will be pulled from folks already working with the City's Office of Community Wealth Building. The cliff effect is real, y'all! It is an entirely real thing that people can make enough money to lose access to social programs but not make enough money to, you know, live. UBI and UBI-like programs address this, and probably cost Society™ less in the long run (he says confidently without bothering to do a Google). Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a few more details since I can't find the press release on the City's new website.
Due to the pandemic (seriously!), Richmond's Green City Commission will give away 12,000 Eastern Redbud seedlings. The goal with this initiative is to increase the urban tree canopy and decrease temperatures—especially in parts of town that experience hotter-than-average temperatures due to a history of redlining and racist urban planning policies. You can get involved in a couple of ways. First, volunteer to help staff pickup sites over the next couple of weekends. Second, 12,000 is a lot of trees, so if you know of or are part of an organization that can grab a ton of tress and put them to good use, let the Green City Commission know. Third, go pick up a tree or three for your own yard. However! Before those of you (like myself) who live in a part of town with no history of redlining and plenty of tree canopy go snatching up all of these trees, consider volunteering to help distribute trees to parts of town that could really use some more dang shade. My own Redbud is pictured above, and, as a friend of mine says—heart-shaped leaves, beautiful flowers in the spring, what's not to love?
Alright, we've entered into the Stressful Voting Window. If you haven't yet voted, the last day for you to vote early in-person is Saturday. If you have requested a mail-in absentee, I would think extremely hard before dropping that thing in the mail and instead drop it off at the registrar's office (which, as we all know is a pain to access without a car) on Election Day. If you plan on voting in-person on Tuesday, please mask up, respect folks' distance, and give your poll workers an extra helping of grace on what is sure to be a stressful day.
This morning's longread
The Island That Humans Can’t Conquer
I'm starting to realize I really enjoy certain genres of articles—genres like "person goes to a really inaccessible place and tells you all about how inaccessible it is."
St. Matthew Island is said to be the most remote place in Alaska. Marooned in the Bering Sea halfway to Siberia, it is well over 300 kilometers and a 24-hour ship ride from the nearest human settlements. It looks fittingly forbidding, the way it emerges from its drape of fog like the dark spread of a wing. Curved, treeless mountains crowd its sliver of land, plunging in sudden cliffs where they meet the surf. To St. Matthew’s north lies the smaller, more precipitous island of Hall. A castle of stone called Pinnacle stands guard off St. Matthew’s southern flank. To set foot on this scatter of land surrounded by endless ocean is to feel yourself swallowed by the nowhere at the center of a drowned compass rose.
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