Good morning, RVA! It's 53 °F, and the string of warm days continues. Today you can expect highs near 70 °F and a bit more sunshine than yesterday.
Water cooler
I guess, for the foreseeable future, these emails will lead off with a coronavirus update—something I'd trade away in a second to go back to continually talking about the Mayor's proposed downtown arena. As of this moment the Virginia Department of Health reports eight presumptive positive cases of coronavirus in the Commonwealth, with none in Central Virginia. Today, let's look at how the region's educational institutions are responding to this rapidly evolving situation. While some schools and universities across the country have begun to shut down or started to plan on moving instruction entirely online, Richmond-area institutions are (at this point) taking a more cautious approach. While class goes on at VCU, I got an email last night saying that I should start thinking about how to teach my class remotely and pointing me to this page of resources to do just that. UR will share their coronavirus plans by the end of the week, and VUU has asked anyone traveling during spring break to let them know. Chesterfield has the best and most up-to-date information out of the region's public schools and have cancelled all field trips outside of Virginia. If I were running comms at a school or university, I'd be posting daily updates—even if nothing had changed. The thing about a viral outbreak is that it spreads virally, and up-to-date information is incredibly valuable.
Here's Micheal Paul Williams on the chance that the NAACP's lawsuit against Hanover County over their Confederate-named schools could get thrown out due to a nonsensical two-year statute of limitations 💸: "So let me get this straight: The Hanover NAACP, during Massive Resistance, was obliged to file a lawsuit protesting the name of a high school that black students weren’t even allowed to attend?" I agree with MPW, that's just ridiculous.
I don't really know how to process this article by Mark Robinson in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the folks still living in tents down behind the Annie Giles Center. I feel a bunch of things simultaneously: It's a complicated situation; living in a tent in a floodplain is not optimal; we're in the middle of a housing crisis; coronavirus!; and Council was just presented with a homelessness plan last month, and I'm not sure how they've decided to act on it. Regardless of how I feel, it sounds like the City and VCU will—and I'm struggling to find the word with the right connotation here—remove? close? end? the encampment on March 30th. It also sounds like the region's homelessness providers have worked hard to provide services and find homes for the folks living there. I will trust those experts and nonprofits to, if necessary, raise further alarm on this situation.
Hey, check this out: Local climate hero and a scientist I actually know in person Dr. Jeremy Hoffman is featured in the Grist 50, an annual list of "50 people who are shaking up environmental policy, the food system, the clean-energy sector, art, commerce, and more." To have a legit climate scientist just living and working in Richmond is a huge resource for our region! I'd love to see our localities, you know, listen to him and start implementing some bolder climate-focused policies and legislation. That's emissions, sure, but it's also land use, transportation (more GRTC funding!), urban forestry, building code—all sorts of things.
Erick Kolenich at the RTD has a great history of VCU basketball's unofficial (official?) fight song, "You Don't Want to Go to War." What inspired this tune, which has pretty much become synonymous with the VCU Rams basketball experience? The marching band from North Carolina A&T, a historically Black university.
Speaking of tunes, Friday Cheers has released their 2020 lineup. They've got Angelica Garcia coming on May 29th, and I've had her new record on repeat for the last couple of days.
This morning's longread
Cancel Everything
As person who's very online and deeply into news, it's hard not to feel intense, building panic over the coronavirus. However! The concept of social distancing, basically just staying away from other folks, is very chill and nearly the opposite of panic. Just do what you can to stay at home and prevent the spread of the virus to people more vulnerable than yourself. As we move forward into what looks to be a crisis, I'm going to do my best to contribute to the public health by keeping my distance.
Do you head a sports team? Play your games in front of an empty stadium. Are you organizing a conference? Postpone it until the fall. Do you run a business? Tell your employees to work from home. Are you the principal of a school or the president of a university? Move classes online before your students get sick and infect their frail relatives. Are you running a presidential campaign? Cancel all rallies right now. All of these decisions have real costs. Shutting down public schools in New York City, for example, would deprive tens of thousands of kids of urgently needed school meals. But the job of institutions and authorities is to mitigate those costs as much as humanly possible, not to use them as an excuse to put the public at risk of a deadly communicable disease. Finally, the most important responsibility falls on each of us. It’s hard to change our own behavior while the administration and the leaders of other important institutions send the social cue that we should go on as normal. But we must change our behavior anyway. If you feel even a little sick, for the love of your neighbor and everyone’s grandpa, do not go to work.
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