Good morning, RVA! It's 63 °F, and today looks cooler and cloudier than the last couple of beautiful days. But! We've got a lovely weekend ahead of us with dry skies and temperatures in the 70s. I'm going camping, and it will most definitely be rad.
Water cooler
Boosternews! After a daylong meeting, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and then the full CDC authorized boosters for both the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. They also authorized round robin mix-and-matching, so regardless of your first vaccine you can now boost yourself with any of the available three. Folks with a primary series of the mRNA vaccines need to wait six months after their second dose and should fall into one of the high-risk categories, while any J&Jers two months out from their one-and-no-longer-done shot can get boosted. The New York Times has the details, details which, of course, lack any sort of direction on how folks should go about making their booster decision. Here's how the NYT puts it: "Regulators have not recommended any one vaccine over another as a booster. They have also remained silent on whether it is preferable to stick with the same vaccine when possible."
White supremacists defaced two murals in town with racist, offensive, and lazy graffiti: The Arthur Ashe mural down by the Battery Park tennis courts and the Black Monument Avenue mural out at Six Points in Highland Park. Patrick Larsen at VPM talked with muralist James Thornhill who helped put up the mural back in 2017, who had this to say: "Just walking down here as an artist and seeing this black spot where we had a wonderful picture of Arthur Ashe, it feels like someone just put a silencer on my mouth...Saying ‘don’t talk, don’t speak, don’t be creative, don’t express yourself, or we’re gonna retaliate.” I am 100% sure our community of artists will respond to the cowards who'd did this with something incredible, but it's awful that they need to.
City Council's Governmental Operations committee meets today and will talk about possible changes to Richmond's charter. This year's set of proposed changes (found at the bottom of this PDF) are an absolutely fascinating look into what the City Council, Staff, and the Mayor's office hate about the way our city government works. Note that the General Assembly has to approve most (all?) of these changes, so don't get too, too excited when you read things like "request that City Councilmembers serve fulltime and be paid accordingly for fulltime work." That's such an incredible need and would expand the potential pool of candidates in a wonderful way, but I just don't see the GA making that a reality. I did get a chuckle out of this recommendations, submitted by Councilmember Robertson: "Mayor serves as chair of Council and vice chair is the longest continual serving [councilmember]." Robertson is, I'm pretty sure...the longest continual serving councilmember. Also, I'm scratching my head at this one which I will just quote verbatim "To forbid trains blocking crossing for more than a set time." There's a lot in here, and today's meeting might be worth tuning in for.
Today is the very last day to request a mail-in ballot for the November 2nd election! The process to do so is super easy, so if you plan on voting by mail go tap a couple buttons on the Department of Elections website immediately after you finish reading this newsletter. You can also go vote early in-person at the registrar's office until the Saturday before Election Day. So many easy options to check off such an important task from your todo list!
President Obama is out and about in Richmond this weekend campaigning for Terry McAuliffe, which is neat. It does mean, however, that a bunch of streets around VCU and Monroe Park will close for most of the day on Saturday, October 23rd. I think it best to avoid the area if you can!
This morning's longread
Forget your carbon footprint. Let's talk about your climate shadow.
I don't know how useful it is to actually try and quantify your climate shadow, but I really enjoy parts of this concept—especially thinking through the weight that some individual actions can have. Yes, I know all the pollution in the entire world comes from just six evil, multinational corporations or whatever. However, one family's decision to put solar panels on their house, which then starts to spread virally across the entire neighborhood, has a much larger impact than just reducing a single home's "carbon footprint."
I visualize my climate shadow being made of three parts: my consumption, my choices, and my attention. My consumption would incorporate my lifestyle expectations, like running the air conditioner all summer or desiring two-day shipping when I shop online, as well as my participation in consumer culture (posting about new purchases on Instagram, spending money that goes toward a company or supply chain that is sustainable long-term) and, yes, my carbon footprint. My choices would include how I donate and invest my money, the number of children and pets I have, and what kind of company I work for and the kind of work I do for them. My attention is probably the most nebulous, yet perhaps the most important: How much of my attention is focused on the climate crisis? How many hours am I devoting to climate action? Is it at least as much as I spend watching Netflix, planning my next vacation, or taking a barre class?
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