Good morning, RVA! It's 66 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday. Expect warmer temperatures, more of that humidity, and a chance of rain throughout the day. Keep the umbrella at the ready!
Water cooler
Not much to report on the chartsandgraphs front, but here are Tuesday's all-time graphs of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19 in Virginia. Tap through for a continuation of the same trends we've seen over the last couple of weeks. The bigger news, however, is the New York Times reporting that "Johnson & Johnson is planning to ask federal regulators early this week to authorize a booster shot of its coronavirus vaccine." The FDA has a meeting scheduled on October 15th to discuss, so mark your calendars, J&Jers! And, not to worry Moderna Maniacs, that's just one day after the FDA will meet to discuss Moderna boosters. As Oprah would say, boosters for everyone!
Yesterday, Governor Northam announced that Ashley Bland, the Instructional Technology Resource Teacher at John B. Cary Elementary, has been selected as "Region I Teacher of the Year." She's now one of just eight teachers in the running for State Teacher of the Year. Here's how RPS Superintendent Kamras's describes Bland, "It's hard to come up with enough adjectives to describe her, but I'll give it a go: brilliant, kind, generous, collaborative, dedicated, passionate, responsive, skillful, insightful, and, of course, loving." Also, please watch this charming video of the Governor's surprise announcement via the First Lady's Twitter. Congratulations Ashley, and good luck at States!
According to this Nextdoor post, some of the neighbors living around Brookland Park Boulevard have taken (plant) matters into their own hands and organized a sort of Adopt-A-Bump-Out program for the remaining bump outs. They want to rip out the rose bushes and weeds—much like DPW ripped out the other bump outs—and replace them with native, drought-resistant, low-maintenance perennials. Then local businesses, families, and organizations can adopt a bump out to do the minimal required upkeep. Since lack of upkeep was one of the "complaints" about the now-removed bump outs, it's great to see neighbors addressing that. However, it'd have been way, way easier for the City to plant native, drought-resistant, low-maintenance perennials in the first place? If so, maybe we'd have a few more bump outs on Brookland Park Boulevard today.
Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch attended City Council's ARPA work session so you didn't have to! Suarez's big takeaway from yesterday's meeting was the 7-2 vote (NO: Larson, Lambert) to keep a huge chunk of the $155 million of federal funding earmarked toward community centers across Richmond. Reading through this piece, I think what's underscored for me is that while City Council does technically have the final say on how to spend this money, the Mayor's in such a position of strengths as the one who creates and submits the budget. To make substantial changes, Council has to find five votes, which, given this particular Council and their priorities, is kind of a lot of votes. Suarez says Council hopes to introduce a final budget this coming Monday for adoption on October 25th, which, we'll see!
VPM's Ben Paviour has some of the details on what happens if the Virginia Redistricting Commission fails to produce new district maps by their October 11th deadline. Ack! That's next week! As always, should you want more, the Virginia Public Access Project has maps, data, and tools for you to explore the current situation. It's over my head, but I know some of y'all out there will want to dig in and maybe even speak at a public hearing.
Via /r/rva a beautiful double rainbow over the James River, the East End, Lakeside, Downtown, and the Fan. What does it mean!?
This morning's longread
Can the iconic Georgia peach keep growing in a warming South?
This article about climate change really does a great job of highlighting a specific, practical impact of warming temperatures on our specific(ish) region. Sure wish we would have put this kind of ingenuity and effort towards limiting emissions back when we still had a chance!
In addition to more resilient varieties, there are technical fixes that could help peaches. Chavez is experimenting with a goopy, cellulose-based mixture that looks like a pulpy mayonnaise and has potential to help insulate trees from cold weather. Because it’s made of cellulose and water, the solution can be sprayed onto peach trees a few days before temperatures drop without introducing a new chemical contaminant like a pesticide. Large wind machines would help stave off the spring frost by pulling warmer air closer to the ground. But deploying these solutions on a large scale will be a challenge. Wind machines are expensive, says Chavez, and the cellulose spray is still in the research stage, though similar trials on cherries and apples at Washington State University have shown promise.
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