Good morning, RVA! It's 48 °F, and today looks pretty great. Expect highs in the 70s and sunshine while we wait for rain to move in for the next couple of days. The pollen continues to disgust me, though. Check out this gross video of pollen bursting forth from a tennis court via NBC12's Andrew Freiden. Blech.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,310 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 14 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 148 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 57, Henrico: 61, and Richmond: 30). Since this pandemic began, 1,248 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state, which I think I might just start including in this paragraph on the regular, broke 1,500 yesterday (1,527). That's an 18.6% increase since the recent low of 1,287 back on March 16th. I think it's important to keep an eye on these creeping numbers so we don't suddenly end up like Michigan, which leads the nation with a seven-day average of 7,284 new reported cases daily. For context that's a rate of 73 per 100,000 people, while Virginia sits at just 18.
This article in the New York Times about the tension between that state and the federal government is fascinating. Michigan's Governor Whitmer demands more vaccine doses, and the federal government says she should instead shut things down until the outbreaks cool off. Remember the added layer of how last time Governor Whitmer shut things down, her life was threatened and protesters stormed the statehouse—so kind of a big counter incentive for her to impose any new restrictions at all. Read through to the second half of the article for gross sentences about the blatant political nature of the decisions to shut things down, which would save actual lives: "State Representative Steve Johnson, a Republican, said he doubted that many people would comply with a lockdown order. 'For her to try to continue those measures would have been political suicide,” he said.'" Cool cool cool.
Tonight at 6:00 PM, you can slake your hot thirst for rezoning content by joining a virtual public meeting about the rezoning of Greater Scott's Addition. Download and flip through this presentation from a few months back if you want to come prepared. The proposed rezoning would take a large swath of parking lots and industrial wasteland north of the train tracks and south of the highway and upzone it from M-1 Light Industrial and M-2 Heavy Industrial to a more humane TOD-1 Transit-Oriented Nodal and B-7 Mixed-Use Business. That means more places for people and more places for people to do things. While there are very few home owners adjacent to this rezoning, I'm sure we can expect the same cast of characters dying 1,000 deaths over the potential to add density.
Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that yesterday the University of Richmond faculty senate "announced it had ratified a vote of no-confidence in the board's top member, rector Paul Queally, calling for him to resign." Additionally, it sounds like the University will reconsider its original decision and process that led to leaving the names of racists on some of its buildings.
I wish I could find out more about this, but a press release from the City has the exciting news that they've hired a new Director of Housing. Sherrill Hampton will serve as the sort-of-new department's new head: "Ms. Hampton has more than 25 years of experience in the affordable housing and community development arenas, and has worked in senior management roles in non-profit, governmental, and educational sectors. She holds a BS in Social Science from Claflin University and a JD from the University of South Carolina School of Law." I eagerly await someone to do an interview with this person!
Minor league baseball returns to Richmond (theoretically) on May 4th, for the first time in 610 days, when the Flying Squirrels take on the Hartford Yard Goats. That's 21 days from now, which feels too far into the future to know anything at all, but this does feel like an important cultural marker in our emergence from the pandemic. \
This past Sunday, Minnesota Police Officer Kim Potter shot andkilled 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop. As we read and learn more about yet another police killing of a Black person, and as people in Minnesota and elsewhere take to the streets in protest, I wanted to link to two things this morning. First, this Instagram post from @coloredgirlsbiketoo, which talks about mobility justice and how Black movement has been criminalized. I like this bit: "We must defund the police by removing police from traffic enforcement, now, and instead invest in Just Streets." Second, spend some time scrolling through Bree Newsome's timeline. She always has smart and thought provoking things to say in these moments. Like: "I agree that ending low-level traffic enforcement is good as a step toward abolishing the institution of policing altogether but Wright is not dead solely b/c of that. The nature of policing is such that he could’ve been killed by another [officer] that same day just b/c he was walking."
This morning's longread
Life Lessons from a Moab Trailer
A look back at decades of an imperfect life lived (mostly) in the desert. I think some of the best longreads I find come from Outside Magazine.
During the ferry trip, what I should have been contemplating was how our friendship had come to resemble a kind of marriage. I didn’t yet know that a marriage is, in addition to a romantic and carnal match, an economic relationship built on trust. One partner might contribute more of the money; the other might do more of the labor. In our case, I was doing countless hours of unpaid work on the trailer, while Wendy was undercharging on the rent and letting me sublet at will as I jetted around the continent. She had become my patroness, enabling my writer’s life, letting me live alone in a secluded spot where I didn’t have to work half the year. Our arrangement required that neither or us lie or cheat or get greedy. And it worked.
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