Good morning, RVA! It's 53 °F, and we have another beautiful day ahead of us. Expect a continued break from the humidity, highs in the mid 80s, and lots of opportunities to wander around your neighborhood. Enjoy, because tomorrow could bring a bit of rain.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 130, 15, and 5.4, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 13.3 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 1.7; Henrico: 6.6, and Chesterfield: 5). Since this pandemic began, 1,352 people have died in the Richmond region. 45.9%, 57.4%, and 53.9% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
As we talk more and more about variants, especially the delta variant, I wanted to surface this Variants of Concern dashboard on the VDH website (which is updated weekly on Fridays). You can see a pretty deep breakdown of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths by variant type. Variants are scary, especially the way in which they're covered in the media sometimes, but two things reassure me: 1) Getting vaccinated is your best protection against all of the variants of concern at this point, and 2) thus far, just six people have been hospitalized as a result of the delta variant across the state. That's a small number, but, of course, still certainly one worth keeping an eye on.
City Council's Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today and will take up, once again, RES. 2021-R026, the laundry list of councilmember-proposed changes to Richmond 300. I think last we spoke of this, each councilmember who wanted to change the master plan—a plan which just won the Master Plan Heisman for the depth and extent of community engagement involved—would grab a meeting with City staff. I have no idea if those meetings happened. I also have no idea how the committees plans to make sense of this list of changes and get the appropriate level of community involvement and buy-in that any amendments to our new master plan should require.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Chris Suarez found a single story that ties together Richmond's housing shortage, lack of public transportation options, and restrictive zoning. Unfortunately, I don't know what the short-term solution is for Mike, who lives in a convenient but illegal trailer. Longer-term, though, allowing and building hundreds and thousands of Accessory Dwelling Units would help a lot of folks like Mike.
The Governor announced that he will call the General Assembly back for a special session on August 2nd to "fill judicial vacancies and allocate more than $4.3 billion in federal relief funding." That is a lot of money, and I'm on pins and needles over here waiting to see how the GA decides to spend it. A month ago the Governor and a handful of GA leaders released this joint statement outlining their priorities for the ARP money, but you never really know what'll come out the other side of a lightning-quick special session until it's all said and done. Also, I wonder if localities will get their share of ARP money before the state? Or does the state need to figure out what to do with their share before Richmond and Henrico see the federal direct deposits show up in their bank accounts?
Ben Paviour at VPM has a nice look back at the 1971 update to Virginia's Constitution on the eve of its 50 year anniversary. I had no idea that so much Jim Crow language was embedded in the actual 1902 Constitution, which was written as a sort of white supremacist middle finger to the federal government and the 14th Amendment. The Library of Virginia will host a panel discussion on the Constitution on July 1st, plus they'll have original copies of four of Virginia's constitutions on display from June 29th through July 1st! Deeply nerdy, deeply cool.
Via r/rva, I will just quote the title of the post in full: "About a week ago, I went on a run near Clover Hill High School & came upon a guy who hit a bear with his car. Cop was positioned nearby with tranquilizer gun and was waiting for the injured bear to come out of a woodsy area. I just moved to Midlothian from South Dakota. Are bears common around here?"
This morning's longread
The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Going to Bed Early
As I get older and my body is less willing to stay asleep, I can totally relate to this concept of "revenge bedtime procrastination"—but in the reverse. Sometimes I just want to out of bed even earlier, that'll show...myself??
According to the CDC, about 70 million Americans have chronic sleep problems. Insomnia affects between a third and a half of U.S. adults at one point or another. And we Americans are not unusually afflicted—one 2016 study reported that worldwide, 10 to 30 percent of the population experiences insomnia; some studies find rates as high as 50 to 60 percent. But behind this torment resides an opportunity to increase our quality of life, if we can change our relationship with our slumbering selves. Instead of worrying about how we can more efficiently induce sleep, we need to stop resisting it. And to do that, we need to stop seeing sleep as purely physiological and start considering its transcendent significance.
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