Good morning, RVA! It's 65 °F, and today looks cloudy and cool. Honestly, if we can avoid any sort of drizzle, you can probably find me in a hammock for most of the afternoon.
Water cooler
I've got two interesting and contrasting pieces of COVID-19 news for you this morning. First, the Governor of Louisiana reinstated their statewide mask mandate yesterday ("indoors for all people age five and older"), and that state's Department of Health has also recommended reducing the size of indoor gatherings, too. These new regulations and recommendations come as Louisiana has the highest rate of new cases per capita (99 per 100,000). The state also has the fourth highest hospitalizations per 100,000; third highest deaths per 100,000; and has the sixth smallest percentage of fully vaccinated people out of all U.S. States and territories (according to the NYT). I imagine that last thing and all of the other things are related. Other states currently experiencing relatively low—or at least not catastrophically high—rates of disease should take heed! Although, I'm not sure that as Americans we're particularly good at taking heed. For some local context, Richmond and Henrico are experiencing "substantial" community transmission, and Chesterfield is experiencing "high" community transmission. Again, take heed! The second bit of contrasting news is that the U.S. reached President Biden's goal of 70% of adults with at least one dose of the vaccine. It took a bit longer than expected, but we got here. I'm encouraged, because that means folks are still getting vaccinated, which, at some points, didn't seem like something that would be true at this point in August. I mean, check out this graph of the daily vaccinations across the country. It's on an upswing for the first time in a long time—definitely for the first time without having a new group of folks become eligible for vaccination. So there's still lots of disease out there, but more and more folks are making the decision to get vaccinated. Positives and negatives, this morning.
Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on the General Assembly's special session, which kicked off yesterday. The GA's goal at the moment seems to be to pass a spending plan for all of the federal emergency aid money as quick as they can, and then get the heck out of Dodge. There is an election in just 91 days, after all.
Tonight, if you feel comfortable doing so, you can attend an in-person public meeting to discuss the Shockoe Small Area Plan from 6:30–8:30 PM at Main Street Station. If you've newly got the heebie-jeebies about in-person gatherings after reading today's first paragraph, you can hop on a Microsoft Teams meeting tomorrow from 12:00–1:00 PM. And of course you may comment directly on the plan using the City's Konveio through August 27th.
Heads up! This coming Thursday, STAY RVA will host their summer fundraiser. Tickets are $50, and, if you need convincing, let me quote three sentences about their mission/vision: "We want to encourage people to STAY, put down roots, and get involved in their community by coming together in support of local schools. In order to be a first-class city, we must provide a first-class education for ALL students...If a school is not “good enough” for my child then it is not good enough for anyone’s child and we are going to work to make sure that ALL schools are great for ALL of our kids." You can learn more about STAY RVA over on their website.
This morning's longread
Eating Dirt, Searching Archives
You know how sometimes you read things and are like, "Dang! Look at how these words are put together!"? I had that reaction after reading this essay, which is mostly about the history of forced labor in Texas.
The land developed for Texas’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century economies reflects a violence that relegates Black bodies to the dirt, then literally builds on them, for the sake of progress and profit. This progress would overwrite enslavement and its afterlives altogether. There are numerous unmarked graves, burials, and bodies gone to dust and countless histories interred in the land. The Sugar Land 95 remind us that those gone to dust still reside in the dirt—and that the flesh that becomes dirt is not only a memory embedded in the land but also an archive providing access to that memory. Dirt offers Black Texas a tangible afterlife. It is intelligible only to those whose flesh is familiar with it, who feel it in their bodies, who have consumed it or are deeply connected to it. Dirt preserves Black Texas life, even in its density.
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