Good morning, RVA! It's 47 °F, and today looks nice, cloudy, with highs in the 70s. Tomorrow, though, you should expect the remnants of Hurricane Nicole to roll through and bring with it showers, potential storms, and even the possibility of a tornado, says NBC12’s Andrew Freiden. Keep an eye on the weather app of your choice!
Water cooler
The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s David Ress reports on the exciting news that the Mayor and six members of City Council (Addison, Jordan, Lambert, Lynch, Newbille, and Jones) have proposed a one-time $0.05 real estate tax rebate. That’s $0.05 for every $100 of your property’s assessed value, so if your home (and your land) is currently assessed at $200,000 you’ll be getting a $100 check at some point in “early 2023.” You can watch the full press conference over on the City’s YouTube channel. I’m stoked on this! The mayor seems pretty set against both the across-the-board tax cuts proposed by Councilmembers Nye and Trammell, saying: “Permanently cutting the tax rate would impact our ability to provide core services to our residents and our communities, it would also mean we couldn’t keep up with the increasing maintenance fees of our roadways, our parks, our libraries, and our schools.” Note that neither of Nye nor Trammell have sponsored this new proposal. It’s encouraging, like, really encouraging, to see the Mayor and a majority of Council work together to come up with a better solution to rising assessments than cutting the real estate tax rate. This is how things are supposed to work! Now, should this rebate pass, it feels like we’ve got a single year—two at the most—to find a clever, targeted, permanent solution or we’ll be right back in the same place debating lazily reducing the tax rate to the detriment of core services, roadways, parks, libraries, and schools.
Grace Todd’s November Attack of the Killer Thumbs column is out in RVA Mag, and, as always, you should tap through for your monthly dose of gardening advice. Like this: “I know it’s a Law of Suburban Dads that leaves must be raked and bagged by sullen teens in order to build character, but — color me shocked — dad was wrong about this one. Leave those leaves in the yard! They’ll rot away just fine, and your soil will thank you for all the nutrients they provide. Mulch them, compost them, run the mower over them to break them up, whatever.” Just this past weekend, we raked our leaves into the yard and had the sullen teen mow over them a couple times—helping both the Law of Suburban Dads and our lawn thrive.
Also in RVA Mag, this really wonderful, train-bridge-heavy fall photo set from Creative Dog Media. Tap through, you won’t regret it!
On Saturday, Richmond will host tons of people who intentionally want to run the 26 miles of the Richmond Marathon—people that do this are amazing and impressive. The marathon’s route encircles large portions of the city, so there’s a decent and real chance you may spend the morning trapped inside a wall of human jogging. If that’s the case, take advantage of the down time, walk over to a section of the race near you, and cheer on some of the people doing this sort of unbelievable thing (on purpose!).
From Bike Walk RVA: On Sunday, “join triathletes, runners, cyclists, yogis, and supporters of traffic safety for everyone at an event to remember Jonah Holland who was tragically killed by a drunk driver while riding her bike in August. It will be a morning of activities followed by a shared catered reception and speaking program to learn about traffic safety improvements in the Richmond region and what we can do to save the next life.” Events kick off at 9:30 AM with a group bike ride, but there’s also a run and yoga session, if those are more your speed. Doors open at 12:00 PM for the speaker session which features a handful of our region’s elected officials. Sign up over on the Eventbrite.
Each year, Hardywood and Better Housing Coalition partner on the Gingerbread House Challenge, a unique fundraiser where real adults spend a whole lot of time crafting incredibly impressive structures out of gingerbread for ultimate judgment by the public. You, the public, can swing by Hardywood downtown (2410 Ownby Lane) this coming Sunday from 12:00 – 5:00 PM, chip in a couple of bucks for a good cause, drink a few beers, and vote for your favorite cookie construction. This year’s theme is “RVA Neighborhoods,” which is sure to bring out some amateur (or actual) architects.
Logistical note! As I mentioned on Monday, this week’s schedule is weird. Tomorrow is Veterans Day, an official State Holiday, and I’ll take the opportunity to curl up on the couch under a blanket, ride out the storm, and watch a horror film or two. Business as usual returns on Monday, the week before Thanksgiving (when schedules immediately get weird again). I love the end of the year!
This morning's longread
A Theory of Sprawling Holidays
Surprising no one, I really enjoyed this Anne Helen Petersen piece about the expansion and Instagramificaiton of holidays—past a place of warm traditions and into the horrible land of capitalism-driven public performances. I’m incredibly thankful I don’t have a young child at this particular moment in our culture and can get away without knowing a single thing about leprechaun magic.
You can see how Christmas Creation took over the month of December — starting with the weekend after Thanksgiving, with that initial push for massive consumption, then gaining speed and intensity, trying its hardest to absorb Hanukkah, all the way up until Christmas Day itself, which is often experienced as a sort of explosion followed by stupor. There are so many things to do, so many gifts to buy, so many family photo shoots to sort through and then pick the right photo to upload to Shutterfly. Some of it rules! Some of it does not. But the truth is that there’s not a lot of obvious ways for Christmas to continue expanding. Hence: the dog advent calendar I just saw this morning at Trader Joe’s. So where does all that anxiety over homemaking and magic-childhood-making and evidence that we’ve got this on lock go? Other holidays. Each one becomes an opportunity to do more. For holidays with meaning, that entails hollowing out the actual holiday itself and replacing it with things to buy and do to render it sufficiently “performable.” For holidays with little meaningful resonance save caricature (see: St. Patrick’s Day) that means expanding the performances and norms associated with the holiday, particularly for kids.
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Picture of the Day
Secret bamboo forest.
