Good morning, RVA! It's 51 °F, and today looks beautiful. Expect highs in the 70s, sunshine, and an absolutely amazing evening for small talk on the porch or patio of your choosing.
Water cooler
Jahd Khalil at VPM talks to Martin Wegbreit at the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society about the large number of evictions scheduled this week in Richmond—126 to be exact. While the pandemic put a pause on evictions across the state, that’s longer the case, especially in the city. In fact, RVA Eviction Lab says evictions could soon surpass their pre-pandemic levels: “By the third quarter (Q3), filings exceeded Q1 2020 numbers, reaching 87.8% of pre-pandemic levels. In Chesterfield, Petersburg, Hampton, Virginia Beach, Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, and some parts of Richmond, the rate of filings was higher than it was in 2019. At this pace, the rate of eviction filings in Virginia will soon return to their pre-pandemic status, and could even surpass it, resulting in an eviction crisis greater than the conditions prior to the pandemic.” And, remember, those pre-pandemic conditions in Richmond made national headlines back in 2018. It’s upsetting that we’re headed back into the same, horrible place again, and Tracey Hardney-Scott at the NAACP reminds us that housing is absolutely critical for, well, everything: “You can't do anything without housing. You can't get a job without an address. You can't [get a license] without an address...Imagine that all being taken away from you.” To prevent this statewide backslide, RVA Eviction Lab calls for legislation to protect vulnerable renters at this coming General Assembly session. I don’t know how realistic that is, but I definitely would like to learn more about the eviction diversion options on the table given we have a divided GA and a Republican governor.
Axios Richmond’s Ned Oliver got ahold of some of the emails sent to Governor Youngkin’s mostly fake Critical Race Theory / school tip line, and the results are about what you’d expect: mostly unserious, bad faith “tips” with a few bizarre emails thrown in for fun. Oliver says that as of this past Wednesday, “the tip line appears to have been shut down...Emails sent by Axios bounced back as undeliverable.” The Governor’s spokesperson had no comment about that.
Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Henrico County will propose a new interchange at I-64 and N. Gayton Road. Ostensibly, the goal is for the new interchange to “ease traffic congestion in the area”—but it almost certainly will not do that. It’ll cost tens of millions of dollars, take up valuable land that could be put to more productive uses, and will most likely increase the amount of nearby traffic and congestion. It boggles my mind that we’re still out here expanding highways in 2022 as every day we’re presented with new and terrible evidence of the impacts climate change will have on our region. Huge bummer.
In his email newsletter last night, RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras announced the winners of the 2022 R. E. B. Awards for Teaching Excellence. As part of the award, winners plan a “once-in-a-lifetime travel experience to enhance their knowledge and skills, and to nourish their souls.” Tap through to read what each of the four winners has planned, because each trip sounds incredible.
WRIC reports on yesterday’s fatal crash on I-95 under Belvidere Street: “An investigation revealed that a 2020 Cascadia Freightliner had been driving on I-95 with a load of I-beams that, according to police, were over-height. The I-beams reportedly struck the Belvidere Road overpass at high speed before striking the septic truck. The collision of the I-beams and the septic truck caused an explosion and forced the vehicle to overturn before becoming engulfed in flames.” Just awful. WRIC also reports that both the highway and the bridge—despite being pierced by an I-beam and caught on fire—are open to travel this morning.
RVA Mag came through for me and has the photos from this past weekend’s Zombie Walk that I’ve been looking for. Tap through for a zombie Beetlejuice (although is he technically a zombie already?), a zombie 7-11 worker, and, worst/best of all, two zombie clowns. I love the amount of effort that folks put into this! Really incredible(ly horrifying) stuff.
This morning's longread
Perfectionism and the Performance of Organizing
I feel a lot of the same ways about organizing—my physical spaces but also my digital and task-related spaces, too. Sometimes an intense focus on organization is absolutely critical so I don’t fail as a person, but sometimes it stands in the way of actually doing things. It’s tough balance to find sometimes!
Keeping a house at Instagram-level organized is the opposite of throwing a good party. I am trying to train my kids to put away shoes and hang up backpacks when they get off the bus in the afternoon, but also recognize how that conflicts with their more urgent needs — to get a hug, to go to the bathroom, to tell me some random fact about their day. I love when the markers are sorted in rainbow order, but I love more the mess of their art projects. I recycled dozens of drawings and paper scraps but forced myself to keep two giant painted cardboard contraptions that were lovingly built (I believe, to be mazes for hamsters we do not own?) and fit nowhere into our lives.
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Picture of the Day
Lotta birds crossing my path this week.
