Good morning, RVA! It's 26 °F, and that’s cold! Today you can expect highs in the mid 40s, clouds, and a vibrating sense of anticipation as we wait for tomorrow’s storms. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden expects an inch or more of rain and warns that we should all prepare for a cold and wet Thursday.
Water cooler
Alright, Congressional primary news! The Firehouse Primary to determine the Democratic nominee for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District will take place this coming Tuesday, December 20th. You can vote at one of five locations across the district at any point between 6:00 AM and 7:00 PM, and, at the moment, you have the choice between State Senator Jennifer McClellan and two men. Potential candidates still have until 12:00 PM on Friday to collect signatures and pay a fee ($3,480, which is, interestingly, 2% of a Congressional salary), so we might see another candidate or two added to the list. I’ll wait for the finale slate before saying too much, but this sure seems like a missed opportunity to have used ranked-choice voting. If you’d like to volunteer to help out with the primary on Tuesday, you can fill out this form.
Eva Russo at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has pictures of work crews lifting the corpse of A.P. Hill out of the ground, wrapping it in a Virginian flag, and putting it on a gurney. I find this photoset, which is not at all explicit or gruesome, to be incredibly surreal.
Natalie Barr, writing for the Capital News Service at VPM, reports on the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority, an independent governmental group formed, at least initially, to distribute cash from national, multi-billion dollar opioid settlements. According to Barr, the five localities that will receive the highest percentage of settlement money are Chesterfield, Fairfax, Henrico, Richmond, and Virginia Beach. More on this, I’m sure, as the process moves along but sounds like this money will definitely have an impact on our region.
Via /r/rva, a list of things to do in Richmond for under $10. Tap through for lots of good suggestions, but I think my list would be: The T. Pott bridge, the Flood Wall, and the VMFA. Also, you could definitely get in and out of Cobra Cabana during happy hour for less than 10 bucks.
Importantly, Sarah Vogelsong at the Virginia Mercury reports that Senator Tim Kaine has urged Coca-Cola to resume production of Northen Neck ginger ale. The senator himself testifies that there is “no better ginger ale on the planet”!
Tonight at 6:00 PM at the Main Library (101 E. Franklin Street), the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities and Housing Opportunities Made Equal will host RVA Table Talk: Housing. This is an opportunity for community members to get together, learn, and engage about housing—maybe the single most important issue facing Richmond right now. Specifically, over the course of a couple hours, facilitated small group discussions will focus on “the needs and ways in which we've adapted and grown since 2020” and “ways we can apply these lessons to continue building better communities in the present.” Talking through important topics with two great organizations seems like a great way to spend a chilly Wednesday evening.
This morning's longread
What You Learn From Eating Alone
This piece by Mari Andrew in the Atlantic is just so charming! While I don’t do a ton of Solitude Food myself, I am definitely married to someone who loves nothing more than to eat lunch alone while quietly looking out a window.
A personal pizza can be Solitude Food too. I buy a personal pizza when I’m anticipating a glorious night entirely to myself: feet up on the coffee table, sparkling water I drink straight from the bottle, some totally uncool wine (like a merlot from the Dave Matthews winery), and a show I’ve seen a hundred times. Just me, melted cheese, and the Thanksgiving episode of Gilmore Girls. That’s divine solitude. But as we’ve all experienced, Solitude Food can become a Lonely Food—and that’s when it turns sad. Solitude is slippery and can morph into loneliness with an accidental listen to a particularly evocative song on shuffle, or when the place you’ve chosen to eat isn’t as charming as you anticipated, or when something goes awry in your pursuit of Solitude Food and it goes from an indulgence to a burdensome ritual.
If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
Picture of the Day
This year’s batch of egg nog finishing up.
