Good morning, RVA! It's 52 °F, and rainy and it'll continue to rain for most of the day. NBC12's Andrew Freiden says we might see some sunshine for a few hours late in the day—fingers crossed!
Water cooler
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Ali Rockett reports on ORD. 2022-091, an ordinance submitted by Mayor Stoney to create a Civilian Review Board. According to Rockett: "The [Mayor's] proposal closely matches recommendations suggested by William Pelfrey Jr. — a professor at VCU’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs with expertise on policing, whom the administration hired as a consultant — but ignores many of the recommendations from a council-appointed task force that called for a completely independent office to handle all complaints against officers, audit police data and procedures, and make binding disciplinary decisions." If I were City Council, I would immediately reject the Mayor's ordinance and focus on drafting something that more closely matched the recommendations from Council's own Civilian Review Board Task Force. To spend so much citizen time and effort on crafting these recommendations just to pass them by in favor of the proposal submitted by the Mayor would make for a serious violation of the public trust. It's not that the Mayor's proposal is bad (although I think it could be stronger), but it is certainly not what Council has promised through their own extensive public process.
This past Monday's episode of The Boring Show (aka City Council's second budget meeting) is now up and available for your ears. I haven't listened yet, but can't wait because RPS Superintendent Kamras stopped by to give an overview of the Schools' budget, which, I think, still has some pretty big open questions surrounding it. Anyway, I plan to zoom through at 2x speed today as I commute by bike (or bus, depending on the weather). Council will hold their third work session this coming Monday at 1:00 PM and will focus on an analysis of the Mayor's proposed operating budget.
Samantha Willis at VPM reports on teacher burnout across the Commonwealth. Unsurprisingly, lots of teachers are burnt out—starting even before the pandemic but certainly exacerbated by it—and have left teaching. Willis also points to the Governor's attempts to stifle classrooms as an additional hum of background anxiety layered on top of all the day-to-day stressors of teaching. I read through to the end of the piece, hoping to find a solution or path forward, but came away empty handed, which is troubling (but maybe also unsurprising?).
Today at the Black History Museum, HOME of VA will host a discussion about the gap in homeownership rates between Black and white individuals. Homeownership is one of the primary ways people build wealth in America, so systemic, racial disparities in homeownership mean systemic, racial disparities in wealth. It's fascinating and shocking, and today you can learn more about the topic and what HOME of VA does to help close that gap. The event kicks off at 11:45 AM with a self-guided tour of the Museum's fair housing exhibit with the discussion starting at 12:15 PM. In-person tickets are $6, virtual tickets are free.
Trevor Dickerson at RVA Hub reports that the VMFA now has a Norman Rockwell! From the release: "Norman Rockwell’s 1971 painting, _The Collector.jpg)_, is the first work by this beloved American artist to enter VMFA’s collection."
It is St. Patrick's Day, which you can, of course, celebrate in whatever fashion you think appropriate. For some of us that's nothing at all, for some of us it's wearing a bit of green and grabbing a beer after work, and for others it's dressing up an enormous skeleton as some sort of terrifying undead leprechaun. Excellent work, everyone involved.
This morning's longread
NASA’s Webb Reaches Alignment Milestone, Optics Working Successfully
The James Webb Space Telescope, which sits contentedly out in the middle of space, has hit an important milestone by aligning its 18 mirrors and producing one, mostly in-focus image. Pretty amazing stuff! The telescope's team will continue to nudge and tweak and shimmy components for the next couple of months, and we should see the first amazing images this summer. I can't wait!
“More than 20 years ago, the Webb team set out to build the most powerful telescope that anyone has ever put in space and came up with an audacious optical design to meet demanding science goals,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Today we can say that design is going to deliver." While some of the largest ground-based telescopes on Earth use segmented primary mirrors, Webb is the first telescope in space to use such a design. The 21-foot, 4-inch (6.5-meter) primary mirror – much too big to fit inside a rocket fairing – is made up of 18 hexagonal, beryllium mirror segments. It had to be folded up for launch and then unfolded in space before each mirror was adjusted – to within nanometers – to form a single mirror surface
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