Good morning, RVA! It's 25 °F, and that's too cold! Temperatures should figure themselves out today, with highs in the mid 40s, and then by tomorrow we should back to very springy mid 50s. I hope all of your outside plants made it through this morning's nearly record cold temperatures! Bundle up if you've gotta leave the house any time soon!
Water cooler
Today's Tuesday and, good news, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield still all have a LOW (aka green) COVID-19 Community Level. The all-time graphs of cases and deaths show marked decreases, and I'm sure hospitalizations would follow the same pattern if I could find that graph (here's a national graph of hospitalizations from the New York Times instead). Things are pretty much following the same trends as they have for the past couple of weeks, which, in our case, is great. This week's big coronanews is not about disease transmission but about vaccines: the White House may decide to recommend an additional, second booster for folks aged 50 or older. The timing for this second booster seems unclear, with the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee having a meeting on the books for April 6th but the NYT reporting that "Unlike with the first round of regulatory decisions on booster shots, no meetings of the advisory committees of either the F.D.A. or the C.D.C. are planned ahead of the decision on second boosters." The President's administration seems to be preparing for another summer or fall wave and wants to get ahead of it. Ugh/yikes/bleh. P.S. If you can stomach the thought of it, bookmark the CDC's wastewater surveillance site to get an early look at any potential coronawaves.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Chris Suarez reports on City Council's meeting last night and has the big no-news about the funding to start redesigning a replacement for George Wythe High School: "With six votes needed for the ordinance to pass, only four voted in favor of releasing the funds. City Council President Cynthia Newbille, Andreas Addison and Reva Trammell abstained from voting. Council members Ellen Robertson and Michael Jones were absent." Which, to do the math for you, means Jordan (2nd District), Lambert (3rd District), Nye (4th District), and Lynch (5th District) voted for the ordinance. Sounds like a pretty solid deadlock, especially with six votes needed on Council and School Board Chair Shonda Harris-Muhammed informing the mayor's administrations "that the board will not consider building an 1,800-seat school instead." I honestly don't know where things go from here? Maybe the money set aside for school construction in the mayor's budget ($200 million according to Suarez) could be used to redesign George Wythe without City Council's involvement? That'd delay the project, of course, but we're already so far off schedule I wonder if it even matters.
Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury reports on the slow recovery of public transit across the state. Bummer...BUT check out this bit about Richmond's bus system: "'We are definitely at pre-pandemic levels,' said Julie Timm, the CEO of the Richmond-area transit agency. By serving large numbers of essential workers who still needed to get to jobs during the pandemic (an intentional feature of the system’s 2018 redesign), Timm said, GRTC didn’t see its numbers drop as dramatically as other areas did." I'll tell you what, I'm really interested in looking into this fall's ridership numbers (assuming no crushing coronawave), when VCU students first come back and more folks typically ride the bus.
Related, the City will start repaving Broad Street, in five phases, starting April 14th. This will mean a disruption for a ton of GRTC buses, including the Pulse, and also, I suppose, drivers. Check out this silver lining though: "30 days after each phase is complete, the City of Richmond will paint the median Pulse Bus Only lanes red between Thompson and Foushee Streets. This color is the international standard for transit-only traffic. The red lanes will alert other drivers to vacate the dedicated lane to help improve efficiency and pedestrian safety." Make sure you check the aforelinked page for a list of specific detours as we get closer to paving.
As you know, Style Weekly is back!, and that means their Top 40 Under 40 is also back! They've put together a great list this year that includes some of Richmond's best folks. Shout out to Cat Anthony, Executive Director of the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation; Eva Colen, head of the City's Office of Children and Families (see below!); Lucas Fritz, owner of the Broadberry; Goad Gatsby, activist and general guy about town; Shadae Harris, RPS's Chief Engagement Officer; Maritza Pechin, Deputy Director of the City's Office of Equitable Development; and Joanna Cirillo, my coworker and, as Dr. Danny Avula put it, "the lifeblood of Richmond and Henrico's COVID-19 response." Congratulations everyone, and thanks for making Richmond your home.
Do you live in the City of Richmond and have children—especially young children? Then take this survey from the City's Office of Children & Families about what your family needs to thrive (with a focus on daycare and preschool). While the cost and logistics would be a huge challenge, just think about how many lives would shift if the City could provide free daycare and preschool to every child?
This morning's longread
Who Was Alice Augusta Ball?
I learned a lot about Alice Augusta Ball (a young, Black chemist), plants, leprosy, and Hawaii in this piece!
Blockaded by 2,000-foot-tall cliffs, the remote settlement was only accessible by boat (or later plane), mule, or foot. Initially, conditions were stark, with patients lacking adequate housing and supplies. Board of Health workers, Christian missionaries and na kokua (people who voluntarily joined their loved ones in isolation) helped the exiles transform the leprosarium into a community, constructing churches, a bar, a store, a theater and a social hall that hosted dances. Some residents held jobs, working as clerks, waitresses, fishermen or hospital orderlies. But the fact remained that patients were forcibly removed to Kalaupapa—sometimes by bounty hunters tasked with tracking down leprosy patients across the islands—and expected to remain there for the rest of their lives.
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