Good morning, RVA! It's 40 °F, and earlier this morning some "snow rain" moved through?? It is spring! Get outta here with that—especially since highs later today will settle somewhere in the 60s. Severe weather could dampen your plans tomorrow, but, after that, the end-of-the-week weather looks great.
Water cooler
Oh, hey, that was quick: Via the New York Times, the FDA authorized "second booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines on Tuesday for everyone 50 and older, describing the move as an effort to bolster waning immunity against severe disease in case the virus sweeps the nation again in the coming months." The CDC then updated its guidance, allowing second boosters, which the NYT frames as less enthusiastic than the FDA's move. CDC also has an update for J&Jers, saying "Separately and in addition, based on newly published data, adults who received a primary vaccine and booster dose of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at least 4 months ago may now receive a second booster dose using an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine." I haven't seen what that means for folks who mix-and-matched J&J with a mRNA booster, though. The further we move down this booster path, the more complicated it gets!
Councilmember Addison's 1st District email newsletter is packed with great information this month. I couldn't figure out how to link to an online version of it, so you get this PDF printed from my inbox. First, Addison has a new liaison, Whitney Brown (who you should, of course, copy whenever you email the councilmember). You can meet Whitney at an April 5th town hall (both in-person and over Zoom). Congratulations, Whitney, and good luck! Second, Councilmember Addison lays out eight important points about replacing George Wythe High School, including his position that "I will commit to releasing the funds to School Board tomorrow with the commitment to build the school at a capacity of 2000. I cannot support funding anything less than that for our children." I don't envy Council's position at the moment. It feels like Richmonders have started to transition to "I don't care how big, just freaking build it," which, while totally understandable, is not the way I'd prefer a decision that'll impact the Southside for decades gets made. Third, check out this side-by-side comparison of the Council's Civilian Review Board recommendation and the mayor's CRB recommendation put together by City Council staff. What a useful document that answers a lot of my questions! Looking at it like this I do think they can find a reasonable middle ground—if Council wants to put in the work. Anyway, good stuff, and regardless of where you live you can subscribe to the 1st District newsletter here.
Up in Hanover, that County's School Board is trying to limit the rights of trans students. Megan Pauly at VPM reports that, "the Hanover County School Board voted to allow the Arizona-based group Alliance Defending Freedom – which the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed an anti-LGBTQ hate group – to review a district policy pertaining to the rights of LGBTQ students in school." Pauly has a good explainer of the extreme views held by ADF and why a public school board has absolutely no business bringing them in to advise on any sort of policy. Over in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Holly Prestidge reports that "some Atlee High School students are being suspended this week following their participation in a student-organized walkout on March 18 in protest of the Hanover County School Board’s policies on transgender students." About the suspension, I love what one of the students involved has to say: "I think what I did was the right thing — I’m not too upset about it...We know what’s going on is unfair. I just want [the board] to understand that ... all we want is to be treated equally.”
The Collegian's Jackie Llans and Madyson Fitzgerald report that the University of Richmond will strip the names of six enslavers from buildings on their campus. UR went through a whole process to rename these buildings, and part of that involved creating this really interesting 10-point "naming principles" document which specifically includes: "No building, program, professorship, or other entity at the University should be named for a person who directly engaged in the trafficking and/or enslavement of others or openly advocated for the enslavement of people." Tap through to read the other nine points which seem pretty thoughtful.
This morning's longread
Lee Jacobs’s Quilt Can Speak
Quilts and quilting are so rad. I definitely would read a longer longread about quilts—especially from the South.
These childhood experiences shaped Jacobs’s approach to quilting and her aesthetic. “I like them old-time quilts,” she recalled. “I reckon because I learned how to do quilts old-timey.” Such quilts required a degree of self-reliance. “Old-time was what you knowed yourself. You didn’t have no paper and book kind of stuff. You accumulate this with your own mind.” Jacobs, who attended school through seventh grade before leaving to work on the family farm and later marry, had to use available materials such as sewing scraps and sackcloth in her quilting. But frugality did not mean sacrificing beauty. “A quilt that’s made and put together with many colors, seems like it’s pretty to me,” she reflected. “The littler the scrap, the prettier the quilt.”
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