Good morning, RVA! It's 58 °F, and you can expect more of the same: Cloudy skies, a chance for rain this afternoon, and highs somewhere in the 80s. Temperatures start to fall tomorrow!
Water cooler
May is Bike Month, and that means Bike Walk RVA has put together exactly 6,000 bike and bike-adjacent events throughout the month for your biking pleasure—with more events being added as we speak (probably)! Today we've got Bike to School Day, which I mention in this space mostly to alert folks who may be driving around this morning. Please keep a patient eye out for roving packs of kids adorably riding their bikes to school! Later this month, you can sign up for bike ped counts, take part in the mythical pizza crawl, chill with some fellow cargo bike aficionados in Byrd Park, and join folks in Bike to Work Day on May 20th. I love Bike Month, and if I didn't have any life responsibilities I would attend every single one of these events! Go check out the full list, add some stuff to your calendar, and I'll see you out there!
The Washington Post has an informative set of maps and charts about what happens across the country when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Virginia is just one of a handful of states in the "no explicit laws protecting or banning abortion" category, which, again, means Democrats' slim 2-seat majority in the State Senate is all that protects the rights of millions of women in the Commonwealth. Patrick Wilson and Andrew Cain at the Richmond Times-Dispatch put it plainly: "Youngkin wants Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade." In Virginia, it's always an election year, so, like I said yesterday, when you're next presented with an opportunity to vote for a Democrat you should do so. That 2-seat brick wall in the Senate is far too fragile to even contemplate staying home on Election Day.
Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams writes about reimagining Monument Avenue now that the VMFA's no longer involved. Both the Mayor and the Valentine's Bill Martin seem to be in the "let's take some time to get some perspective" camps, with Martin saying, "I’m from the country...Letting land lay fallow is not a bad idea, to allow people to heal so you can do the work to grow the future that you want." I'm into it, but I'd love to see some concrete planning work done to start putting together a timeline—even if that timeline accommodates a long, chill fallow period!
Style Weekly's Karen Newton has a nice piece on Storefront for Community Design, one of my favorite community organizations. A nonprofit dedicated to bringing the design of spaces and places to the community! What a great idea!
Finally, May the 4th be with you.
This morning's longread
Some Unremarkable Parenting
Friend of the Email Sam has a great column in Richmond Family Magazine about toilets, trans kids, and supportive, caring families. Great writing and worth your time this morning.
At least once a week I’d be called to duty, unclogging our humble toilet. It was during one of these sessions, hands on the plunger, having just calculated the optimum amount of force to do the job with minimal splash back, that my then 13-year-old popped their head into the bathroom and said, “Dad, I’m trans.” I was not expecting to have this conversation at that particular moment. The best I could manage was, “Wow. Okay. I love you, and I really want to talk more about this with you, but can you give me a couple of minutes?” I quickly finished in the bathroom, went out to the living room, and sat down with my child and my wife Kat. It was then that my child told us that they were non-binary (not identifying as either male or female), and that we should use they/them pronouns for them, use words like “child” or “kid” when referring to them, and that they’d like to be called a different name. We told them we loved them, would always love them, and would support them any way we could.
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