Good morning, RVA! It's 72 °F, and today looks warm and humid with a potential chance of rain for pretty much the entire day (mostly in the afternoon, though). Temperatures stay cooler(ish) for the next couple of days and then heat up later this week. I think my garden could use the rain, so I’m not going to complain too much.
Water cooler
The other day my calendar reminded me that I’ve written a daily morning newsletter for the past six years—since at least 2016! Six years is a long time to do anything, especially for me, and I’m pretty proud of how Good Morning, RVA has changed and evolved over the better part of a decade: Fewer sentences about restaurants, way more sentences about zoning. This week, I’ve decided to do something new and run a first-ever mini membership drive. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, but 1) feels awkward, and 2) there’s just so much to write about every morning that I’ve never gotten around to it. But here we are! My goal over the next couple of weeks is to find $200 in new monthly Patreon contributions—whether that be entirely new Patrons or existing Patrons that increase their donation. I think that seems achievable, right? To both existing patrons and new friends, thank you so much for supporting something that I love doing and hope is a useful and good thing for our city. As always, you can become a patron at: patreon.com/gmrva.
Former City Councilmember Jon Baliles (and former excellent city blogger before that) has a new weekly newsletter to which you should subscribe. There are very few people in Richmond who know more about the subtext and context of what’s going on in town than Baliles. For example, check out this smart thought about the financing of a baseball stadium in his most recent edition: “It would not surprise me at all to see the ‘winning bidder’ with a plan that looks great on paper but when the wheels start moving, it is quickly “discovered” that to make the plan work on the City’s timeline, a City backstop of bonds will be needed to help make sure the stadium is completed. Mix that with the MLB deadline requirement, and the pressure on the Council to approve the backstop will be unrelenting and allow little if any time for deliberation or consideration. Navy Hill died a death by 1,000 self-inflicted cuts by the Administration. If this cynical prediction unfolds, we could be told we must approve the City bond backstop or we will lose the Squirrels.” Certainly something to keep an eye on. Anyway, I think readers of this newsletter will enjoy what Baliles has going on—go subscribe this morning!
School’s out for summer, as someone famous once said—definitely not AC/DC and almost certainly Alice Cooper. To commemorate the year that was and the start of a (fingers crossed) restful summer, RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras wrote a nice end-of-year note in his email this past Friday. I recommend reading it, even if you don’t have kids, as a reminder of what we’ve all been through over the last year. It’s a lot, and my brain has done an admirable job of forgetting most of it. As Kamras says, “This has been a very hard year. But every time we got knocked down, we dusted ourselves off, got back up, and kept pressing forward.” I look forward to continuing to press forward, albeit in a more chill way, over the coming year.
VPM has some photos and video from this past Friday’s local protests after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Also tap through from some comments from Sen. McClellan, including this important reminder: “Because of our strong state laws, abortion remains legal in Virginia. As other states face restrictions, Virginia will remain a safe haven for abortion care. We welcome everyone to make their reproductive health decisions free of government interference.” I know we just wrapped up this year’s General Assembly session and it feels way too soon to start talking about next year’s, but it’s hard not to see abortion dominating the legislative discussions this winter. The State Senate does have a stressfully razor-thin Democratic majority, but that includes chaotic, pro-life Democrat Sen. Joe Morrissey. I don’t know what that means, but there’s lots of time between now and then for all sorts of things to change.
Mike Platania reports that Sapporo will buy Stone Brewing which means the Stone facility in Fulton will soon start making Sapporo—which is cool and weird all at once. Platania says the acquisition means another 200,000 barrels of beer coming out of Richmond and about 30 more jobs at the brewery. What about the long-abandoned plans for a restaurant/bistro? Who can say!
This morning's longread
We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe v. Wade. We’re Going Somewhere Worse
Maybe you’re exhausted from reading every single word of Roe v. Wade coverage and analysis over this past weekend. Maybe you’ve been avoiding it because you just can’t. Either way, I’d definitely understand if you wanted to skip this dark but well-written overview of the post-Roe landscape in the New Yorker.
In the meantime, abortion bans will hurt, disable, and endanger many people who want to carry their pregnancies to term but who encounter medical difficulties. Physicians in prohibition states have already begun declining to treat women who are in the midst of miscarriages, for fear that the treatment could be classified as abortion. One woman in Texas was told that she had to drive fifteen hours to New Mexico to have her ectopic pregnancy—which is nonviable, by definition, and always dangerous to the mother—removed. Misoprostol, one of the abortion pills, is routinely prescribed for miscarriage management, because it causes the uterus to expel any remaining tissue. Pharmacists in Texas, fearing legal liability, have already refused to prescribe it. If a miscarriage is not managed to a safe completion, women risk—among other things, and taking the emotional damage for granted—uterine perforation, organ failure, infection, infertility, and death.
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