Good morning, RVA! It's 62 °F, and how good was yesterday’s weather?? So good! Today, you can expect more of the same, maybe a bit warmer, and maybe a bit more sunshine. Get out there and enjoy it.
Water cooler
Yesterday, I asked if anyone had a good explainer on the new Climate Bill (aka the Inflation Reduction Act), and reader Lori sent me this video by Hank Green, one of my favorite YouTubers/internet people. It’s about 20 minutes long, totally worth it, and will give you a good sense for how this bill invests almost $400 billion into reducing the United State’s carbon emissions and mitigating the impacts of climate change. I also love that this video gets the tone exactly right: This bill is a huge deal—one that seemed impossible just a month ago. That Congress could figure out how to get it passed gives me a sense of climate-hope that I didn’t think I’d feel...for awhile...maybe even in my lifetime. That’s cynical, but, hey, the last six years have been tough and cynicism-inducing. We needed a win!
VPM’s Ben Paviour has a quick Lab School update, which includes a map of all the college and universities that have expressed interest in starting their own Lab School. It’s a lot of colleges and universities all across Virginia—like, most of them! Lawmakers are now trying to figure out if private institutions, like Liberty University, are eligible for this (public) funding to start their own K–12 public school. Paviour also links to this PDF of the official Lab School guidelines from the Virginia Board of Education, which is a medium interesting read. Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has more and reports that the first Lab Schools “could begin recruiting teachers and students as early as February and open in time for the 2023-24 school year”. Seems rushed to me. Also, who knows how this will impact the teacher shortages facing almost every single public school district in the commonwealth. I think I have a lot of questions about how this effort won’t further divert resources away from the public school system that the State refuses to fund at an appropriate level.
Henry Graff at NBC12 reports on the continual crashes on Semmes Avenue. Tap through to see the remains of a car strewn across a bike lane—scary stuff. 5th District Councilmember Lynch has a good quote at the bottom of the piece: “We need to look at solutions to narrow the road because that is really the only solvent to curtail this type of speeding behavior.” First, it’s really wonderful to finally have elected officials talking about making actual, physical changes to infrastructure to improve the safety of our roads. In fact, I think we’ve got at least three councilmembers now who realize we can’t thoughts-and-prayers-and-paint our way to safer streets. Second, barrels and barricades would do the job and do it on the cheap!
Yesterday, RVA Bike Share announced a second station on the Southside—this one at Carter Jones Park! I think this brings us to 22 functioning stations, with seven more indedicated as “planned” on the map. 29 is still less than the 40 promised years ago, but this is certainly steady and welcome progress. I think I might even be considering turning back on my annual membership...
Heads up! VCU students start moving into dorms today and continue to do so through Saturday. If you’ve got to move through campus, expect wide-eyed students, anxiety-filled families, and illegally parked U-Hauls. While all of that makes navigating our streets and sidewalks a bit of a black-and-gold obstacle course, ultimately, it’s charming, and the return of students brings a lot of life back into town—I love it. Welcome back, Rams!
This morning's patron longread
Review: Jared Kushner’s ‘Breaking History’ Is a Soulless and Very Selective Memoir
Submitted by Patrons Emily and Val. Occasionally you read something and you can tell the writer and their editor were having just the best time. This review of Jared Kushner’s new book is one of those piece and worth reading—probably orders of magnitude more so than the book itself.
“Breaking History” is an earnest and soulless — Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one — and peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term in office. Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to speak about his boyish tinkering (the “mechanic”) with issues he was interested in. This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
