Good morning, RVA! It's 70 °F, and today's gonna get hot again. You can expect highs right around 90 °F with plenty of humidity for your afternoon commute. I hope you have an excellent, if sweaty, day!
Water cooler
Today is the official first day of school for both Richmond Public Schools and Henrico County Public Schools. Students: Good luck, it'll be awesome. Families: You did it, you made it through the summer. Related, RPS School Boardmember Liz Doerr sent out a link to this neat data dashboard tracking RPS's progress towards the goals laid out in their Goals4RPS strategic plan. The dashboard is currently in beta and tracks just a handful of things—graduation & dropout rates, SOL results, PALs results, enrollment trends, and attendance rates—with more goals and data coming soon. I love a good dashboard and will be interested to see how community members, decision makers, and media start to use this one.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Patrick Wilson and Chis Suarez continue to report on the RPD’s Alleged 4th of July Plot, putting in FOIA requests to figure out what Chief Smith knew before holding his now-infamous press conference on July 6th. It doesn't look good for the Chief: "Smith's own department had provided him information in writing before his news conference that the location of any potential incident was 'unknown,'...A police official emailed those records to Smith and an assistant seven minutes before Smith's 2 p.m. July 6 news conference." Tap through for a screenshot of the actual talking points sent to the chief, which say verbatim: "the location was unknown." Why invent a location for a potential mass shooting on the spot, unnecessarily panicking neighbors and instantly calling into question police operations in and around Dogwood Dell on July 4th? I don't know, but Wilson and Suarez ask a lot of good questions in this piece, and have started to elevate their questions to the City's Chief Administrative Officer as they try to get to the bottom of this whole situation. Apparently, Councilmember Lynch has requested a "full briefing" at Council's September 6th meeting, and I would even bet we'll learn more this week.
Last week, I shared an L.A. Times article about California’s plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. I was like, cool, good for them, until Sarah Vogelsong at the Virginia Mercury reminded me of this important local fact: "In 2021, Virginia Democrats pushed through legislation to adopt vehicle emissions standards and electric car sales targets set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) as part of the party’s broad climate change agenda." This means that, unless General Assembly Republicans get their way, the Commonwealth will also ban new gas-powered vehicles in 2035! I'm sure there will be much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by Republicans in the next couple of GA sessions, but this is so clearly the path forward. I hope the slim Democratic majority can find a way to preserve the move towards these standards.
Jack Jacobs at Richmond BizSense reports on two things 1) Stoplight Gelato in Jackson Ward plans to reopen this fall, and 2) Penny’s Wine Shop will share the space. I loved Stoplight Gelato and hope that, even without original owner Barbara Given, it thrives now that were a bit less pandemicy in these parts. If I'm being honest, I mostly wanted to link to this piece because the photo of the folks who own Penny's is just about the most charming Business Owner Headshot I've ever seen.
Via /r/rva, this guerrilla show under a bridge down by the James River is just perfect Richmond vibes.
Today at 8:33 AM, if everything goes according to plan, NASA will launch a massive rocket to the moon, kicking off their Artemis I mission. You can stream the launch live on NASA’s YouTube channel and read some more about Artemis I here. Space exploration timelines always seem to slip, but, in a magical perfect world, NASA will send a crewed mission around the moon and back in 2024 (Artemis II) and then a put actual people—including the first woman and first person of color—back on the surface of the moon as early as 2025 (Artemis III). As you can probably tell, I am very excited and absolutely love this stuff. Good luck today, NASA!
This morning's longread
If You’re Suffering After Being Sick With Covid, It’s Not Just in Your Head
This piece about longcovid in the New York Times has some interesting history about the long-term health impacts following other viral pandemics. Turns out, it's not just COVID-19!
When the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 ended, misery continued. Many who survived became enervated and depressed. They developed tremors and nervous complications. Similar waves of illness had followed the 1889 pandemic, with one report noting thousands “in debt and unable to work” and another describing people left “pale, listless and full of fears.” The scientists Oliver Sacks and Joel Vilensky warned in 2005 that a future pandemic could bring waves of illness in its aftermath, noting “a recurring association, since the time of Hippocrates, between influenza epidemics and encephalitis-like diseases” in their wakes. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, the worst viral outbreak in a century, and when sufferers complained of serious symptoms that came after they had recovered from their initial illness, they were often told it was all in their heads or unrelated to their earlier infections.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
