Good morning, RVA! It's 77 °F, and, again, it’s hot. Today, you can expect highs in the low-to-mid 90s, Feels Likes in the 100s, and a potential for rain lasting most of the afternoon. We’ve got a bunch more weeks of summer left, so buckle up and pack an extra shirt for when you sweat through the first one.
Water cooler
Should you want it, Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has another update on the General Assembly’s slow stumble toward a budget. Sounds like the House and Senate have crept closer to a compromise over the past week or so. Progress is good, but I agree with political commentator Bob Holsworth: “The challenge is that every day that goes by, it becomes closer to the election and that becomes more of an influence on what they're doing.” I hope that influence is not to make big, huge campaign issues out of small, reasonably straightforward budget stuff.
This morning I learned about “The Rich Men North of Richmond,” from, of all places, the actual local newspaper. I think this means I’m either entirely out of the loop or I’ve successfully pared back my social media usage to a healthy level. I’m not going to link to it because parts of it are offensive, parts are dumb, and most of it is Republican propaganda. But this song exists and it mentions Richmond and I feel like there are lots of takes floating around of various temperatures. Here’s my extremely mild take: If any of the elected officials sharing this song wanted to address the issues it mentions—like, for example, livable wages—they could introduce legislation instead of posting American flag emojis on Twitter. They don’t actually want to solve these problems, so they won’t.
Early reminder: Breakaway RVA, my favorite casual group bike ride, will host their monthly event this coming Thursday, August 17th. For each ride, Breakaway picks out a theme to guide the route past interesting and noteworthy Richmond spots. This month, you’ll discover how Richmond’s early park system was shaped by its municipal water needs and existing geography. I mean parks, public works, and bicycles, what more could you want out of a Thursday night! Meet at Monroe Park at 5:45 PM (on Thursday); the event is free, but you’ll want to tap through and register over on the Eventbrite.
As foretold by himself, Dan Sinker of indictment.fyi, my main source of presidential indictment news, is in the midst of shuttling a child off to college and is unable to cover last night’s Big Indictment News. While I await his return and recap, I’ll make do with the New York Times’s ongoing, up-to-the minute coverage. The short of it: “The former president and 18 others were indicted by an Atlanta grand jury in a sweeping racketeering case...The indictment laid out eight ways the defendants were accused of obstructing the election: by lying to the Georgia state legislature, lying to state officials, creating fake pro-Trump electors, harassing election workers, soliciting Justice Department officials, soliciting Vice President Mike Pence, breaching voting machines and engaging in a cover-up.” That’s a long list of really terrible stuff, but that last one especially blows my mind!
This morning's longread
Happy Birthday
I stumbled across this Substack by Laurie Stone about...aging? Writing? Life? I don’t know, but I love it. This specific edition celebrates her one year of newslettering, but, dang, it includes some really great writing advice in the second half.
This way of working produces pieces that leave questions. We aren’t ever going to know, really, why we behave the way we do or why anyone else behaves the way they do. There are no clues. There is no untangling. There is only more tangling. “Tangle better” might be the thing you can exchange for ending a piece of writing with a bow. This kind of writing can feel satisfying to the reader in the way a piece of music is satisfying as it plays with the variations of its themes and wanders through the questions you, the reader, find yourself asking. Another important thing about the chunks you offer instead of a continuous narrative is: They have to be brilliant separately as pieces of writing, as well as in the series where you place them. They have to surprise the reader in the turns they take and in the ways they use language no one expects. The reader is guided through the circuit of “tangle better.”
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Picture of the Day
You never know what you’ll find at West End Antiques Mall, like these $450 Pyrex bowls.
