Good morning, RVA! It's 73 °F, which is already pretty warm for this part of the day. Today you can, once again, expect sunshine and temperatures around 90 °F—with more of the same throughout the weekend. If you’ve got plans to go get rad, make sure they’re in the early morning or late evening, and make sure you stay hydrated.
Water cooler
RVA Rapid Transit will host their third Mobility University this coming September, and the application is now open. This is a five-week course that meets on Wednesdays to “educated and empower bus riders to self-advocate for better public transportation.” Over the course of about a month, you’ll cover the history of transit, how the bus gets funded, tips on telling your own story at a public meeting, and learn how to build your own advocacy campaign from scratch. So, if you’re a bus rider and would like to dig deeper into making our public transit system better, go ahead and fill out the application form today. Added bonus: Every session comes with free dinner catered by Soul n’ Vinegar!
This article from NPR, syndicated on VPM, is the textual embodiment of the “This Is Fine” meme: “This summer's crazy weather just can't stop, won't stop Americans from having fun.” The “crazy weather” is, of course, extreme heat and weather events set off by climate change, and the “fun” these Americans are having is literal heat stroke. It feels very American that we feel challenged by this summer’s apocalyptic weather not to do whatever we can to slow the death of our planet, but to prove that we can and will, by god, still go to a baseball game even if it means ending up in the ER.
Charlotte Matherly at Richmond BizSense reports that Stone Brewing’s sale to Sapporo will impact brewing in Richmond in a big way—a $40 million way. Stone’s Richmond facility will double their staff, add 12 new fermentation tanks, and increase production by hundreds of thousands of barrels of beer in the coming years. This stat in particular blows my mind: “The Richmond brewery will make about 40 percent of Sapporo's total product output this year, a goal that'll increase to 50 percent in 2025.” I don’t think I’d ever in a million years have predicted that half of Sapporo would be made in Richmond.
Axios Richmond’s Ned Oliver continues to do first-hand reporting on Very Important Food News. This week, he tries two stick-based foods, writing “Yes, that's right, only one of these has a hot dog inside. The other thing on a stick is a piece of mozzarella cheese.”
Today and tomorrow, life fills The Fan and Monroe Ward as VCU students return to campus for their official move-in days. It’s all very exciting to me; I love seeing families wandering around the neighborhood looking lost and excited and sad all at the same time. If you’ve got to move through VCU’s Monroe Park Campus over the next couple of days, give these folks—people who may have never set foot in Richmond until this weekend—an extra bit of grace. Yes they probably crammed their huge vehicle into a weird, made-up parking space, and yes they crossed the street without even looking while carrying two huge Rubbermaid containers—but this is a big, important weekend for them and theirs!
This coming Saturday, August 19th, the Elegba Folklore Society will host the 32nd (!) Down Home Family Reunion. Taking place at Abner Clay Park in Jackson Ward, this event “celebrates African American folklife with world music and dance, the Heritage Market, special children's events, interactive site demonstrations and delicious down home food. It is designed to show aspects of West African cultural traditions that are African American and that have been absorbed by the American South.” Sounds like an excellent way to spend a hot summer Saturday in Richmond.
This morning's longread
Flesh and Page
Sometimes you want to end the week not thinking about the climate or politics or zoning and rezoning, and just sort of nod along at interesting facts that will never ever apply to your life. And so, I give you today’s longread: A lengthy excerpt from an even longer book about parchment.
A set of fifteenth-century guidelines in Middle English provides instructions on how to “done awey what is wreten in Velyn or Parchement withowte any Pomyce”—that is, how to erase words from vellum and parchment without the use of a pumice stone, a common tool for finishing parchment sheets: “Take the juice of rew and of nettle, in March, April, or May, and mix it with cheese, the milk of a cow or of a sheep, add dry lime, mix them well together, and make a loaf, and dry it in the sun, and make powder out of it.” The powder must then be cast on the letters once they are moistened with saliva or water; after that, a quick scratch with the fingernail is all that is required to “done awey the lettres.” “This medicine,” the writer avows, “when made with the cheese or milk of a cow, is good for vellum, and [with the cheese or milk] of a sheep, good for parchment”—implying (quite charmingly) that the species derivation of the cheese or milk will determine the effectiveness of the erasure.
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Picture of the Day
Heckuva Golden Hour.
