Good morning, RVA! It's 64 °F, and it looks like we’ve got another great day on tap with sunshine and highs in the mid 80s. I know we’re smack-dab in the middle of the week, and it’s way too early to look towards the weekend, but temperatures may start to creep up on Saturday. Enjoy this bit of cooler weather while you can; I spent about an hour puttering around in the garden last night and didn’t even break a sweat. Amazing!
Water cooler
Hark! What’s this? A COVID-19 update! You’ve probably either heard rumblings of a new COVID-19 wave approaching or maybe just had more people in your life get sick and test positive. Well, the presence of a new Katelyn Jetelina email in my inbox confirms it: “We find ourselves in the middle of a COVID-19 wave. Again. If this summer follows the previous three, we should expect ~10-15% of Americans to get infected.” It’s early on, and, reading through her entire email will, I hope, help tamp down any panic you might start to feel creeping in around the edges. As for what’s going on locally, you can pull up Virginia’s hospital admissions data on the CDC’s website or poke around in the Virginia Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard, which just got an update yesterday. It looks like, at least here in the commonwealth, both hospital admissions numbers and wastewater surveillance continue to show low levels of COVID-19 in our communities. That’s good news, but keep an eye on things as the situation evolves. It’s been a while since I’ve written a sentence like this but: Make good decisions, test frequently, stay home if you’re sick, and maybe dig around in your cupboard for that old box of masks—just in case.
Look at what happens when people get involved! Em Holter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that “The City of Richmond is backing out of a deal to build a fire training facility at the Hickory Hill Community Center” Wyatt Gordon has a copy of a letter (Twitter) sent from the City’s CAO to Council President Mike Jones and Councilmember Reva Trammel saying that, as a compromise, Richmond Fire Department training classes will remain at Hickory Hill while “a new burn tower will be built in Sandston, VA to replace the current structure.” Southside ReLeaf put out the following statement, too: “The city made the right decision by listening to community members and finding an alternative location for the burn tower. Given the environmental racism Southside residents experience daily due to discriminatory policies and decisions, it's important for city leaders to stand by their commitment to protect and expand green spaces...Southside ReLeaf encourages city leaders to keep an open dialogue with community members to determine the best path forward on how the community center should be used.” Great work, everyone—especially community members on the Southside who, without getting involved, would have seen some of their valuable green space literally burnt to the ground.
Yesterday, I talked about Virginia’s Big Tree Program, a searchable database of Virginia’s biggest and bestest trees that you definitely need to get into if you haven’t already. Then I learned that Richmond’s own Sheri Shannon, of the above-mentioned Southside ReLeaf, was once American Forests’s National Big Tree Program Coordinator. Has there ever been a better job title? Probably not. Check out this post on the American Forests website from way back in 2013 about a trip Shannon took to visit National Champion trees (a real thing!) in the eastern part of the commonwealth. I’m serious this time: I need someone to put together a map of all of Richmond’s champion trees—especially if we have any State or National champions!
I don’t know how much the “challenge” part of the “Kia Challenge” is actually driving thefts of Kias and Hyundais, but it’s certainly exposed a security weakness in those vehicles (specifically, the ones manufactured in the United States and Australia between 2011 and 2021). If you own one of these cars, the Richmond Police Department will give you a steering wheel lock for free—just call or visit your local precinct to pick one up.
Another day, another indictment of former president Donald Trump. Will any of them mean anything? Will anything happen to hold Trump accountable for doing an actual coup on January 6th? Will the growing stack of criminal charges against an active presidential candidate have any impact on his campaign at all? Who can say! Which is terrifying! As always, I turn to indictment.fyi to give me just enough information about the unfolding horror to make me feel informed yet not like I want to curl up in a ball under the coffee table.
This morning's longread
John Fetterman, Hoodie and All, Is Adjusting to Life in the Senate
I really liked this quick, and brutally honest, interview with Senator John Fetterman. Not only does Fetterman have a role in the national conversation about mental health but about disability, too. It’s just a matter of time before everyone—at some point in their life—needs some sort of accessibility tools like speech-to-text apps, and it’s nice to see someone in the extremely public sphere reflect that.
Mr. Fetterman arrived on Capitol Hill, signature hoodie and all, as a figure of fascination. For months, though, he kept colleagues and reporters at an arm’s length as he labored to cope with auditory processing issues that are an ongoing side effect of his stroke and debilitating depression that he now says prompted him to consider harming himself. He was treated for clinical depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center earlier this year, and his six-week stay there placed him at the center of a national conversation about mental health, a role he wasn’t always certain he wanted to fill. But in recent weeks, Mr. Fetterman has been adjusting to a more normal life for a lawmaker. Using a tablet that transcribes voice to text, he has started taking questions from reporters in the hallways, a staple of a senator’s life in Washington, and has begun inviting reporters into his office for informal off-the-record chats.
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Picture of the Day
Look what washed out of the downspout!
