Good morning, RVA! It's 33 °F, and cooler weather has returned (at least for a minute). Today, and for the next two days, you can expect highs in the 50s before temperatures return to their springlike, mid-60s ways. We should get a bunch of sunshine today, too, so fingers crossed that it’s enough dry everything out a bit after yesterday’s soaking rain.
Water cooler
Barry Greene Jr. at VPM has some more of the details, story, and life behind this week’s Shockoe Project announcement. It’s such a massive project and I’m nervous about it stalling out before it ever really gets off the ground, but, the more I read about it and the more I flip through the 130-page master plan, the more excited I get.
Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams sat down for a really interesting interview with Michael Fanone, former member of the Metropolitan Police Department and guy who showed up to protect the Capitol from insurrectionists on January 6th. I’m almost certain that this would have made for an A+ podcast and wish I could manifest that into existence.
David Poole, who you may know as the founder of the Virginia Public Access Project, has a neat history for the Virginia Mercury about how the Commonwealth accidentally legalized personal use of campaign funds. First, did you even know that candidates can spend campaign funds on sort of whatever? I did not! And, second, I certainly didn’t know that this suboptimal state of affairs only came about because of how a section of legislation got reorganized. Always be careful when you start copy/pasting around sections of a document! You never know what can happen!
Yesterday, I said I’d noodle on a clever name for Jason Roop’s City Council pre-show, even though that’s entirely none of my business. What I appreciate about readers of this email newsletter, is that y’all, too, took it upon yourselves to come up with a few names, despite it being entirely none of your business either. Great minds! Some of the better options that showed up in my inbox: The Roop Scoop, The Roop is on Fire, What’s the Roop?, and Let’s Get Councilly (which, I keep saying like “Let’s. Get. Dangerous.” from the Darkwing Duck theme song).
The clear winner, though, which was right there in front of me the entire time: Roop There It Is.
Today at 12:00 PM, RVA Rapid Transit will host local transit and urbanism reporter Wyatt Gordon for a talk on HB 285, the bus stop shelter bill. This state-level bill would, in RVA Rapid Transit’s words, “drastically cut down on red tape to get bus shelters installed on many major roads across our commonwealth.” I bet you’ll hear some hot-off-the-presses updates, too, because the bill did quite a bit of shuffling around over the last 48 hours. Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more, the event is free but make sure you register over on the Eventbrite.
This morning's longread
Minimalism Is Neat, but Clutter Makes a Home
It took awhile, but I’ve found a nice balance between the Marie Kondo minimalism of 10 years ago and the groovy maximalism that I associate with the 1970s (for some reason). Konmari gets a lot right, especially her focus on tossing junk that doesn’t spark joy, and, maybe embarrassingly, thanking items for doing a good job before putting them in the recycle. But! Just because you should get rid of items that make you feel bad about yourself, that doesn’t mean we have to turn our homes into barren, cold museums! Anyway, this longread is about holding on to keepsakes that spark joy, which you should definitely do.
Still, I keep it, along with a few other pieces of what you might call “sentimental clutter”—personally meaningful yet impractical objects: a box of old birthday cards, a chipped seashell, a loyalty card for a café that no longer exists. I’m reconsidering these mementos and many others as I try to clear out space in the small apartment I share with my husband and toddler. But I can’t seem to give them away. So they collect in the corners of rooms, evoking the randomness of a thrift store—and not the twee, curated kind. I don’t necessarily love the look of mismatched junk congesting the nooks and crannies of my home, but the clutter satisfies a deeper emotional need. Collectively, it represents every stage of my life, the lives of relatives who have died, and now the life of my not-quite-2-year-old daughter. It connects me to people and times that would otherwise feel lost.
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Picture of the Day
Out here doing SCIENCE.
