🫠 Good morning, RVA: A secret melting, felony disenfranchisement, and the state of the River

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and highs today are back up in the 80s. The weekend ahead of us looks beautifully monotonous, though, with continued clear skies and summerish temperatures. I think…it’s hammock weather out there! I hope you find time to enjoy it, because more seasonal weather moves in this coming Tuesday and you may need to add a layer or two under your Halloween costume.
 

Water cooler

The Washington Post has put together some pretty striking video of a foundry melting down Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue in a 2,250-degree furnace. The whole thing was done in secret and is part of a really neat Swords Into Plowshares project that will create new public art out of the melted-down bronze that once made up the statue. There’s something weirdly cathartic about watching this video on loop.
 

Local reporter Mallory Noe-Payne, who you may remember from the Memory Wars podcast she put together with Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams, has a new one-hour special focused on Virginia’s felony disenfranchisement laws. Tap through to listen or to read a transcript of the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt to get you going: “Virginia is one of only three states with a constitution that permanently strips citizens with any felony conviction of their right to vote, and the only one of those three states that today doesn’t have a clear and public process for how someone can get that right back. It’s estimated that it impacts 12% of voting-age Black Virginians. That’s more than 1 in 10 not allowed to vote.” This is one of the more shameful parts of Virginia’s legal system, and, unfortunately, would require a constitutional amendment to change. The commonwealth’s Republicans, of course, have no interesting in passing such an amendment—which is also shameful and something that they themselves are ashamed of: “I sent interview requests to more than 50 state lawmakers who had voted against the amendment in the past, all Republicans. I got zero responses.”
 

The James River Association has put out their 2023 State of the James report, and the State of the James is…pretty OK, grading out at a B. JRA gives our collective work at restoring and preserving the river high marks for the number of breeding pairs of bald eagles, reducing the amount of nitrogen in the water, and wastewater pollution reductions. It’s not all fun and splashy games though, as the river’s shad population has reached an all time low and stormwater pollution controls—exacerbated by climate change’s heavy rains—fail to meet goals.
 

If you attend one weird Richmond Halloween event this year, make it the 18th Annual Richmond Zombie Walk. This Saturday at 2:30 PM, a horde of zombies will descend upon Carytown, shamble about, eat a brain or two, and groan aloud their thirst for the human life they once held—all for a good cause, too! Richard Hayes at RVAHub has all the details, plus some great photos of zombies from years past.
 

Tomorrow, October 28th, local voter registration offices will open for Saturday early voting. From 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Richmonders can stop by and cast their ballot at the hard-to access Laburnum office (2134 W. Laburnum Avenue), City Hall (900 E. Broad Street), or the Hickory Hill Community Center (3000 Belt Boulevard). These locations already host weekday early voting hours (from 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM) and will offer Saturday hours one more time on November 4th. You’ve got lots of options (and no excuses not) to make your plan to vote!
 

This morning’s patron longread

Why You Should Make Time for Oddball Rituals

Submitted by Patron Doug. I love the idea of oddball rituals! After reading this, I’m inspired to pursue more decidedly odd ones in my life and with my family.
 

Rituals can be religious or secular; they can range from traditional to offbeat. But even the small ones add richness to our lives, said Michael Norton, a professor of business administration at Harvard and author of the upcoming book “The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions.” Life is full of uncertainty, Dr. Norton added, and rituals help us “insert some regularity into the process.” There’s evidence that they also alleviate performance anxiety, deepen relationships and make us feel more in control. The beauty of establishing a ritual is that it’s easy. You simply decide to do it.
 

If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
 

Picture of the Day

Here are two Dall-e generated images of a melting Robert E. Lee statue. I couldn’t decide which I liked more!