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 itâs enough dry everything out a bit after yesterdayâs soaking rain.
Barry Greene Jr. at VPM has some more of the details, story, and life behind this weekâs Shockoe Project announcement. Itâs such a massive project and Iâm 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. Iâm 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 didnât 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 Iâd noodle on a clever name for Jason Roopâs City Council pre-show, even though thatâs entirely none of my business. What I appreciate about readers of this email newsletter, is that yâall, 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, Whatâs the Roop?, and Letâs Get Councilly (which, I keep saying like âLetâs. Get. Dangerous.â 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 Transitâs words, âdrastically cut down on red tape to get bus shelters installed on many major roads across our commonwealth.â I bet youâll 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 youâre interested in learning more, the event is free but make sure you register over on the Eventbrite.
It took awhile, but Iâve 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 doesnât 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 doesnât 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 âsentimental clutterââpersonally meaningful yet impractical objects: a box of old birthday cards, a chipped seashell, a loyalty card for a cafĂ© that no longer exists. Iâm 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 canât seem to give them away. So they collect in the corners of rooms, evoking the randomness of a thrift storeâand not the twee, curated kind. I donât 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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Out here doing SCIENCE.