📧 Good morning, RVA: Another mess, a vote by mail error, and invasives

Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and, by now, you know the deal: Expect cloudy skies and temperatures around 70 °F. I’m definitely feeling the gloom—the sun popped up for a minute last night, and I ran outside to recharge quietly on the stoop like a plant. Don’t worry, just a couple more days of this persistent gray!
 

Water cooler

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Anna Bryson reports on another mess at the Virginia Department of Education, this time with the approval of a “new partnership with iTeach, a for-profit company offering online teacher training…[including] authorization to certify special education teachers.” The Board of Education approved the new partnership, but, turns out, at the time they didn’t know that iTeach’s special ed courses for teachers failed to meet the state’s standards! Double turns out: VDOE staff, though, knew about iTeach’s shortcomings and “pushed back against department leadership for pressing ahead with the special education courses even though they did not meet the state’s standards.” Triple turns out: “the Youngkin administration did not provide this document to members of the state Board of Education before they unanimously voted in June to approve partnerships with iTeach.” The whole matter’s made worse when the State Superintendent asks her FOIA officer to redact more information from the RTD’s public records request (which then becomes part of the public records request). Oof.
 

Fellow vote-by-mail aficionados, Dave Ress, also at the RTD, reports that the ballot you recently received may contain an error in the instructions! Ress says that the ballot still reminds you to have a witness sign the envelope, which is no longer required due to a recent change in state law. Annoying! Errors in voting-related materials have the potential to disenfranchise folks, so that’s not great (especially for a registrar that’s been in the news a bit too much over the past couple of years). Luckily(?) this error seems fairly minor and shouldn’t prevent most folks from getting their ballot filled out and sent back correctly.
 

VPM’s Patrick Larsen reports on the invasive spotted lanternfly’s journey across western Virginia. Tap through and you’ll definitely learn some things, like how another invasive species (Tree of Heaven, booo) provides a primary host for these crop-killing bugs. But the real gem here is this “new music video” from the Virginia Cooperative Extension on how to stop the spotted lanternfly’s spread. I think the combination of “music video” and “cooperative extension” always deserves your time.
 

Tonight at 7:00 PM, VCU Libraries will host Dr. J. Drew Lanham—an ornithologist, wildlife ecology professor, and birder—for their 2023 social justice lecture. Lanham will deliver a talk titled “Coloring the Conservation Conversation” and will focus on “how Black people’s historical relationship to land influences their present perceptions of nature, its appreciation, and stewardship.” I’m sure he’ll also talk about his experiences as Black birder, too, since he wrote “9 Rules for the Black Birdwatcher” for Orion Magazine back in 2013. This sort of stuff is extremely my jam, and if you’re interested in attending—either in-person or virtually—you’ll need to register ahead of time. Learn more about Lanham in this nice interview in Style Weekly by Karen Newton.
 

For some reason, I find this picture of a massive Henrico-grown pumpkin sitting on a forklift to be so disturbing.
 

This morning’s longread

I Have a Question for the Famous People Who Have Tried to Apologize

I will admit to not knowing about a couple of these pop-culture apologies! Still, I enjoyed this piece in the New York Times, because I love when folks dig into the practical components of what makes an apology work and feel authentic.
 

The first step in a good apology is acknowledging harm. The second is expressing genuine regret, and where possible, acknowledging our shortcoming. Our intentions are not always good. Sometimes we’re selfish. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing, and sometimes we fail to consider the consequences. If we can admit these things, it helps repair trust. Then we vow, in good faith, to not perpetuate the same harm again. The last step is repair. This means directly addressing the harm done — not via self-flagellation on YouTube nor with any expectation of forgiveness.
 

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Picture of the Day

So many colors at the neighborhood smoke shop.