🚮 Good morning, RVA: Emergency shelters, land value tax, and the Scarlet R

Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and the next couple of days look like absolute stunners. Expect highs in the 70s, sunshine, and some serious hammock weather. There’s a small chance of rain on Sunday, and then cooler temperatures arrive on Tuesday—but you can safely ignore all of that while you enjoy a wonderful weekend.
 

Water cooler

As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 113, 55, and 110, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 8.9. These numbers have all, generally, plateaued compared to last week. You know the deal at this point: Get your fall COVID-19 booster (now available to everyone five and older) and your flu shot. No one wants to either (or, gah!, both) of these diseases, so just go schedule your appointment this weekend. The Mayor got his two shots this week, which means you can probably find the time to do so, too.
 

Ned Oliver at AXIOS Richmond reports on the City’s efforts to open four emergency shelters…but not until mid November at the earliest. See above about the cold front moving in next week and then wonder why, after what seems like years and years at this point, the City still hasn’t figured out a sustainable emergency shelter solution.
 

I’ve written a bunch about City Council’s proposals to lower the City’s real estate tax rate, something I’m dead set against. To be clear, though, not all of City Council supports these shortsighted proposals! Councilmember Addison put together a quick five-minute video explaining why the proposed reductions won’t provide the tax relief we need, how we can help people most directly in the short term, and, finally, how we can set the City up for success in the long term. Spoiler: That last one is done by creating a land value tax.
 

You should definitely know what types of things you can recycle and what needs to go in the true trash, otherwise you may get a shameful Scarlet R stuck to your recycling bin. NBC12’s Henry Graff reports on some of the “OOPS!” stickers showing up on bins across town and reminds folks that plastic bags, styrofoam, cords, and food waste are not recyclable and need to stay outta the blue-topped bins. The worst/most inconvenient thing about this new effort—other than the dirty looks you’ll get from your more well-behaved neighbors—is that, if you get OOPS’d, Central Virginia Waste Management Authority will not collect your recyclables at all! You’ll have to wait allllllll the way until the next go around. What will you do with all of those seltzer cans until then??
 

Tomorrow, October 15th, OystoberFest returns to St. Thomas Episcopal Church on the Northside (3602 Hawthorne Avenue). Not only does OystoberFest have the best October portmanteau around, but if you ride your bike over there they’ll give you $2 worth of oystickets (a less successful portmanteau I just made up). Head over to their website to look through the menu, and then make a plan to fill yourself with a regretfully large amount of oyster and oyster-related food.
 

I’m a sucker for this sort of thing: On Sunday, the Firehouse Theatre will host a production of the 1938 The War of the Worlds radio drama. They’ll have voice actors and sound effects artists recreate the radio play, which just sounds really neat—plus the source material can’t be beat.
 

This morning’s longread

America’s Lost Crops Rewrite the History of Farming

I did not expect this long piece on the first domesticated crops in North America to be so fascinating. Now I kind of want to grow some of this stuff!
 

Over the past few decades, a small group of archaeologists have turned up evidence that supports a different timeline, which begins much, much earlier. Plant domestication in North America has no single center, they have discovered. In the land that’s now the U.S., domestication was not an import from farther south; it emerged all on its own. Before Mexico’s corn ever reached this far north, Indigenous people had already domesticated squash, sunflowers, and a suite of plants now known, dismissively, as knotweed, sumpweed, little barley, maygrass, and pitseed goosefoot. Together, these spindly grasses formed a food system unique to the American landscape. They are North America’s lost crops.
 

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Picture of the Day

How do people live without toaster ovens?