Good morning, RVA: 1,358 • 160; hold on until June; and get engaged on the equity agenda

Good morning, RVA! It’s 34 °F, but look at today’s beautiful weather! Expect highs in the 60s and no rain as far as the eye can see—which is until at least next week at some point. Take some time today to get outside and sit in a sunbeam.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,385 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 160 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 169 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 60, Henrico: 61, and Richmond: 48). Since this pandemic began, 1,033 people have died in the Richmond region. I post a lot of charts that I make in Google Sheets because I’d be making them anyway, but that doesn’t make me a chartwizard or some sort of dataranger. If you want to see some really beautiful (and useful!) coronacharts, check out this set of graphs, tables, and maps from the Anchorage Daily News that Patron John shared with me. I am jealous of this person, “Kevin Powell,” who can make all of these wonderful visuals.

Over in vaccine world, President Joe Biden, who I still sometimes forget is the president, said yesterday that we’d have enough doses for “every adult in America” by the end of May. That’s just three months away, and, like I’ve said before, abundant supply of vaccine really does change everything. We can go from anxiously refreshing websites and email clients, to strolling on down to our neighborhood pharmacy or grocery store. You may still get your vaccine at a massive clinic run by the national guard, but it won’t be your only option and it won’t feel like winning the lottery (which is a good thing!).

Last week the Mayor announced the Richmond Equity Agenda, which “serves as a road map to recover the right way, outlining priorities for the next four years and beyond.” He’s also asked that residents—like you—weigh in on the Agenda by leaving comments on the actual text of the ordinance itself. You should definitely do this! Scrolling through the document, I see that the housing and transportation people have already made a first pass, but we still need folks passionate about health, wealth-building, education, climate, public safety, history, community engagement, and economic development to dig in. That’s a big list of topics, and surely most of the folks reading this email care about at least one of those things. Please take six minutes this morning, scroll through the topic sections, and leave at least two comments about how you’d like to see our City equitably addresses some of the challenges facing us.

Ack! I forgot to link to this on Monday, but the YWCA has started their 21-Day Racial Equity and Social Justice Challenge. You might remember a similar thing from last year, but here’s the gist: Sign up and then each day, for 21 days, via email “you will be presented with activities such as reading an article, listening to a podcast, reflecting on personal experience and more. Participation in an activity like this helps us to discover how racial injustice and social injustice impact our community, to connect with one another, and to identify ways to dismantle racism and other forms of discrimination.”

Anah Johnson and Adam Lockett have a column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the City’s need to refocus on safer and expanded spaces for pedestrians—especially with budget season right around the corner. I deeply agree with this bit: “As the demands for more sustainable transportation infrastructure in the city and surrounding counties continue to grow louder, it would be an unfortunate and preventable injustice if the health and needs of the people once again were not prioritized. Richmonders should be able to go for a walk, hike or bike ride without a risk of respiratory illness or fatality from a vehicle.”

VPM’s Ian Stewart has a picture of the newly-installed pedestrian hybrid beacon at Grove and Somerset Avenues! I think I might try to ride my bike out there today to check it out. New infrastructure road trip!!

Trevor Dickerson at RVAHub writes about Photogrammar, a new project out of UR’s Digital Scholarship Lab. Be careful or you could lose your morning scrolling around on a map of over 170,000 photographs from life in America during the Great Depression and World War II.

The Atlantic-10 men’s basketball tournament kicks off today in Richmond at the Siegel Center with first round games featuring La Salle, Saint Joe’s, George Washington, and Fordham. Tomorrow’s second round takes place in both the Siegel Center and the Robins Center. Then, on Sunday, the championship game will be played in Dayton, which is garbage. I mean the whole idea of having a basketball tournament right now is garbage, but having the entire tournament in Richmond except the final? Double garbage. Richmond starts their tournament play tomorrow at 11:00 AM and VCU will tip off on Friday at 3:30 PM. Sports!

This morning’s longread

Mars Is a Hellhole

I like reading things about why we shouldn’t deify Elon Musk.

The influence Musk is having on a generation of people could not be more different. Musk has used the medium of dreaming and exploration to wrap up a package of entitlement, greed, and ego. He has no longing for scientific discovery, no desire to understand what makes Earth so different from Mars, how we all fit together and relate. Musk is no explorer; he is a flag planter. He seems to have missed one of the other lines from Pale Blue Dot: “There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”

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Picture of the Day

Just one from my now enormous collection of matchbooks.