Good morning, RVA: A new utilities commission, Juneteenth, and a day off

I just opened the ordinance PDF and there it was!

Good morning, RVA! It's already 63 °F, and today you can expect highs right around 90 °F. It looks just beautiful outside at right now, but I think we may have some storms roll through this afternoon—I hope to watch them pass from the screen porch. Weatherwise, the rest of the weekend looks incredible, though, so make sure you find some time to get out there and enjoy it (while remembering to hydrate, of course).

Water cooler

At this past Monday’s City Council meeting, 1st District Councilmember Addison introduced ORD. 2023-188, which would establish a Public Utilities and Serivces Commission. The purpose of this new commission would be to “provide the Council and the Mayor with information and advice concerning the management and operations of the utilities operated by the City, including natural gas, water, wastewater, solid waste, and stormwater.” I think this new commission would cover a good 30% of this email newsletter’s content, so I’m pretty excited about it. Honestly, when I saw this ordinance, my first thought was “oooo maybe we can infiltrate its membership and force the commission to consider how to transition the City away from its role as a natural gas provider.” Then, I just opened the ordinance PDF and there it was: One of the stated objectives of the commission—written right in the legislation—would be to “provide advice on how the City may facilitate a transition of the gas utility in accordance with the City’s climate and ecological emergency declaration.” Incredible! I think this may be an important/fun commission to sit on, so keep an eye out for details on getting appointed (if, of course, Council does decides to pass this ordinance and create this new advisory body).

Thad Green and Luca Powell at the Richmond Times-Dispatch covered the really beautifully, heartbreaking, and complicated funeral for Shawn Jackson and Renzo Smith, who were both shot to death outside of Huguenot High School’s graduation last week. Some of this piece feels a little bit like grief tourism, so I’d understand if you want to skip it, but I do think it does a good job of underscoring just how wide an impact trauma can have on a community.

This coming Monday is June 19th, an official state and federal holiday celebrating Juneteenth. Yesterday, to kick off the long weekend of celebrations, the Mayor held a quick press conference to raise the City’s first official Juneteenth flag, which is a pretty rad looking flag (minus the text on it, of course). Throughout the weekend you can join all sorts of celebrations around town, like Henrico Parks & Rec’s Juneteenth Celebration, Juneteenth 2023 at Hardywood (put together by UnlockingRVA), Richmond Parks & Rec’s Jubliation in June—actually, just go read this event list by Karen Newton in Style Weekly with your calendar open in another tab.

If, on the other hand, you’re looking to spend some time this weekend alone in the forest (always a great decision, if you ask me), the folks at RIC Today have put together a really nice list of some of the region’s hiking trails. A lot of these—but not all!—are also wonderful places to go get rad on your bike, too.

Logistical note! As mentioned previously, on Monday the Commonwealth celebrates Juneteenth, and I will be taking the day off—both from my day job and from this email. If you’ve got the day off, too, I think you should spend at least a little of that time reading about Juneteenth and why it’s important. Enjoy, and you’ll catch me back in your inboxes on Tuesday!

This morning's longread
My Father’s Death in 7 Gigabytes

OK, maybe a weird longread to share right before Fathers Day, but sometimes Paul Ford can really write a sentence. I do (kind of frequently) think about what it would look like to reduce my entire life down to an archive of everything I’ve ever written and what kind of story that would tell. Not that anyone would actually read a PDF mostly about zoning and bikes with that many pages!

Dad wrote opaque, elliptical, experimental works of enormous profanity. One of his plays was produced with fanfare in the 1970s, and many poems were published here and there, but most of the manuscripts were returned with polite rejections. He came of age, though, in an era of great writers writing greatly. You stuck to your guns and waited for people to figure you out, and if they didn’t, even after decades—their effing loss, buddy. The upshot was 70 years of writing on crumbling yellow onionskin, dot-matrix prints with the tractor feeds still attached, and bright white laser output, along with more than 10,000 ancient WordPerfect files and blog entries, including many repeats. Now all mine to archive. I thought, briefly, about just not doing it. What could he say? What could anyone say?

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Picture of the Day

I am growing a plant that’s the final boss from the Suicide Squad movie.