Good morning, RVA: A report from Mitch, rename some schools, and “gambling”

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and looks like we could end up with some rain later this afternoon. Pack a jacket!

Water cooler

Roberto Roldan at VPM has an interview with former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu—you might remember he stopped by Richmond as part of his E Pluribus Unum tour last year. You can check out the full report his group put together after that country-wide tour (PDF). It’s full of takeaways that are true for Richmond as well as much of the South (and, really, much of America). For example: “Residential segregation matters because where you live affects your access to education, employment, transportation, healthcare, and so many other aspects of daily life that are often taken for granted.”

I feel like it’s been a while since I linked to one, but you should definitely read through this week’s email from Superintendent Kamras. It’s packed with info about state-level education funding, rezoning, and the school renaming process. About the latter, RPS would like to rename eight schools, and, as you can imagine, there are community meetings about each beginning next month and stretching through February. Maybe public meetings aren’t your thing—or maybe you’re all burnt out on public meetings, what with Richmond 300, school rezoning, and NoBro crowding out the regular-person stuff on your calendar. Remember when October in Richmond just meant a lot of festivals with beer trucks? Simpler times! You can, of course, still submit suggestions for school names via this online form.

WTVR reports that a driver hit and injured a person riding their bike at the intersection of Arthur Ashe Boulevard and Norfolk Street. This part of Arthur Ashe is included in the high-injury street network—so we already knew it was dangerous before this crash. Now that we have “proof” that it actually is dangerous, will anything be done to make this part of this street safer?

Last month, Henrico Police shot and killed Gay Ellen Plack in her own home while they were there to perform a welfare check. In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, her brother has an account of what happened that day and a list of questions for the Henrico Police that you should read. I think it takes a lot of strength to write something like this and start the work to prevent a similar tragedy from happening to anyone else.

Here’s a delightfully odd story about gambling in Chesterfield County by Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury. Oh, excuse me, it’s not “gambling” but “playing skill games and losing lots of money while doing so” 🙄.

If you’re looking to hang, but, like, in a cultured way, the VMFA wants you to know that they’ve added extended operating hours to Wednesdays. You can now do your own version of that Ferris Bueller “stare at a Seurat in a meaningful way” thing until 9:00 PM on Wednesday through Friday.

Reminder: Tonight at Canon & Draw Brewing Company (1529 W. Main Street) from 5:30–7:30 PM, you can and should come hear about Complete Street Richmond’s Vision Zero Scorecard. I’m convinced we’ve never before had such a public awareness and focus on the safety of our streets in Richmond—so, if this is something you care about, it’s a good time to get involved and meet some like-minded folks. Also, this event is worth “.5 CM for AICP certified planners,” if those words mean anything to you.

Tonight is also the final Richmond 300 forum: MLK Middle School (1000 Mosby Street), from 6:00–7:30 PM. If you can’t make tonight, there are a few more sharing sessions rounding out the week, but we’ve kind of come to the end of this stage of the process. Next, the team will work through all of the feedback they’ve received at all of these dang meetings into a report, and then get started on the draft Master Plan document! You can check out a diagram of the entire process here (PDF), if you like to start your mornings with process diagrams.

This morning’s longread

The Forgotten Drink That Caffeinated North America for Centuries

You know I’m about to get super into this stuff.

Cassina, or black drink, the caffeinated beverage of choice for indigenous North Americans, was brewed from a species of holly native to coastal areas from the Tidewater region of Virginia to the Gulf Coast of Texas. It was a valuable pre-Columbian commodity and widely traded. Recent analyses of residue left in shell cups from Cahokia, the monumental pre-Columbian city just outside modern-day St. Louis and far outside of cassina’s native range, indicate that it was being drunk there. The Spanish, French, and English all documented American Indians drinking cassina throughout the American South, and some early colonists drank it on a daily basis. They even exported it to Europe. As tea made from a species of caffeinated holly, cassina may sound unusual. But it has a familiar botanical cousin in yerba maté, a caffeine-bearing holly species from South America whose traditional use, preparation, and flavor is similar. The primary difference between cassina and maté is that while maté weathered the storm of European conquest, cassina has fallen into obscurity.

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