Good morning, RVA: Haze, Hikes, and heckin’ voting

Today, June 9th, is the very last day to apply for a vote-by-mail ballot to
be mailed to you for the June 20th primary!

Good morning, RVA! It's 55 °F, and today looks bright, sunny, and hazy. Expect highs around 80 °F with a forecasted Air Quality Index of 97 or “moderate” (however, the current AQI sits at 139 for my location). As we move through the weekend, keep an eye on the AirNow website and make smart decisions! I could end up being totally wrong, but I don’t think we’ll be trapped inside hiding from bad air all weekend long.

Water cooler

Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams writes about the mass shooting at Huguenot High School’s graduation, saying “The graduation ceremony has joined the grocery store, the schoolhouse and the house of worship among spaces that can no longer be assumed safe.” Williams calls to task the Governor for his ineffective and wasteful policies, the Lt. Governor for her “tone deaf and ill-timed” screed, and the continued impact systemic racism has on our Black communities. If you can handle it, it’s worth reading.

FYI, today, June 9th, is the very last day to apply for a vote-by-mail ballot to be mailed to you for the June 20th primary. Voter registration offices open for early voting tomorrow, June 10th. We’ve got a handful of fun elections across the region, so get your situation figure out and make sure you can participate!

Tomorrow, Bike Walk RVA will host three guided trial hikes along different sections of the proposed Fall Line Trail. Seems like a fun way to get outside and get your hands (or feet, I guess) on how the Fall Line will connect different parts of our region. If you’re feeling hikey, you’ve can join at 8:00 AM to walk through the northern section, 10:00 AM for a tour through the central section, or 12:00 PM for a stride through the southern section. Each hike will cover about three miles and will probably be a blast.

Something horrible to keep an eye on: Last night the Bedford County School Board passed its own version of a “Don’t Say Gay” policy. According to the reporting, the District’s superintendent, “reiterated that this policy forbids teachers from initiating the conversation [about sexual orientation or gender identity] but teachers can teach those topics as long as it's a part of the approved school system curriculum.” I would expect some of the Commonwealth’s more conservative localities to attempt to quickly follow suit.

Via /r/rva, a picture of a random recliner at Canal and 2nd Streets which is giving me good Richmond vibes.

It’s still June, which means it’s still GMRVA Pledge Drive month. Where, other than Good Morning, RVA, can you find notifications of Combined Sewer Overflow public meetings, thoughts on the Governor’s unraveling of climate change policies, and a picture of a man walking down the street with a katana strapped to his belt? Nowhere, I say—and that was all in just yesterday’s email! You can support this important (and sometimes silly) work by chipping in a couple of bucks on the ol’ Patreon. At the start of this month, I set a goal of increasing the amount of monthly patron donations by $381, and, so far, we’re 41% of the way there—which seems pretty good, considering 70% of June remains. Crunching the numbers a bit, and I still think the goal, while a stretch, is realistic and achievable! So if you aren’t a current patron or would like to increase your monthly donation by a dollar or two, consider doing so today. Because who knows when you’ll desperately need to know about the next very important and cool sewer meeting!

This morning's longread
To the 40,000 Drivers Who “Cause” Car Crashes Every Year

Warning: I think some of the language in this piece could, rightfully, upset people who have had their lives impacted by traffic violence. What I liked about it, though, is the idea that people should be able to make (horrible, bad, awful) mistakes on our streets without suffering life-changing consequences.

These individuals did not mean to cause harm to anyone, yet they are overwhelmed by guilt anyway, because—again—the societally accepted narrative is that the driver is to blame. Even when the driver understands that it was an accident, they don’t have the language to describe why it was an accident, beyond that they didn’t mean to do it. The truth of it, though, is that car crashes are a consequence of an “accidentally-on-purpose” approach to road and street design. We’ve embraced a development pattern that forces most people to drive (or be driven around) in order to get anywhere, and yet we’ve simultaneously prioritized speed over safety on our streets. When you force millions of people to engage in a risky activity every day, and you make it so that they’re set up to fail in that activity, and the consequences of failure are fatal…Well, how can that result in anything other than tragedy on a mass scale?

If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Picture of the Day

You never know what you’ll find in the forest.