Good morning, RVA: More Dogwood Dell confusion, a School Board recap, and Memory Wars finale

This RPD + Dogwood Dell situation just keeps getting messier and messier.

Good morning, RVA! It's 73 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 90s with a family-sized helping of humidity on the side. Get used to it (as if you weren't already), because the weather today looks a lot like the weather tomorrow, the day after, and on until Tuesday. Whew, I'm running out of undershirts to sweat through over here!

Water cooler

The details surrounding the Richmond Police Department's claim that they prevented a mass shooting at Dogwood Dell continue to get less clear and more confusing. VPM’s Whittney Evans reports that: "Richmond prosecutors have withdrawn charges against two people originally from Guatemala who police accused of planning a mass shooting at the Dogwood Dell Fourth of July celebration. A prosecutor told a Richmond judge Wednesday the office has no evidence tying their arrests to a planned shooting at that location." The RPD released this statement on Twitter that sure feels like it's in direct conflict with what happened in court: "As confirmed today, there is evidence that RPD stopped a mass shooting from happening in the city on July 4. Our investigation led us to conclude that Dogwood Dell was the intended target. The result of good investigative work led to removing two men with guns and rounds of ammunition from harming our residents and visitors. The case is now in the hands of the federal justice system and we will continue to follow the case as it unfolds." First, I'm confused about the federal case. According to Evans, it has nothing to do with a mass shooting but with the immigration status of the two men, but this reporting from the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mark Bowes is less certain about the meat of the federal case. Second, an email statement sent by RPD uses entirely different, softer language than their Twitter statement, backing off from "as confirmed today" and not even mentioning Dogwood Dell at all. I honestly don't know what the next steps are for this, but it's a mess and it keeps getting messier.

KidsFirst RPS has a good write up of this past Monday's School Board meeting alongside their School Board scorecard. Sounds like a mixed bag! The most interesting item, for me at least, is the Board's decision to delay progress on rebuilding Fox Elementary by asking for more information—despite the Board previously authorizing the Superintendent to move as fast as possible under an emergency procurement policy. You can watch a short excerpt from the meeting on that first link and see board members express a kind of helplessness about finding and receiving information from the RPS administration. Sure, maybe the Board needs to review the Fox contract before voting on it (up for debate given the emergency procurement situation), but they certainly don't need to wait until their regularly scheduled public meetings to ask for more information.

A couple months ago I linked to the Memory Wars podcast, put together by local reporter Mallory Noe-Payne and featuring Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams. If you hate waiting and love to binge, good news for you because the final episode of the six-part series dropped today! I've been a faithful listener over the summer months, have really enjoyed it, and, honestly, am kind of sad to see (hear?) it end. Free idea: I'd definitely subscribe to a more regular, more conversational podcast where these two just talk about interesting stuff every week.

While most City Council committees take August off, the Urban Design Committee meets today, despite the heat and deep summer-vacation vibes. On their agenda is a discussion of the redesign of the Main Library. I really encourage you to tap through the previous link and scroll down to page four of the PDF to see how the master plan I'm always going on about really does impact our city—all the way down to the project level, even. UDC staff has put together a really nice table listing out goals from Richmond 300 on one side and then, on the other side, comments about how the new plan for the library does or does not meet those goals. It's pretty nerdy stuff but a neat example of how and why the Richmond 300 master planning process was so important to get right.

Breakaway RVA—one of Richmond's free, fun, and casual group bike rides (yes, we have multiple now!)—returns tonight for a "slow-rolling ride visiting the monuments and statutes of Richmond you should know." If you're interested, and you should be because Breakaway is always a blast, meet out front of the VMFA at 5:45 PM, expect to ride about 10 miles (including at least one hill), and join the gang for beers at Triple Crossing Foushee afterwards. Bring a light and plenty of water!

Via /r/rva, a looping, three-second video of a Duke’s Mayonnaise labeling machine that I watched for, like, an entire minute.

This morning's longread
What Is Water Cremation?

Weird, but OK!

During alkaline hydrolysis, a human body is sealed in a long, stainless-steel chamber, while a heated solution of 95 percent water and 5 percent sodium hydroxide passes over and around it. In low-temperature alkaline hydrolysis, the solution reaches a temperature just below boiling, the process is performed at atmospheric pressure, and the body is reduced over the course of 14 to 16 hours; in a higher-temperature version of the process where the mixture tops 300 degrees Fahrenheit and creates more pressure, the body is reduced in four to six hours. The process dissolves the bonds in the body’s tissues and eventually yields a sterile, liquid combination of amino acids, peptides, salts, sugars and soaps, which is disposed of down the drain at the alkaline hydrolysis facility. The body’s bones are then ground to a fine powder and returned to the deceased person’s survivors, just as the bones that remain after flame cremation are returned to families as ash.

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