Good morning, RVA: National attention, canine flu, and a five-year anniversary

I always get nervous when a national reporter does a deep dive on something
nuanced and local!

Good morning, RVA! It's 64 °F, and, guess what, today looks wet and rainy! You can expect a shower or a drizzle for pretty much the entire day, and you should definitely keep an eye out for potentially severe thunderstorms later this afternoon. Maybe cancel your after-dinner stroll. I think we’ve got at least another day of this soggy situation, and then, on Saturday, things should start to warm up and dry out a bit.

Water cooler

Alec MacGillis at ProPublica has a long story about learning loss caused by the pandemic, Richmond Public Schools, the nascent teacher’s union, the RPS School Board, and the Board’s stumbly attempts to launch a year-round school pilot. There’s a lot in here! I always get nervous when an out-of-town reporter does a deep dive on something so very local and nuanced. On the one hand, it’s great to have national attention brought to some of the challenges facing Richmond, pressuring leaders to act (think Emily Badger’s reporting on eviction rates in Richmond for the NYT). On the other hand, can anyone who hasn’t spent the last forever living here really understand why we are the way we are? I’m not the only one to have complicated feelings: A quick scroll through the Horrible Bird Site shows that people have lots of thoughts and opinions on this piece, including the Mayor himself who said: “But, instead of leading boldly and doing whatever it takes to support our kids' post-pandemic recovery, leaders on the School Board and in the Richmond Education Association choose to sit idly by & maintain the status quo.” Yikes. I’ve got plenty to say about the School Board and their dysfunctional performance over the last handful of years, but I’m not the mayor! It’s definitely an intense quote from Richmond’s top elected official, with some surprisingly anti-union vibes. Anyway, I probably need to read the whole thing again before I have more coherent thoughts, but I did want to assign it as homework and put it in your queue for this weekend.

Richard Hayes at RVAHub reports that Richmond Animal Care and Control will close for two weeks due to an outbreak of canine flu. That means you can’t drop off any stray animals for the next 14 days (you remember how quarantine works, right??). However, before you go all Outbreak, Wikipedia says that “the H3N2 virus as a stand-alone virus is deemed harmless to humans.”

Tomorrow, June 23rd, is the five-year anniversary of the opening of the Pulse. That’s wild and basically a thousand years ago! To celebrate/commemorate, here’s an episode of the Two People podcast I did about riding the bus that first shiny summer of Pulse service. Give it a listen and relive what it was like literally the day after the Pulse opened.

Tonight, the Richmond City Charter Review Commission will hold another public hearing at the Second Police Precinct (177 E. Belt Boulevard) from 6:00–7:30 PM. While the process of looking through our City’s Charter and suggesting tweaks (or wholesale changes) is not yet over, I do think we’re reaching the “wrapping things up” stage. If you still have thoughts and feelings, make your way out to their meeting tonight and let them know, and keep an eye out for the Commission’s final recommendations later this year.

Logistical note! Tomorrow morning, I am leaving Richmond to spend three days and two nights riding a bicycle through the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’m very excited, but, unfortunately for you, it that means no Good Morning, RVA tomorrow. Should I survive the adventure, this email will return to your inboxes on Monday! P.S. Tomorrow, as you stumble aimlessly about without the consistent grounding GMRVA provides you each morning, consider chipping in a couple of bucks on the ol’ Patreon (patreon.com/gmrva) or increasing your monthly donation if you already give. I’m currently at 71% of my goal with just a week left in this official monthlong pledge drive!

This morning's longread
At long last, the glorious future we were promised in space is on the way

I thought it appropriate to share this longread about strapping humans into a tube and blasting them off into space while crews here on earth desperately search for humans strapped into a tube lost at the bottom of the sea. It’s not lost on me that this week’s submarine saga could serve as a cautionary tale for trusting high-risk transportation systems to rich men with too much time on their hands.

The solution to this problem involves several steps. The first is distributed launch. Two Falcon Heavy rockets, or four Falcon 9 rockets, can launch as much mass as NASA's Space Launch System rocket. The price for either option would be substantially less than $275 million, or one-tenth the cost of a single NASA launch. This exists today, and more partially reusable rockets are on the way. The second technology is storing and transferring fuel in space, known as propellant depots. SpaceX and Blue Origin need liquid oxygen to serve as an oxidizer for their engines, but each uses a different fuel: methane for Starship and hydrogen for Blue Moon. Both companies have work to do in proving out the technology to store and transfer these propellants, but both have already been partnering with NASA. Sowers believes this is a solvable problem.

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

Garden layers.