Good morning, RVA: School Board appreciation, he didn’t see his shadow, and winterberry

We need smart, thoughtful, and caring people to step up and run in School
Board races this year. Maybe that’s you?

Good morning, RVA! It's 39 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday: Partly cloudy with highs somewhere around 50 °F. The weekend ahead of us and a bunch of days afterwards will feature clear skies and similar temperatures—perfect weather for spending time in the local forest of your choice!

Water cooler

February is, of course, Black History Month, and I’ve got my eyes out for interesting local events or celebrations—like this Dawoud Bey photography exhibit at the VMFA. Expect more to come throughout the month, and if you come across something you’d like to share with me, please do!

February is also, according to the RPS Superintendent email, School Board Appreciation Month, a very specific and narrowly focused celebration that I’m not sure I knew about until this morning. Our School Board is complicated and has been described by one particular daily zoning and rezoning email as dysfunctional and chaotic. But I also think things are changing! Over time, they’ve straightened out under their new leadership, my group chats are quiet on School Board meeting nights, and I haven’t felt like I needed to ask thousands of people to email the Board and yell at them for their failure to follow any sort of rational process. It’s real progress, and, this School Board Appreciation Month, I really do appreciate them (most days).

Even with all that progress, I’m still impressed by the kind words Superintendent Kamras has for a School Board that has, at times (many times), run him ragged for the last however many years: “Serving on the Board is not easy – especially in today's highly politicized environment. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy (physical and emotional), often at the expense of one's family and friends. So please join me in thanking all members of the Richmond City School Board for their service, dedication, and unwavering support of our students, staff, and families!” If you want to thank them directly, you can find their contact information over on the RPS website.

A final thought on School Board: We need smart, thoughtful, and caring people to step up and run in School Board races this year. We’ve made a lot of progress—I really believe that!—but I want to see more of it. If you’re even the slightest bit interested, give it some real thought.

Today is Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow. As an old person, today always makes me think of Bill Murray’s 1993 classic Groundhog Day—especially the scene where Murray’s childhood friend Ned Ryerson sees him on the street and runs up to him yelling “PHIL? PHIL CONNORS?” For some reason we reenact this scene a lot in my house. I’ve also been thinking about it a lot because I read the sexy dragons books recently, and the main, steamy character is named “Xaden Riorson,” which, in the audiobook, is pronounced as “Ryerson,” and I swear it makes me laugh every single time. “Xaden! RIORSON! Case Western High! Xaden Riorson, I did the whistling bellybutton trick at the high school talent show. Bing!”

The Henrico Citizen reports that Susanna Gibson has launched a new PAC, called MyOwn, which will “support candidates dedicated to legislative reform related to gender-based and sexual violence...in particular nonconsensual pornography, nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, synthetic NDII (‘deepfakes’), intimate privacy violations, and image-based sexual abuse.” I think this PAC is still super new, and I can’t find an online presence for it this morning. But when I do, I’ll drop a link in this space for folks who want to learn more or lend their support.

The Virginia Mercury’s Meghan McIntyre brings us this week’s Three Interesting Bills floating around the General Assembly, and HB 1167 caught my eye: “HB 1167 from Del. Paul Krizek, D-Alexandria, would give local governments the authority to prohibit the sale of English ivy, with violations punishable by up to $50 for the first infraction and $200 for a subsequent one within 12 months.“ Yes! I’m waging a decade-long battle against English ivy in my yard, and I don’t think I’ll ever truly declare victory. We’ve had to recruit entire groups of volunteers dedicated to removing English ivy from our parks. It’s bad! Let’s ban it! Side note: I like that this bill, opposed by Big Nursery (aka the Virginia Agribusiness Council and Virginia Nursery and Landscaping Association), is somehow a partisan issue? It passed out of committee along party lines.

Also plant-related, Susan Higgins, writing for the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden blog, has a nice post up about Winterberry, one of my favorite native shrubs. If you want to join me in my recent obsession with making sure my outdoor spaces are filled with Winter Interest, the Winterberry is for you! One of the last conversations I had with the Gaden’s Jonah Holland, was her convincing me to pull out the poisonous nandina scattered around my yard and replace it with something less dangerous to animals. I ended up swapping a few of them for Winterberries, and, while they’re still little, they look rad (Winter Interest!).

This morning's longread
A Single Small Map Is Enough For A Lifetime

This guy spent a year exploring the nooks and crannies of his hometown instead of spending the enormous amount of carbon it takes to travel to far-flung adventure haunts. It’s a good idea and reminds me a lot of Peak Pandemic times, when I rode my bike down every single road, alley, and path I could find on the Northside, discovering a lot of places that I still ride today. If this sounds like your jam, maybe check out his recently released book, Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness.

I felt a need to reconcile my enthusiasm for exploration with my decidedly unadventurous local environment. One morning I set down a heavy laundry basket on top of piles of homework scattered over the kitchen table, carried a pair of abandoned cereal bowls to the dishwasher, and wondered: What if this bog-standard corner of England was actually full of surprises if only I bothered to go out and look? Maybe the things I’ve chased from India to Iceland — adventure, nature, wildness, surprises, silence, perspective — were here too? The first step was to get a map. Ordnance Survey, Britain’s national mapping agency, divides the whole country into 403 “Explorer” maps at 1:25,000 scale, meaning that 1 kilometer of land is represented by 4 centimeters of map.

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

Bulk and brush.