Good Morning, RVA: Gusty

Strong winds late this morning threaten to blow. you. away.

February 5, 2015; 6:59 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Leo Reynolds

Good morning, RVA! It’s 43 °F, which is today’s high. As the day goes by, expect temperatures to drop, winds to gust, and clouds to move in. Tonight looks to be a cold one, so let your faucets drip if you live in a century-old house with thin and fragile walls.

Water cooler

Richmond Public Schools will close Elkhardt Middle School due to mold and air quality issues caused by busted steam pipes. Students and teachers will end up at the recently closed Clark Springs Elementary, almost seven miles away. The school board and superintendent are not joking about the money they need for school facility maintenance and repair. That this particular school should need to be closed for these particular reasons is not a surprise: In a report from this past August (PDF), Assistant Superintendent Tommy Kranz asked for $1.9 million to replace Elkhardt’s boilers and steam pipes, plus $275,000 to deal with the school’s damp basement.

The Verge got their hands on an internal memo from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in which he takes full, personal responsibility for the company’s failure to address their troll infestation. A true thing that he says: “We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.”

If you love and live on the Internet, read this strongly worded piece in WIRED by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler about Net Neutrality. I think we might have saved the Internet (for now), you guys. Vox explains the details.

Sports!

• #18 Rams showed a glimpse of the future as underclassmen JeQuan Lewis, Doug Brooks, and Michael Gilmore all played a critical role in their 72-60 win over the Patriots.
• Spiders travel to Philly to take on La Salle tonight at 6:30 PM.
• Caps head to Ottawa and face off against the Senators at 7:30 PM.

This morning’s longread

Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing

Also check out this troubling chart of children’s books by and about people of color.

But let’s go back to this: “It’s not for you to relate to!” Write that in the sky. And it’s true – often, as writers of color, to portray our stories in all their vibrant authenticity, all their difficult truth means we’re not writing for editors and agents, we’re writing past them. We’re writing for us, for each other. And it’s not just a question of characters of color, it’s not a numbers game. It’s about voice, about narrative flow. Because of who we are and what we’ve lived, our stories often contain implicit critiques of white supremacy, critiques that we know stand little chance of surviving the gauntlet of the majority white publishing industry. We see diverse futures, laden with the tangled past of oppression and we re-envision models of empowerment and survival. But only a few of us make it through. There is a filter and the filter is white culture.

This morning’s Instagram

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February 5, 2015 6:59 AM 0