Good Morning, RVA: Keep the umbrella handy

Let it be your faithful companion for the rest of this week.

June 2, 2015; 7:03 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: pamela figueroa

Good morning, RVA! It’s 67 °F, and all that rain yesterday certainly cooled things off. Highs today may hit 75 °F if we’re lucky, if we’re unlucky we’ll see another round of mid-day storms. Go, go, gadget umbrella!

Water cooler

The RTD’s Michael Paul Williams has this editorial about development on the Boulevard. It says what you probably already know: the lack of progress and planning is frustrating, and it’d be cool if there was something rather than nothing being done in that space. Before we rush into anything, consider: the lack of a super-huge development project–think Walmart, stadium, or children’s hospital–certainly hasn’t kept folks like Blue Bee Cider, Blanchard’s Coffee Co., and every brewery know to man from moving into the area.

Speaking of the free-standing children’s hospital, Style Weekly’s Peter Galuszka sat down with Bill Goodwin (aka the man with $150 million to give) to talk about moving forward after VCU and Bon Secours pulled out of that plan. He is, understandably, not super stoked.

Well, this is neat: the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, along with some other partner organizations, announced the creation of the Virginia Automated Corridors. About 70 miles of I-95, I-495, I-66, U.S. 29, and U.S. 50 are now approved for testing of automated vehicles! The robots are coming!

Because GLAAD is fantastic at their job, they’ve released a handy tip sheet for how to talk about Caitlyn Jenner without being offensive–unintentionally or otherwise. Top tips: use female pronouns, don’t refer to her by her former name, and never add a superfluous “-ed” to the end of transgender (which is an adjective, not a noun). If you’re a person who frequently writes words, their more generalized media reference guide is also useful.

Sports!

• Squirrels pulled out a 5-3 win over Reading to even up that series, while a new series against Portland begins tonight at 7:00 PM.
• Rams baseball advances to the school’s very first super regional with a win over Dallas Baptist last night. They’ll face Miami in Coral Gables on Friday.
• Nats had their game against the Blue Jays postponed yesterday. They’ll try to make it up today at 1:05 PM and 7:05 PM–we’ll see if the weather cooperates.

What to expect

We bestow unto you, these things:

• All the June festivals
• 1708 Gallery’s rad summer program
• Hypocrite dad
• The Great Park Challenge

This morning’s longread

I Was a Proud Non-Breeder. I Changed My Mind.

The idea of having kids to stave off the horror of death never resonated with me; I don’t see how you’re any less dead just because your DNA lives on. But children, I suddenly understood, would hedge against the unthinkable fact of my husband’s mortality. Not long ago, I learned the Arabic word Ya’aburnee from a friend’s cheesy Facebook graphic. Literally, “you bury me,” it means wanting to die before a loved one so as not to have to face the world without him or her in it. It’s a word that captures exactly my feeling for my husband. Part of the reason I didn’t want kids was because I feared they’d come between us, but if he were gone, I’d be frantic to hold on to a piece of him. Grasping this didn’t make me want a baby, exactly, but it started pushing me from “no” to, well, ambivalent.

This morning’s Instagram

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June 2, 2015 7:03 AM 0