Good Morning, RVA: T–Day minus 2
One day closer and turkeys still freak me out.
Photo by: Larry Smith2010
Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and man is my yard is frosty this morning. I’m not sure if last night was the first official freeze of the year, but I can’t remember another time everything looked so crispy out there. If you’re sensitive to cold like an old person’s tooth, fear not, as the sun will come out and the temperatures will rise to the mid-50s.
Water cooler
“Bicycling championship finished poorly,” says an anonymous editorial in the RTD. Listen. If fewer tax dollars were generated by the Big Bike Race™ than promised, that is a bummer (and something we will know more about next month). But to lead with the headline that the race “finished poorly” is ridiculous. The editorial claims that the “public was led — and sometimes misled — to understand that hundreds of thousands of visitors would descend on central Virginia” while in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE the editorial links to THEIR OWN 2013 piece that says: “hundreds of thousands of visitors will book hotel rooms, eat in restaurants, shop in stores, buy souvenirs and spend money elsewhere in the region — to the tune of $72 million in 2015.” This is why folks were mislead! Additionally, and this drives me bananas, when one of the major local narratives (told by media, government, schools, and institutions) was that downtown and the race would be a disaster and locals should stay away, we shouldn’t be surprised when they…stayed away? Right? Anyway, more on this when the full study comes out next month and then we can all kvetch about it around our holiday tables.
Whoa, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church downtown will remove all of their remaining Confederate flag imagery. St. Paul’s was Robert E. Lee’s own church during the Civil War, and their official coat of arms (which is something that I totally need for my family) contained a tiny Confederate battle flag (which my family coat of arms will totally not contain). Part of the process the church went through was this fascinating inventory of existing Confederate references and symbols (PDF). Some of the Jefferson Davis as Paul and Robert E. Lee as Moses stuff makes me uncomfortable.
This is from a couple days back, and I keep forgetting to bring it up: Ellena McConnell talks about what adoption means to her and how it changed her life. Ellena is 19 years old, mega inspiring, and has made me regret ever complaining about anything.
I enjoy Vox’s “questions you were too embarrassed to ask” series. Here’s one on ISIS.
Related: The US State Department has issued a worldwide travel alert, telling citizens to be aware of “possible risks of travel due to increased terrorist threats.” I do not know how often they release such alerts, but the NYT said it was an “unusual step.”
Here’s Today’s Gross Picture of Turkey. This one’s judging you for Thanksgivings past.
Sports!
- Hokies (roundball) take on North Carolina A&T tonight at 7:00 PM on ESPN3.
This morning’s longread
Ambling Through America’s Most Stoned Suburbs
There are some amazing quotes in this story!
Other mothers didn’t see mixing weed with parenting as a problem. “Three’s a hard age,” one told me early on a Saturday afternoon, her eyes noticeably bloodshot as she watched her 3-year-old daughter torture a cricket in the family’s front yard, which was decorated with pumpkins and a makeshift graveyard. “We have a lot of temper tantrums, during which I walk back into my room, close the door, and walk back out with a brand-new head.” She smokes every day, but never drinks, and her daughter had taken to confronting mothers she saw holding beers. “We don’t drink pop, we don’t use the TV very often,” she said. “We’re very healthy people.”
This morning’s Instagram
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Ross Catrow
Founder and publisher of RVANews.
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