Good Morning, RVA: What’s the state of your Union?

The president delivers the State of the Union tonight, clear your calendar!

January 20, 2015; 6:48 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Christopher Dilts

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F at the moment, but worry not fair Richmonders: highs will comparatively soar into the mid-50s this afternoon, rendering your long underwear and wool socks useless. Something to keep an eye on: the unreliable 7-day forecast has a bit of snow on the calendar for Monday and Tuesday.

Water cooler

In a Putinesque story, several weeks ago while in Africa, Governor McAuliffe was thrown from a horse and broke seven ribs. Yesterday he was taken to the hospital to drain some fluid from around his lungs. Here’s the Governor’s Office release: “While on vacation with his family in Africa, Governor McAuliffe was thrown from a horse, which resulted in seven broken ribs. While the injury did not impair his ability to do his job and his doctors expected the injury to heal on its own, today they identified increased fluid around his lungs that will require a procedure to remove. He is being admitted today and is expected to be back in action after 2-3 days of recovery.”

Ooo, Graham Moomaw has the early details of what (I think) could be the city’s first protected bike lane. Of course, the impetus behind this new lane is to connect the Virginia Capital Trail with the Floyd Avenue Bike Boulevard, and we all know how the latter is faring.

From WTVR comes this terrifying sentence about yesterday’s water main break: “Angela Fountain of the Department of Public Unities estimates that up to 70 percent of the city’s water mains are cast iron, and they are ‘upwards of 75 to 100-years-old.'”

President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address at 9:00 PM tonight on just about every channel that exists–you can even watch online if you so desire. Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa will make the Republican response.

Sports!

• Caps host the Oilers tonight at 7:00 PM.

This morning’s longread

I Read Everything Janet Malcolm Ever Published

Unlike the author of this piece, I’ve read nothing that Janet Malcolm ever published. But that didn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of this profile and adding, like, 15 articles to my reading list.

The most exciting-to-read works of journalism often betray little evidence of how tedious they were to report. Baroque murder trials come with thousands of pages of court transcripts. Corporate fraud is found in boxes full of financial documents. At the heart of high-stakes stories is usually a knot of red tape to untangle, tax records to line-check, reticent witnesses to draw out. Investigative journalism demands tenacity, but also a high tolerance for boredo

This morning’s Instagram

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January 20, 2015 6:48 AM 0