Good Morning, RVA: Winter is coming for real this time

Dang! Bundle up out there, folks!

January 5, 2016; 7:09 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Muffet

Good morning, RVA! It’s 19 °F, which is certainly a respectable January temperature. Highs today will barely reach above freezing, but the sun will be out drying up all the previous days of rain.

Water cooler

Police are now officially reporting Sunday’s murder on the 3800 block of Midlothian Turnpike. They’re also reporting another fatal shooting on Sunday, on the 2200 block of Chateau Drive, as a death investigation. Depending on how the latter investigation goes and where they decide to put the stabbing that happened in December but whose victim died in January, 2016 has either one, two, or three murders. Related: we’re changing how we do murder coverage for 2016. Stay tuned.

Also related, President Obama, faced with a congress that refuses to reduce gun violence, used his executive power to do a few of gun-related things.

Today, Michael Paul Williams talks about Virginia’s decades-long ban on independent cities annexing land (and tax base) from their surrounding counties. Richmond’s teeny physical size is the reason you see it pop up on so many of those national per-capita lists–think “3rd most tatooed city in America.” The city is only 62.5 square miles yet still contains all the regular downtown city stuff (tattoo shops) a normal city would have without any suburbs to balance those numbers out. Williams ends with a call to reconsider city-county consolidation. Think about what that would allow us to do for regional transportation and education, just for starters. Then stop thinking about it because the odds of something like that happening are ultra slim.

Richmond school board is putting together their budget, which could include $8.3 million to increase teacher salaries, especially for teachers who’ve been in the system for a long time. Folks showed up at last night’s meeting to support the idea, but remember! School Board really has no say in the matter. The mayor will need to include School Board’s financial requests in his budget, and then Council will need to approve that.

This seems rad: Governor McAulliffe announced a partnership between VCU and the University of Havana that will see them develop some “cooperative programs in a variety of academic disciplines studied at both institutions.”

Breaking Periodic Table news! Maybe my most favorite kind of news!

Sports!

• Rams look to continue their four-game winning streak tonight against St. Joe’s at 7:00 PM. The game will be televised on “ASN”.
• Spiders head up the road to Rhode Island tonight. Tipoff is at 7:00 PM and you can watch on ESPNU.
• Hokies knocked off the #4 Wahoos, 70-68. It’s the first time Tech has topped UVA since 2012.

This morning’s longread

Marie Kondo’s Life-Changing Magic and death.

Marie Kondo has a new book out, Spark Joy, and here’s a deeply condescending and depressing review of it.

…the intensity and austerity of Kondo’s practice and recommendations suggest an “anorexia of things” (although God only knows we should also not underestimate the pathology of its opposite, hoarding). To discard the stuff we’ve acquired is to murder the version of ourselves we envision using it.

This morning’s Instagram

flag squad

A photo posted by @stuhelee on Jan 4, 2016 at 6:10am PST

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January 5, 2016 7:09 AM 0