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A letter to my Richmond and Henrico Health Districts friends on my last day
This is a bittersweet moment, for sure, but today is my very last task as Director of Communications at RHHD! I’ve taken a position at the City of Richmond working in their Office of Strategic Communications and Civic Engagement. While I’m sad to leave y’all, my public health family, I hope to bring the many, many experiences and lessons I’ve learned here at RHHD with me to my new work at the city.
I joined the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts way back in July of 2021—early on in the pandemic and before the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines. I’d never worked in public health before and quickly found myself in the deep end of strategic, risk communications as, together, we all learned about this new coronavirus. What and how we communicated about COVID-19 changed over time, but, across almost four years, it remained difficult, long, scary, strange, and sometimes even fun work. I am incredibly proud of what we all—across all of our teams—accomplished.
And that’s what I’ll miss most about my time at RHHD—all of you! I’m so lucky and honored and humbled to have worked with some of the best, kindest, smartest, and most curious people during one of the darkest, scariest, and most uncertain times in my life. I’ll forever remember the late nights, long meetings, and thoughtful words of encouragement that kept me going.
Just as I’m incredibly proud of what we have already accomplished, I’m incredibly excited for what y’all will tackle next. COVID-19 is (mostly) in our rearview mirror, and we’ve still got important work to do, communities to serve, and stories to tell. Ever onward!
Thanks for the last four years, y’all, and I will definitely see you around!
Stay well and do good, Ross
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Great graphs of the Monument Avenue 10k results. Solid work, Toms!
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Debugging from 15 billion miles away. Incredible!
The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety. So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS.
via NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
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Drinking scotch, listening to Petey, responding to these GMRVA wellwishes, and feeling emotions.
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Finished reading: Vladimir by Julia May Jonas 📚
Oh manm what a ride! Put it in your queue ASAP!
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Finished reading: The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby 📚
White churchfolk! If you’re looking for a place to start, this is the book for you.
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Watching X-Men ‘97 on Saturday mornings is the best thing.
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Finished reading: Interior Chinatown: A Novel by Charles Yu 📚
Ahhhh so weird and creative! Loved it.
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Finished reading: The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson 📚
I wasn’t convinced I needed a retelling of Carrie, but now maybe I need more retellings of Carrie?
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Some really beautiful, muted colors in the trees along Chamberlayne Avenue this week.
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On most Saturdays I read a few posts from a blog about this one guy who grows avocados in California.
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Finished reading: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar 📚
I mean, my emotional capacity is maxed out lately and I’m crying at everything, but unghhhhhh this is so incredibly romantic.
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It’s invasive Bradford pear tree smell week!
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Finished reading: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid 📚
The end of this made me cry while riding my bike.
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We’re nearing the midpoint of my first season as a travel volleyball dad, and, by far, the most stressful part of every single trip is figuring out the hotel parking and the convention center parking.
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Remember when the funnest stuff was slowing down internet videos to make funnier internet videos?
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The Mixing Bowl, aka the Springfield Interchange, overlayed on downtown Richmond. It takes up an entire city’s downtown! Wild / barf!
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Whoa! Friday Cheers landed Mdou Moctar??
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Finished reading: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson 📚
The audiobook is like a Sunday afternoon listening to an elder tell you stories from their past—if your grandpa happens to be Will Patton and he lived in the frontier.
(Did someone here recommend this to me? I don’t remember how it ended up on my list.)
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Sigh.
Both the House (HB644-Sullivan) and Senate (SB305-Salim) bills to allow localities to establish ordinances on the use of gas-powered leaf blowers are dead for this year.
Via VAPLAN
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Maestro, 2023 — ★★★.  The main character of this movie is cigarettes.
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Killers of the Flower Moon, 2023 — ★★★★½.  ☹️
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The NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox is my absolute favorite plant resource. I almost always just search “ncse <plant name>”, because what you find there will be 100x more useful than whatever rando blogsite.
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Insidious: The Red Door, 2023 — ★★.  When will we get the Insidious-Conjuring crossover we are owed, Patrick Wilson???
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Finished reading: Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros 📚
I regret to inform you that, unfortunately, I do recommend both sexy dragons books.
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