James River History: Lecture II on Wednesday

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From event description:

The Department of Historic Resources’ Underwater Archaeology Program is leading presentations about the history of the James River and its impacts on the City of Richmond. We hope you’ll join us for these talks, and then go on guided walks and river cleanups.
The second public lecture in this series will take place on Wednesday, May 3, 6 pm at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. The presentation will focus on the cultural history of Richmond as a port and center around Richmond’s maritime landscape below the Fall Line, highlighting the events and places that have influenced the founding and growth of the city.
Attendees at this lecture will be given details and a chance to sign up for a guided walking tour and cleanup, scheduled for Saturday, May 6, at Ancarrow’s Landing in Richmond’s Manchester neighborhood.
DHR is hosting this event in partnership with the City of Richmond Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities’ James River Park System and the Current Culture Fly Shop. The event is part of a series that satisfies the outreach component of a larger DHR program supported by grants from the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Fund. The program seeks to collect additional data on the maritime history of the James River. The Chesapeake Bay Restoration Fund is financed through a portion of the proceeds from the annual subscription fees of the “Friends of the Chesapeake Bay” license plates.

OHNA Meeting Tomorrow Night

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From email announcement:

Monthly Meeting Agenda
Tuesday 25 April 2023
7:00PM
This meeting will be held by Zoom, at the link below.

Topic: OHNA Monthly Meeting – April
Time: Apr 25, 2023 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
(Editor’s note: meeting information redacted, email OHNARva@gmail.com to request it)

Welcome
• Treasurer’s Report

Community Updates:

1. Lt. Brian Robinson, City of Richmond Police Section Lt, 4th Precinct
2. Officer Luke Schrader, Police Liaison, VCU
3. Ms. Verenda Cobbs, VCU
4. Ms. Stephanie Lynch, 5th District Councilperson
5. Ms. Colette McEachin, Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney (Nathan Hiddle)

Updates:

1. Amphitheater planned for Tredegar Green.
· It is slated to seat 5,000 people and accommodate and additional 5,000 standing, as per our meeting with the developer’s representative. No additional parking is planned.
· When the previous amphitheater plan was proposed, the neighborhood raised questions about hours of operation, noise levels, and parking, none of which were ever answered.

2. An SUP application has been filed with the City of Richmond for the demolition of 708 China Street, and its replacement with a building.
· The Zoning Committee met with the applicant and asked them to reconsider demolition and incorporate the historic building into their new construction.
· The applicant has declined to make revisions and wishes to proceed with demolition and replacement.
· The item was placed on the 3 April agenda. At that meeting, it was continued until the next meeting, 17 April. At that meeting, it was continued for a month, until the 15 May meeting (an agenda is not yet available for that meeting)

Continued Business

3. Traffic issues along Idlewood at Cherry and Pine Streets
· There have been several recent accidents at these two locations.
· These two intersections suffer from poor visibility and the high speed of cars exiting 195 east onto Idlewood.

New Business

1. An SUP application has been filed with the City of Richmond for 601 ½ South Pine Street, and its replacement with a building.
· The applicant is proposing to divide the parcel and to construct a new, two-family detached dwelling which will be configured to appear as a single-family dwelling from the street.
· The proposed new two-family detached dwelling would be two stories tall fronting China Street
· This SUP will be reviewed by the zoning committee, and a presentation and recommendation will be brought to an upcoming PHNA meeting (subject to the ability to schedule a meeting with the applicant to discuss their proposal)

2. A volunteer has agreed to head up a committee looking into locations for a dedicated dog park in Oregon Hill and addressing the various city requirements for such an undertaking.
· Any other volunteers?

3. Any new items?

Bryan Clark Green, President

Harrison Moenich, Co-Vice-President

Jennifer Hancock, Co-Vice-President

Mike Matthews, Secretary

John Bolecek, Treasurer

Trash/Recycling Pickup Tomorrow

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This Wednesday is a “Red Wednesday”, which means trash and recycling pickup.

Please go over what can be recycled. Ideally, rolling recycling containers are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night.

If it seems like pickup did not happen, use this online form:
https://cvwma.com/programs/residential-recycling/recycling-service-request-form/

If you have not done so already, don’t forget to sign up for your Recycling Perks.
In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling.

Oh yeah, Earth Day.

‘Commission to vote today on proposed repeal of city parking requirements’

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From RichmondBizsense.com article:

The proposal has its share of critics. Several citizens have submitted opposition letters ahead of today’s commission meeting, contending that any cost savings for developers would not necessarily be passed on to homeowners or renters. Others said parking is already scarce in certain areas and expressed concern that the change would exacerbate the issue.

At the community meeting last month, Oregon Hill resident Charles Poole said, “If you want to tweak the minimum parking requirements, tweak the requirement, but to get rid of it altogether would be extremely burdensome for the neighborhoods.”

Contending that the city had not adequately engaged the public on the issue, Poole added, “You haven’t been going to the neighborhoods and asking what will help their quality of life. There’s been nobody in our neighborhood who’s said, ‘Oh, you know what? We need less parking spaces here.’”

VCU Green Action! Demonstration Friday

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From VCU Green Action! invitation:

Hello All,

My student organization, Green Action!, is hosting a peaceful demonstration on Friday the 21st from 12-1, starting at the Compass and walking to President Rao’s office, where we will demand that the university begin to take climate change seriously, and I’m humbly asking you to attend.

VCU has a responsibility to its students, the greater Richmond area, and as an institution of higher learning wielding power in our society, to look out for our futures. Last semester, when faculty met with Rao’s administration about declaring a climate emergency, they said they didn’t want to get political. Our future isn’t political.

Please consider setting aside just an hour of your time. All you need to do is show up – the more people there are, the harder it will be for the administration to ignore us.

Thank you, first of all, for signing the petition to encourage President Rao to declare a climate emergency. Every signature matters, and we expect to reach our goal of 2,000 before earth Day! If you want to review the petition in detail, you can read it here. It includes nine action items that accompany the emergency declaration for VCU to accomplish.

Secondly, thank you for opening and reading this email. You’re a trooper for that.

I hope to see you on Friday the 21st at 12:00 in the Compass. You can follow @greeanactionrva on Instagram for reminders on when and where the protest will take place in the following week.

Let’s show Rao and his administration that student voices can’t, and won’t, be ignored.

Carolyn Hindle

Looking Forward To Tito’s Taqueria and La Fe Cafe

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Oregon Hill residents are excited to hear about two ‘sibling’ restaurants opening in the building that used to be Mojo’s at the southeastern corner of W. Cary and S. Laurel.
Richmond Magazine has a nice story that describes past and future plans of the family affair.

Splitting the 6,700-square-foot building into separate ventures, Tito’s Taqueria will occupy the larger side of the space, while La Fe Cafe will take the other. Estefay says her parents are excited for them, and that a solo venture of her own has been a long time coming.
…
“I dream a lot of the place being busy, so I think it’s going to be good, my dreams have been telling me,” Tito says, noting that he was drawn to the property because of its walkable neighborhood in close proximity to VCU campus and businesses such as the Altria Theater.

Tito says there will be 15-20 different types of tacos on the menu at the taqueria, a combination of traditional varieties, more Americanized versions and vegetarian options. Offerings will also include sopes, “tornado fries” and playful riffs such as birria pizza. He also hopes to make happy hour a fun two- to three-hour period with mariachi or other music and plenty of frozen margaritas on tap.

At La Fe Cafe, Estefay plans to start the day a little earlier than her older brother, focusing on breakfast, lunch and coffee. Drawing influences from her travels and her background, she says, “I decided to do something different, like a breakfast cafe but a little bit international. I’ve been traveling a lot, and I love food … and experiencing different places and different cultures.”

Estefay says her vision for brunch includes elaborate pancakes and waffles — the latter served both solo and in sandwich form — along with chilaquiles, Honduran baleadas and pupusas, which draw on her mother’s Salvadoran roots.

Trash/Recycling Pickup Tomorrow

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This Wednesday is a “Red Wednesday”, which means trash and recycling pickup.

Please go over what can be recycled. Ideally, rolling recycling containers are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night.

If it seems like pickup did not happen, use this online form:
https://cvwma.com/programs/residential-recycling/recycling-service-request-form/

If you have not done so already, don’t forget to sign up for your Recycling Perks.
In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling.

In recycling news, last week a panel of scientists testified during a Senate meeting of the Subcommittee on Chemical Safety, Waste Management, Environmental Justice, and Regulatory Oversight. It was the first in a series of six meetings Sen. Jeff Merkley, D- Ore., said are necessary to get lawmakers on the same page about how to handle urgent plastic pollution issues affecting air, water and human health.

“The fossil fuel industry is envisioning a massive increase in the production of plastics, but that will only amplify the problems,” Merkley said. By the end of the hearings series, Merkley said, the committee hopes to have “strategies that we can take to a national level.”

Neighborhood Association To Be Replaced With AI

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The Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association (OHNA) has announced that it is going to be turning over much of its functions to an AI (artificial intelligence) program by the end of the calendar year.

After collaborating with University of Richmond student researchers, OHNA officers concluded that many of their volunteer duties could be better completed using a new AI/chatbot interface called VULCAN.

This new project is the result of a collaboration with University of Richmond faculty and students. They are are part of a larger push to explore and develop AI as community outreach. The Oregon Hill initiative started with a few individual interviews and group retreats with OHNA officers at the end of 2022 and has taken on a life of its own, so to speak. So much so that the OHNA AI project gained its own name, VULCAN. The project was presented at a lunch symposium at the University of Richmond a little over a week ago.

“The name VULCAN was decided upon after reading the 1856 quote that described the residents of the neighborhood of Oregon Hill: “…so called, probably, from its remote inaccessible, though beautiful situation, and is inhabited chiefly by a hardy and industrious race, disciples of Vulcan.”, shared UR researcher Rebecca Croon.

The project took on significance in November of 2022 when Open AI’s ChatGPT was released. ChatGPT is a conversational generative AI model that can create human-like responses based on patterns learned from large data sets. ChatGPT is a game changer compared to previous AI technology like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. These less advanced virtual assistant AI systems can only perform a specific task. However, ChatGPT is a text-based AI that can answer advanced questions, hold conversations with the user, write a custom letter (with citations), and many more custom-prompted tasks.

By running ‘quiet polling’ on social media and email, found that AI could account for 99% of the engagement with residents between their moving in to the neighborhood and attending their first OHNA meetings.

“Volunteer officers simply did not have the capacity able to provide the amount of individualized support and orientation that VULCAN’s chatbot could,” says Ms. Croon.

Furthermore, programmers can customize VULCAN so that is can easily simulate officers’ profiles, their personalities, and efficiently run the neighborhood association’s Zoom virtual meetings on its own.

Patrick Turing, a student member of the UR Spider Community AI team, (URSCAI), that is helping with implementing VULCAN, described how OHNA President’s facial movements can be mimicked with ‘Deep Fake’ video technology, even adding his children’s playful hijinks in the background.

“We can totally humanize this process, and soon we can capture voting tabulations on Zoom as well without even having to count- VULCAN will simply read the vocal queues and emotional loads on attendees’ faces to know which way they are voting. No more painful waiting for Boomers to find their ‘Hands Up’ button on the screen.”

For their part, OHNA officers have been impressed and are looking forward to VULCAN’s help.
One officer, speaking anonymously, said she was hopeful that VULCAN can keep on top of member lists and physical/email addresses, bylaws updates, letters to government officials, etc.

“What’s great is that institutional experience will hopefully be fully ingrained into the program so that we don’t lose the recall that we previously had to rely on from previous officers and neighbors. We already find ourselves asking VULCAN for advice based on its AI capabilities.”

Vulcan’s results are truly impressive. The URSCAI team expects OHNA officers to gradually withdraw as VULCAN learns to take over their roles and interact more with the community.

Asked what he will do with time saved by VULCAN, one OHNA officer quipped that he “may have to spend more time on FaceBook with grumpy neighbors complaining about OHNA.”

Oregon Hill residents who would like to learn more and contribute to the VULCAN project are encourage to contact the Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association via email, ohnarva@gmail.com

As ChatGPT gains media attention for things like passing law school exams, researchers believe that in its next steps, it will be taking the helm of many organizations, including some government.

Inflatable VCU Logo To Be Floated Over Monroe Park

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The Richmond Times Dispatch recently reported that Virginia Commonwealth University is planning to increase its visibility with larger signs around its campus.

“Beginning this fall, the university will install more of the large VCU letter signs that dot its campus. They are metal, bright yellow and roughly 7 feet tall. They let visitors know when they are about to enter campus, which is why VCU calls them “front doors” to the university.”

In a followup phone interview yesterday evening, VCU officials confirmed that there will be an additional element unveiled later in the year- an inflated medallion dirigible sign that will be floated hundreds of feet above Monroe Park.

“Having secured permission from the Mayor’s office, President Rao wants this to be a shining beacon that can be seen from 64 and 95, and both sides of the river” gushed a member of VCU’s publicity department.

While many college and universities have produced inflatables, VCU plans to super-size theirs.The giant inflated medallion will have internal LED lights around the VCU logo so that it will glow brightly at night. It will be anchored with large steel cable that can be reeled in during times of inclement weather. It will be located at the northeast corner of Monroe Park, which has changed greatly over the last decade with many mature trees destroyed.

Further questions about costs were deferred to later, as were questions about a $415 million capital project for its planned VCU Dentistry Center, a new United Campus Workers committee focused on issues of campus-wide health and safety, a change in basketball coaches, and a new proposed tuition increase “because of inflation”. But then, VCU administration did state back in December that it needed to ‘raise’ $51 million in order to maintain standards.