I'm still working on the CHANGES file for 1.9, it's taking longer than I anticipated since it's been roughly 9 months since we last did a major update (and I forgot how long that one took me).
The original thinking for a beta was to get something moving while we finished up a few things we knew we wanted in 1.9 (svn info --show-item, external pinning). But I'm starting to think these things are close enough that given the time it's taking me to finish up CHANGES we may be ready for a rc1 as soon as those are done. Thoughts?
