Monday, October 23, 2017

Good morning to all the Drips in Dripville! It’s Monday, October 23, 2017, and let’s start with soothing news for our soaked souls: though it’s extremely foggy for now, we’re beginning an extended period of dry and beautiful autumn weather, punctuated only by an occasional shower at midweek. Computer models indicate that a protective barrier of high pressure off the coast will keep the rain at bay all the way into November. High today’ll be 65. Halloween looks scary good. Sunrise 7:38 AM Sunset 6:10 PM.

After all that rain, there’s been another combined sewage overflow, the city said dutifully.

Like a big wet dog, we’re shaking off the multiple inches of rain, from ponds to puddles to power outages. Floodwaters receded from Highway 101 south of Seaside, after drowning that busy thoroughfare for much of the weekend. But there’s still a detour around a section of the highway in flood-prone Tillamook. At the same time, a landslide forced cancellation of the Salmon Homecoming event at Oxbow Park. They’ll just have to spawn without an audience. On Saturday we took the countryside route to Mt. Hood for a party on the roaring Sandy River, winding up and down the breezy, golden backroads, past acres of Christmas trees, all shaped up and ready to harvest. It was so beautiful that we just turned off the ugly Ducks game and enjoyed the drive all the more.

Three little kids went missing in Vancouver around dinnertime, ages 9, 10, and 11. Three hours later, the police department sent this email to the media: “The missing children were found and are safe.”

For the second week in a row we have soccer magic in the air, as the Portland Timbers snuffed the Vancouver Whitecaps 2-1 to hoist aloft the huge silvery Cascadia Cup, and claim the #1 playoff seed in the West.

The Morrison Bridge is open again. The weight limit is restored to 40 tons, meaning TriMet’s #15 Belmont/NW23rd bus is on the bridge for the first time in literally years.

Today’s the day C-Tran buses will begin using the widened shoulders of SR 14 to scoot past the bottled up traffic between 164th and I-205.

It was a good feeling to see the five living former Presidents joining together at a fundraising event for all Americans affected by this year’s hurricanes. Nice group photo with Lady Gaga. And hard not to chuckle when, while Bill Clinton was speaking, a mischievous George W. Bush whispered something that made Barack Obama break into that grin of his. Wonder what he said?

Oregon Congressman Greg Walden’s House Energy and Commerce Committee begins hearings into the nation’s opioid epidemic today in DC; President Trump will sign a declaration recognizing that prescription painkiller addiction has become a crisis and directing the cabinet to take action. One wonders if they’ll acknowledge the study showing a decline in opioid deaths in Colorado since the legalization of cannabis.

Without explanation, the EPA has canceled a talk today by three of its scientists at a climate change conference in Rhode Island.

The English electronic band Depeche Mode, which has been influencing bands from Nine Inch Nails to Coldplay since the early 1980’s, is at the Moda Center tonight for the last stop of their US tour.

Apple introduced the iPod on this day in 2001. I still have mine, full of unforgettable gems by…let’s see…Swingout Sister, Everything But The Girl, the Divinyls, Boy Meets Girl, the Cowboy Junkies, INXS, Cake, M.C. Hammer…

The World Series begins tomorrow, Houston at LA. It was on this night in 1993 when West Linn High School graduate Mitch Williams dished up the meatball that Joe Carter smacked outta the park, and the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies. That pitch shouldn’t overshadow the Wild Thing’s scary effectiveness on the mound; his old Cubs teammate Mark Grace said he pitched like his hair was on fire.

A high school varsity football coach in Maine was stiff-armed by his own team, after he ordered his defense to taunt the opposing quarterback for being raised in a two Mom household. He told them to say, “Who’s your Daddy?” They refused. And as of this morning, he is no longer the coach.

Who did that hot dog think he is, zooming his hotshot BMW motorcycle down a closed California freeway, dodging burning embers, live wires, and abandoned cars? He’s Dr. Scott Witt, neonatologist, who helped rescue all eight premies who were evacuated from a Santa Rosa Hospital amid the wildfires–that burned down his own house.

And Justin Timberlake has been named the headliner for the Superbowl halftime show. Last time he was in that primest-of-all-prime-time, he did prophetic duet with Janet Jackson (“gonna have you nekkid by the end of this song” was a lyric), and some people freaked out at a microsecond of human flesh, others of us shrugged and said, hello, and America rolled back its VCR’s millions of times just to be sure, and now practically every single live broadcast on over-the-air radio and television comes with a digital delay to prevent sensitive eyes and ears from exposure to such outrages as a simple breast or a strong word.

Well, dang. It’s Monday. Last full week of October. Fresh start!