Thursday, October 26, 2017

Good morning! Today is Thursday, October 26, 2017. Today’s weather in Portland shows a return to sun, with highs in the mid 60’s, and a breeze blowing the leaves around. It’ll be quite windy in the Columbia Gorge tonight, with gusts reaching 60 MPH. Sunrise today is at 7:42 AM, sunset 6:06 PM. It’s the 299th day of the year. Thanksgiving is four weeks from today.

Thank you, everyone, for the stunningly beautiful photography that was posted in the comments section on Facebook yesterday!

Quick note: tomorrow is one of those days when I’ll be absent from the radio, and here as well, although I may do some experimenting.

It was another day of futility in the search for Portland lawyer Nate Mitchell, lost after a hike on the western reaches of Mt. Hood.

Police shot and wounded a man wanted for robbing the US Bank at N. Lombard and Emerald in the Portsmouth neighborhood.

Portland’s City Council has greenlighted the creation of the position of Deputy Chief of Police. Salary’ll be in the $180K neighborhood, plus benefits.

Forbes Magazine has ranked Portland as the #1 city in the nation for business and careers. We’re apparently a magnet for ‘highly educated Millenials” in part because we’re “dramatically more affordable” than the Bay Area.

The Columbia River was the unhappy recipient of 100,000 gallons of yuck, when the City of Vancouver was calibrating the pumps at a treatment facility, and oops! It’s all downriver from the Interstate Bridge.

The water crisis is over in Amity, the Yamhill County town that woke up to faucets full of nothing on Monday because of computer snag.

Big vote in the House today on a budget bill that would clear the way for the Republican tax cut, including a slash in the corporate rate from 35% to 20% that the White House says is non-negotiable. One proposal to pay for the business tax cut is to shrink the pre-tax amount that individuals can sock into their 401K’s from $18,000 a year (24K for 50+) to just $2400. Another would eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes.

Today is Hillary Clinton’s 70th birthday.

Quote from Joe Biden, on whether he’ll make a try for his ex-boss Barack Obama’s old job: “I haven’t decided to run. But I have decided I’m not going to decide not to run.”

This is the day the National Archives liberates the final batch of documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We probably won’t know for some time if there are major revelations, because there’ll be a lot of reading to paw through, but the Archives website says “we assume that much of what will be released will be tangential to the assassination events.” In other words, they expect no bombshells. But there will be many a rabbit hole to dive into.

So you’ve heard that Fats Domino died. The last time most of us heard from Fats Domino was during Hurricane Katrina when he was rescued by boat from his home in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. But we hear echoes of Fats Domino in decades of the music we play. Billy Joel, who would know, said during Fats’ Rock Hall of Fame Induction that he was the one who made the piano a rock and roll instrument. He kind of invented these rapid-fire left-hand triplet chords that pervade the oldies genre. Paul McCartney is quite proud that Domino’s influence is all over the Beatles’ music–notably in “Lady Madonna,” where that piano is pure Fats Domino. Elton John says there’s a lot of Fats Domino in his music as well. Fats Domino was 89–one of the longest-lived, and therefore one of the last, of his generation of the founders of rock.

Cue the Sports intro! World Series: Houston tied it at a game apiece, winning 7-6 in 11 innings as home run balls went flying out of Dodger Stadium on a hot night. It’s the Blazers vs. the LA Clippers tonight at 7 at the Moda Center. The Oregon State Beavers (1-6) host the Stanford Cardinal (5-2) in Corvallis in Thursday night football at 6 on ESPN.

Real estate folks will no doubt be lining up to view a commercial property that’s open today at 3535 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. Listed at $900,000, 3500 square feet, with a full bar and pool tables, lots of security features, same owner for 28 years…it’s the headquarters of the Gypsy Jokers Motorcycle Club.

Saturday is Prescription Drug Takeback Day. Go to the DEA’s website to find out where to dump off all those old painkillers and tranks, rather than flushing them and creating blissed-out three-eyed fish in our rivers.

This is the weekend of a free RV turn-in event sponsored by the City of Portland., If there’s an old Winnie moldering in your driveway, the city’ll be glad to take it off your hands at an all-day event Sunday. You do need to register by tomorrow. Many of the RV’s now occupied by homeless people were given to them for free by folks who can’t afford to pay the amount usually needed to dispose of it.

A woman in Florida was arrested for crashing a wedding to spy on her boyfriend, pouring a drink on him when she spotted him dancing with some other woman, then punched the other woman in the face before retreating to the bathroom, where she was dragged out of a stall by several female guests. Big weddings are the most fun!

Remember, I’m gone tomorrow, in pursuit of those elusive Z’s. Have a very fine Thursday, and check in with stuff! More photos!