Oh, look! It’s Portland’s Daily Drip for Monday, October 30, 2017! The days grow short…it is the autumn of the year…and yet: can our world possibly be more beautiful than today will be? The weather is sunny, and windy, with highs around 60. Sunrise 7:48 AM, sunset 6:00 PM.
The first indictments are in by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia grand jury. Ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and business associate Rick Gates turned themselves in on charges of conspiracy and money laundering. Meantime, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign named George Papadopolous pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with Russians. Here’s a link.
A pregnant woman is apparently going to be OK after being bumped and dragged by her own car…she was driving on Cedar Hills Blvd with two kids in the back when the engine conked out, so she and another woman hopped out to push..when the car began rolling downhill. So she tried to get back in behind the wheel but was knocked down, and one of the wheels may have passed over her chest. A retaining wall stopped the car from rolling. She’s in the hospital and should be fine.
Two Navy Seals are being investigated in the strangulation death of a Green Beret during a secret assignment in Africa back in June. Lots of questions about that one. No answers.
Portland’s original sin–the infestation of racism spanning decades–gets national exposure tonight in a documentary from CBS News. It’s on the CBS News cable network and website. This is the anti-“Portlandia.” It tells the world about things we locals damn well better know: the no-blacks clause in the original state Constitution, the unabashed KKK presence here in the 1920’s, the racial sorting of the Vanport flood evacuees through blatant redlining, the killing of a young Ethiopian PCC student named Mulugeta Seraw by a local nest of bat-wielding Nazi rats in 1988, and the deaths on a MAX train just this year at the hands of yet another white supremacist, who seems to feel at home here. The title of the CBS documentary is: “Portland: Race Against the Past.” I haven’t seen it, but I bet we won’t like it. Mirrors aren’t necessarily pretty.
A teenager from Silverton who carjacked a Toyota Corolla from a Safeway parking lot in Salem was chased by the police, crashed on Highway 18 near Grand Ronde, shots were fired, and he died.
Three small dogs were rescued from a townhouse fire at 82nd and Ramona. Seventeen people were helped by the Red Cross to find shelter while they figure out what they’re supposed to do now.
Eighteen people turned in their beat-up, rundown, high-mileage, and worthless RV’s to the city, instead of selling or donating them to homeless people, who park them on the city streets and live there.
There was a meeting of meteorologists over the weekend, where they discussed the prospects for the coming winter in Portland. One–who successfully predicted last winter’s onslaught–said this year will be even worse. Five snowstorms instead of four, the first coming in early December. But another is like, Bosh! Balderdash! We’ll get two inches snow at most.
Puerto Rico is tearing up its contract with that tiny energy company from Whitefish, Montana. It’s not clear why they were hired in the first place–possibly because they were the only one that didn’t ask for a down payment. The Interior Secretary says he didn’t have anything to do with it, though he’s from the same small town.
Kevin Spacey says he doesn’t remember it, but has apologized for “what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior” after actor Anthony Rapp says Spacey made a sexual advance toward him in the 1980’s, when Rapp was 14.
Happy birthday to The Fonz himself, Henry Winkler, who turns a young 72. A year ago I spent 15 minutes on the phone with him, to plug an appearance at a local school for kids with dyslexia, which Henry himself has battled and overcome his entire life. Told him about Blazer PBP king Bill Schonely being nicknamed “the Schonz” at the height of the popularity of The Fonz, and Winkler was full of glee at that. The Fonz extended The Schonz his best wishes.
The Portland Timbers begin their playoff run against the Houston Dynamo tonight at 6:30 on FS1, in a match to be played at BBVA Compass Stadium, which, like Portland’s Providence Park, was built for soccer, and has a similar capacity of just over 20,000 people. (Except that the Houston pitch may have a number of divots, courtesy of Hurricane Harvey, and unlike Portland, it hosts no ghosts of baseball players past. By the way, did you know that the franchise formerly called the Portland Beavers is now the El Paso Chihuahuas?).
Last night’s World Series game was absolutely nuts. Houston finally won it 13-12 in the bottom of the 10th. Both teams’ bullpens are toast; they went through 14 pitchers between them. Both teams had 14 hits. The entire Series has been a home run derby, with a record 22 homers between the two teams. (A woman in the stands caught one of the home run balls …and somebody else grabbed it from her and threw it back on the field. I’d be so steamed!). Houston can win it all tomorrow night in LA, or it’ll go to game 7.
The Blazers tangle it up with the Toronto Raptors tonight at 7 at the Rose Garden.
Sunday’s Seahawks win over the Houston Texans was one of the best games I’ve ever seen on the radio. I walked five miles while listening to Steve Raible and Warren Moon, and watched every play. The majority of the Houston team, by the way, knelt during the National Anthem rather than standing, after the team owner said the player rebellion amounted to “inmates running the prison.”
Brooke Gladstone–cohost of “On the Media”–is at Powell’s City of Books tonight, with her book “The Trouble with Reality–a Rumination on Moral Panic in our Time.”
Panic! No…not here…we take it all in, and breathe deep…the gathering gloom. This week…we celebrate the dead. We say goodnight to October. We have the latest sunrise of the entire year. We see the last of Daylight Time. The Boys of Summer walk off the field. We’re shuffling through leaves that just days ago were illuminating the treetops in glorious colors. It’s the Fall of the Year. Yet the change of the seasons warms the heart. All is safely gathered in. We turn inward to our homes and loved ones, inward to ourselves, a time to read, reflect, meditate. And the great season of the bright happy holidays is just around the corner. Good times to come!
Off to the radio show! 5-9 AM on K103….while you take over the DD from here. Thank you and have a great day!
Portland's Daily Drip 