Hello, friends! Here we are together on a dripworthy Wednesday, November 1, 2017, a cool and drizzly day that signals a shift to a rainy raw cold tomorrow. We’ll peak at 57 today, then cuddle up, because it’ll be 5 to 10 degrees colder tomorrow. Studded tire season begins today in both Oregon and Washington, and just in time for people who travel the passes. The snow level swan-dives by two miles of elevation, from 14,000 feet yesterday to 4000 tomorrow and just 2500 for the weekend. For reference: Barlow Pass over Mt. Hood is 4155 feet, Santiam Pass is 4816, the Siskiyou Summit on I-5 to California is 4310, and the Sunset Highway over the Coast Range is 1642.
Before we move on….our hearts turn to New York, again, where the latest radical tactic of driving a vehicle into a crowd–this time on a bike path in the shadow of the World Trade Center–has pierced the hearts of eight more families. The driver is a 29-year old man from Uzbekistan, who was shot but not killed and thus will be prosecuted. And so another city reenacts the sad ritual that we just saw in Barcelona and Charlottesville, but New York has profound history and experience, and the new One World Trade Center, at 1776 feet tall, was lit overnight in red, white, and blue, while the Halloween parade went on.
Speaking of which: it sounds to me like all our little goblins are home gobblin’, and that we made it through the Halloween night with maximum treats and minimum tricks. A fine night under a nearly full moon. I haven’t heard of anyone getting hurt, just folks smashing pumpkins, or maybe it was soundgarden or sonic youth. Anybody have Halloween tales or pics to share with Driplandia?
We had no trickster treaters. The only light in our hobbit hole at the end of the spooky road was from the TV in my lair. LA wins Game 6, forcing Game 7 tonight. This is as it should be. When baseball’s over, Summer Is. Over.
The tweet that people are tweeting about is from Donald Trump Jr., who posted a photo of his sad-eyed little daughter in an NYPD costume and holding up a scantly filled candy bucket, and the young Trump conveyed the following sentiment: “I’m going to take half of Chloe’s candy tonight and give it to some kid who sat at home. It’s never to early to teach her about socialism.” (Or about Matthew 5:3-10).
This has happened twice in October in downtown Portland: a man has gotten into an elevator with a woman and threatened to assault her. The first time, the woman somehow pushed him out; the second, a witness saw what was happening, and he stopped. He’s a white guy, about 6-2 and 250 pounds, with what’s described as a “chiseled jaw.” Which will be a fractured one, if he tries that on some of the women I know.
New rules go into effect in all Multnomah County libraries today; so please everyone, keep these in mind: no weapons, no drugs or alcohol, no bathing in the bathrooms. no sleeping, no animals n the library, no hankum pankum. Thank you.
West Linn, one of our fine suburbs, is in the market for a new police chief after the departure of longtimer Terry Timeus, who’s retiring by mutual agreement, thus finally resolving an incident that left some of his officers wondering if he’d been driving when he shouldn’t. He wasn’t given a sobriety test and wasn’t charged, but his departure follows an internal investigation and lots of coverage in The Tidings.
There’s been another low-level detection of the microorganism cryptosporidium in Portland’s Bull Run water. That makes five in a month. We’re not supposed to do anything different, but if someone in the family is in frail health, it’s good to check with your medical people on this. Meantime, we need better-trained bears in the woods.
Signups begin today for 2018 coverage under the Affordable Care Act–still very much the law of the land. Obamacare is under assault, nevertheless it persists.
We all recall that nurse in Salt Lake City who was roughed up and arrested for refusing a police officer’s order to draw blood from an unconscious patient without his consent or a warrant. She’s agreed to a settlement from the city of $500,000.
The Blazers are at the Utah Jazz tonight.
Weird scene on the Willamette, where about two dozen people dressed up in pointy-hatted witch costumes, like the Wizard of Oz, and rode paddleboards on the river. They’ll be back as Santas next month.
Michaelangelo’s painstaking masterpiece on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was revealed to the public when Pope Julius II celebrated Mass there on this date in 1512. Five million tourists a year come to witness it, and to be hushed by security.
Of this much we are sure: Sunrise will come at 7:50 AM, and sunset will go at 5:57 PM. We’ve reached the latest sunrises of the year, which sounds weird but is true. More on Friday. FB is still acting up for me; maybe Russian troll revenue has declined, so FB can’t afford to lubricate the potentiometric rectifiers. Or maybe Facebook is just another institution that’s freaking out. But it’s a new month, and soon it’s a full moon. So that’ll still the waters.
Portland's Daily Drip 