Gotta say…
I miss doing the Daily Drip! I’ve effectively unplugged for the week, but when I saw that there was a severe storm warning on the north Oregon coast this morning, I remembered a promise I made to pop up once or twice and spout off.
If this were an actual Daily Drip, the following would be included…
Container ships return to the Port of Portland. Only one a month…at first. The loss of those ships a couple of years ago was a wicked blow to Oregon agriculture and manufacturing, while adding truck traffic to the Seattle slog. I said at the time that the Governor must make restoring that service a priority, and she did. This was signed during Kate Brown’s recent trip to Asia. But it’s only a start.
The Real Mother Goose is shutting down at the end of the year. That’s been a go-to spot for desperate Christmas shoppers like me since the 1970’s. There’s a sale there starting Friday. The airport location, BTW, stays open.
Monday was the anniversary of the day in 1988 when a bright young PCC student from Ethiopia named Mulugetah Seraw was set upon by a knot of white supremacist thugs with a baseball bat and steel-toed shoes outside his apartment at SE 31st and Pine. He was 28 years old. That particular nest of nazis was prosecuted into bankrupt oblivion, yet I notice the white-pride banner was flying on the anniversary date from an I-5 overpass in Vancouver.
The statute of limitations may have run out on their disgusting and criminal behavior, but the court of public opinion is forever in session for men who’ve forced themselves on others, preying like jackals on ones who were too young, incapacitated, or politically vulnerable to resist. I’d like to imagine that we turned a corner when a Mitch McConnell goes from silencing Elizabeth Warren with the words, “Nevertheless she persisted,” to saying, at last, “I believe the women.” I do too.
Today my vacation takes me to our stately Capitol in Salem, where my friend Sen. Lew Frederick kindly invited me to sit in on some between-session committee hearings. Tomorrow it’s McMinnville, and a visit to the R. Stuart winery, then the quarterly Walker/Erickson reunion on Thursday evening. This week we’ve celebrated the first birthday of granddaughter Erica–whose Mom had the cool idea of baking a “smash cake” just for her. We booked our next vacation, in May, even though I haven’t exactly had the dates approved at work. Haven’t made it to the coast yet–looking at this weekend for that. But I’ve missed being on the K103 morning show for this week, and writing the DD and interacting with you. On Monday it’ll be back to normal. For three days!
Portland's Daily Drip 