Friday, March 23, 2018

And suddenly it’s Friday! It’s March 23, 2018, and though it’s spring, we’ve got our Ma Boyle hoodies fleece wrapped tight, shielding us from the chilly hard rain and hilly wet snow, and highs of just 45. Oregon’s Spring Break starts and finishes wet and cold, but it looks like we’ll have hours of sunlight each day from Monday through Thursday. Sunrise 7:07 AM, sunset 7:27 PM.

Your radio daddio here is on the sick list, but there’s a lot going on, so I’ll bash this out and crawl back in the sack.

Seems that the hilly snow is low enough to put school buses on snow routes in Mollala, Camas, and Newberg.

Long security lines at PDX…parking lots 80% full… Spring Break!

Five gang-related shootings in the last 72 hours….police say they aren’t naming the gangs because when they’re announced on TV, membership zooms.

Big march for gun control, part of the national March for our Lives, meets in the North Park Blocks at 10 AM tomorrow, and winds its way to Pioneer Courthouse Square, for a student rally and a performance by Portugal The Man.

The Dow fell a breathtaking 724 points yesterday, after the Trump announcement of tariffs–a tax to be paid by American companies and consumers–on goods from China. China responded by hiking tariffs on pork, aluminum and other goods.

President Trump, despite denials, is replacing H.R. McMaster (and HR has been a busy place there) as National Secretary Advisory with John Bolton, the firebrand ex-UN ambassador with the Sam Elliot mustache that Trump hates. The president’s top Mueller probe lawyer walked out the door, too.

Hobby Lobby will open its first Portland-area outlet in Clackamas this spring. That’s the private company that went to the Supreme Court battling for the right to exclude contraceptive coverage from its employee health plan–and won.

President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law on this date eight years ago.

I keep a list of key historical dates with my prep materials, but I missed a big one yesterday: it was the 25th anniversary of my longtime conspirator Craig Walker’s liver transplant. That partnership and more importantly that friendship are among the most important in my life, and the operation on March 22, 1993 gave it a new life that’s lasted a quarter of a century and counting.

It’s opening night for the 99W Drive-In in good old Newberg! Now showing: Peter Rabbit, PG, at dusk, followed by Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Gates open at 6:30, earlier if there’s a backup.

It was on this day 20 years ago that ‘Titanic” ruled the Oscars, winning 11 Academy Awards, to tie the record set by “Ben-Hur.”

Gonzaga was the only men’s basketball team from our corner of the world in the March Madness brackets, and they lost to Florida State last night. But our basketball-happy province has a strong presence in the women’s Sweet Sixteen, as Oregon State women play Baylor at 4:00 PM today on ESPN 2, and Oregon women play Central Michigan at 3:30 PM Saturday on ESPN.

The Boston Celtics drop by the Moda Center to meet the Blazers, who are eager to hang up another string of W’s.

Soccer time! Both the Thorns and the Timbers are on the road tomorrow.

My Mother Mary would turn 90 today, but for the night when she hung a few homemade angels on the humble Christmas tree, went to bed, and became one of them.

Happy birthday to Chaka Khan! Her biggest hit rings out on the radio every week on K103, and right here on the Daily Drip, for Tell Me Something Good! (Or whatever we’re calling it today. I resist formatics.)

–“Couple meets at speed-dating event, fall in love. He’s 92, she is 80” (Don’t rush things, kids!)

–“Student At Columbia Univ. develops ‘Racing Auditory Display(RAD)’ technology which enables the blind to play racing games on a level competitive to sighted players”

–“An African-American musician named Daryl Davis has made it his mission to befriend members of the Ku Klux Klan, resulting in several hundred of them leaving the Klan”

–“County jail serves fresher more nutritious food; teaches inmates a viable skill”

–“Vancouver Aquarium rescues sea lion with nylon rope wrapped around its neck” (The kind of thing the SOLVE cleanup removes from Oregon beaches twice a year)

All this week–and thank you for the tremendous response–we’ve been celebrating Oregon’s visionary Governor Tom McCall, whose March 22 birthday was declared Tom McCall Day by Governor Kate Brown a few years ago and seems to have been pretty much forgotten. Not by our little group, though! So I’ll wrap up with one more quote from McCall, but first:

A direct part of the McCall legacy, the SOLVE Spring Oregon Beach Cleanup is happening tomorrow. Started in 1984, this effort plucks tons of trash from the sands from border to border. Every cigarette butt tossed in the bag, every six-pack yoke and rusty beer can scraped from the tide line, is the volunteers’ message of love for our state. Ten AM tomorrow is the time. Might see a few whales spouts while you’re out there!

So a final quote from Tom McCall, the former broadcast news guy-turned-Republican Governor, whose environmental legacy is so enduring that a whole park is named after him, in a spot where a freeway once marred the Portland waterfront. Said McCall, “I really care about this world. And I understand—as all Americans can or will—that man’s problems are made by man and can be solved by him. We can be roused from our pouting. Man is not all evil; life is not all pointless; the future has not yet been written. We are writing it now, and I hope what we write is a story of love.”

I love that! Every day, we’re writing the future. My immediate future is to pop another Nyquill and head back to the pouch. G’nite mates!