Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Good morning, friends! Here’s the breakfast edition of the Double D for Tuesday, March 27, 2018. You’ll step out the door into light rain and high tree pollen, with highs in the mid 50’s. But it’ll be warmer and drier Wednesday through Saturday. Sunrise is at 7:00 AM straight up, and sunset comes at 7:32 PM.

Highest of high fives to the Oregon Women’s basketball team, on a season that led them, like their Oregon State counterparts, to the Elite Eight….a great season that ended with a loss to Notre Dame.

Not sure yet why, but..a power outage reported in the area of SE 122nd from Division to Powell, affecting about 5,000 PGE customers.

The big muckout is underway at a homeless camp on the eastern flanks of Rocky Butte, within eyesight of Interstate 205 near the Portland Airport. By The Grotto. We’re the most liveable city in a first world country and we’re still chasing Hoovervilles around.

Supporters of an assault weapons ban in Oregon have begun turning in signatures aimed at putting the measure before voters in November. Conservative opponents are readying a court challenge to block it.

This could revolutionize those needle-in-a-haystack searches for missing hikers: Mountain Wave Search and Rescue has successfully test-flown a drone, and it will be mission-ready soon.

The yo-yo Dow is opening in a high spin today, at 24,202, following yesterday’s 661 point jump, the zaniest since 2008. Rumors of talks with China to avoid an everyone-loses trade war are soothing fears.

Downtown Oregon City has won a Great American Main Street Award, the first city in Oregon to cop the honor in eight years. It’s become a wonderful place to spend an evening.

A pivotal figure in the struggle for civil right has died at 76: Linda Brown was 9 when she was turned away from an all-white elementary school in Kansas, and ordered to walk with her black friends across busy railroad tracks and streets to the so-called “separate but equal” school, and her family sued and ultimately won the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.

Burgerville employees in Portland say they are on the verge of becoming the first recognized fast food union in the United States.

Scientists, who aren’t really sure, are saying that a derelict Chinese space station could crash to earth in a spectacular series of fireballs any day now. Most of it will burn up in the atmosphere, but some could make it all the way to the surface, resulting in a one-in-a-trillion chance of hitting somebody. Everybody duck! Trajectory projections place the potential path of destruction south of 43 degrees latitude; we’re in the safe zone at 45.

There’s a video going around of a dog waiting patiently, with not a human in sight, at a Portland crosswalk on a busy street. When cars in both lanes are finally stopped, the dog trots across, and traffic resumes.

The Blazers are at the New Orleans Pelicans at 5:00 PM. As far as I can tell, still no Baby Damian.

NFL news with a local connection: Grant HS alum Ndamukong Suh, a thunderous defensive tackle, (whose name I’m proud to say I got right, when I had to say it repeatedly, as the PA announcer for a high school football team that Grant was playing) has signed with the Los Angeles Rams.

The Stormy Daniels interview had more viewers than the Golden Globes.

It’s Joe Donlon’s farewell week at KGW. He’s on his way to WGN in Chicago, where the news can be much, much more intense.

This is the anniversary of Mt. St. Helens’ first visible volcanic activity in 1980, when KGW Radio airborne reporter Mike Beard stumbled onto a plume of steam and ash. The mini-eruption focused world attention on the volcano, which cut loose cataclysmically less than two months later.

The reboot of the old “Roseanne” show hits ABC tonight. Same cast, which requires a miraculous resurrection of John Goodman’s Dan Conner, who’d apparently died in the last episode. Roseanne and Dan are grandparents who take a lot of meds. She’s a far-right Trump supporter (same as in real life). Laurie Metcalf’s Jackie wears a “Nasty Woman” t-shirt and greets her sister with “What’s up, deplorable?”

The Viking descendants among us are hoisting tankards of mead at the news that “Hagar the Horrible” is now gone from The Oregonian comic page.

People with money to burn–or, say, amusement parks or sporting events–will soon be able to order fake meteor showers on demand, fired off from a satellite 220 miles up. Which will put them in conflict with Elon Musks’s proposed 7500 broadband satellites, 210 miles high.

Headlines from our Department of Something Good!

–“Melt-Resistant Ice Cream Is Here: Using Banana Extract, Scientists Concoct Breakthrough Recipe”

–“93-year-old Holocaust survivor finally receives his bar mitzvah”

–“Exonerated man gets his groundskeeper job back with Chicago White Sox after 23 years in prison”

–“Graduating HS senior receives acceptance letters from West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy.” That’s almost unheard of. She’s picked Army.

–“I Feel Love’: 8 year old Girl Sets Out To Hug Officers In Every State”

OK! Worktime. Have a very fine Tuesday!