Thursday, June 7, 2018

Ahoy there! It’s the Daily Drip, requesting permission to come aboard, on this Fleet Week Thursday, June 7, 2018. We get one more day of bright spring sun before rain comes storming in for the weekend. Highs go 75 today, 70 on Friday, then 62 on Saturday. Sunrise 5:22 AM, sunset 8:56 PM.

This year’s Grand Floral Parade may be one of the rainiest ever. Allow me to say it’s OK to bring an umbrella if you have room to raise it. But ponchos keep you just as dry, and don’t poke your neighbors’ eye out. NWS says people from the coast to the valley to the Cascades need to be aware of possible thunderstorms Saturday afternoon, though it may be too cool.

Salem, we’re sorry you have to go through this again. Just four days after the last water alert was lifted, the cyanotoxin count bounced back up, so the alert is on once more that medically vulnerable people need to be back on bottled water. They ran out at the Fairgrounds last night, but I’m sure they’re replenished. The Oregon National Guard is back at it, and huge trucks marked “emergency water” were seen rolling down I-5. Hotter weather will worsen the algae; Salem is looking into upgrading filters.

A father from Colorado drowned at the Oregon Coast trying to save his 17-year old son, who was knocked into the waves while boarding off Rockaway Beach. The son has not been found.

Our best wishes go out to Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, who revealed that he was diagnosed with a small cancerous brain tumor. It was caught early, and he says he’ll battle it like the helicopter pilot he was in Vietnam. Richardson is the highest-ranking Republican in the state, and is next in the line of succession for Governor. He put up a Facebook live video, and I have to say he had trouble communicating.

People on both sides are applauding the Trump commutation of a life-without-parole sentence for a woman who’s been in prison since the ’90’s for a nonviolent drug crime. Thousands of others are similarly languishing, but don’t have a Kim Kardashian lobbying in the Oval Office for their release.

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley is calling for congressional hearings into what he calls Trump’s “horrific child-snatching policy” at the Mexican border.

Somebody spray-painted graffiti in one of the Ape Cave lava tubes at Mt. St. Helens.

Breaker breaker, good buddy, we could have us a self-driving convoy right here in Portland. Daimler is opening a research facility on Swan Island specifically to develop automated commercial vehicle technology, with the goal, as a company PR release says, to “make roads safer and help trucking companies boost productivity. At least a robot behind the wheel won’t get distracted by its water bottle and wipe out 24 guardrail posts, as a meat truck driver did on 217 the other day.

The country music soap opera “Nashville” comes to an end tonight on CMT.

The Golden State Warriors are a game away from sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA finals.

A young woman in the upper deck at a Padres game caught a foul ball right plop in her beer. The crowd roared as they watched her on the big screen chug the brew with the ball still in it.

Pick up the current Willamette Week for the dirty lowdown by Nigel Jaquiss on how the Portland area, where this used to be the state religion, has forgotten how to recycle. Almost 10 percent of what we put in the blue carts absolutely should go straight to the trash. That includes–eww–tons and tons of diapers. But other stuff that’s less obvious, and we need to get it right.

Here’s why we have to keep our garbage out of the environment. A whale washed ashore and died on a beach in Thailand. It had 17 pounds of plastic bags in its belly.

Prince would have turned 60 today. Damn opioids.

Tell me some good stuff!

–“Queen Elizabeth loves to dance along to ABBA’s Dancing Queen”

–“Waitress and grandma of 7 children receives 3000$ as a tip for smiling and hard work”

–“India will abolish all single-use plastic by 2022”

–“5 years after struggling to get permission signed by absentee dad, woman graduates from U.S. Naval Academy”

I shouldn’t tell this story. Recently we added a Daily Drip Minute every morning at 6:20 on K103. It wasn’t my idea, but I’ve come to realize it’s a really good one. Every day, I pull something out of the Drip or the comments, and run with it on the air. This does involve 5 minutes’ prep, but it’s turned out to be topical, colorful, and hyper-local, which I love. Now, this week I’m covering KEX’s drivetime newscasts simultaneously with my role on K103, so I’m enjoyably swamped all morning. Yesterday at 6:20 Bruce pops on the air and says, “Now it’s time for…” and then it dawned to my shock that I hadn’t prepared for…” John Erickson’s Daily Drip!” What do you do? Who DO you do? I danced and faked it and riffed on D-Day and RFK and I dunno what else, then slunk off the set like that scene in Charlie Brown’s Christmas where Snoopy is caught dancing after the music stops. Radio people, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I have a new radio nightmare!

I’m looking forward to hearing what Jack Bogdanski, and anyone else who attended, thought of Tony Bennett’s concert at the Schnitz last night. I’m already getting messages saying it was spectacular.

Oh…I owe the Dalai Lama one (with everything, I know, fine old joke)….yesterday was not his birthday. It’s July 6. An internet source I recently switched to (because the other one had nothing but YouTube stars I’ve never heard of) was off by a month, and therefore so was I. So. I’ll make it up by calling Dial-a-lama for another quote:

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.