Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Good morning to you, dear Dripster, surfer, or lurker, or competing radio person doing show prep, and welcome to the last day of Spring! Today is Wednesday, June 20, 2018, and though we’ll steam up to 90 degrees today, there’s a good possibility we’ll experience late-day thunderstorms with flashes and bolts of lightning, hail the size of Susan B. Anthony dollars, and potentially flash flooding in burn areas. Like the Columbia Gorge. So we’ll be on the lookout for severe weather, and may call upon the Daily Drip Storm Team if things start popping. The window for that seems to be between 4 and 8 PM, but we’ll see. Pix and video and real-time info will be welcome! Sunrise 5:21 AM, sunset 9:02 PM. This is it, friends. Solstice time is imminent. Druids are doing their stretches.

With the world watching, the US government is housing babies and toddlers, taken from their parents,. in at least three facilities in undisclosed locations in south Texas. The government is calling them “tender-age shelters.” Others call them baby jails. Lawyers and medical providers who’ve been there say there are rooms and rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis.

Disturbingly unsurprising story from inside the walls of the federal prison in Sheridan, where volunteer attorneys who’ve met with asylum-seeking detainees in ICE custody say they were told that two men have gunshot wounds…and have not received medical attention.

Protesters shouted “shame” at Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as she had dinner at an upscale Mexican restaurant in Washington, DC. And woman believed to be an congressional intern shouted an F bomb at President Trump as he arrived at the Capitol for a meeting with Republicans. That just gives ammunition to the other side, folks.

With on-the-nose timing, the US announced its withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council, calling it “a protector of human rights abusers and cesspool of political bias.”

A truck from Fifty Licks Ice Cream drove up to the protests outside ICE HQ on SW Macadam…and handed out free cones to demonstrators. A chant developed: “Ice cream good, ICE bad.”

Noticed something weird on Gov. Kate Brown’s web page yesterday: an advisory that Oregon’s official state email had been hacked, and state employees can’t correspondent with recipients on certain domains like Hotmail and MSN. Apparently a state worker got phished, clicked on something they should not have, and IT crews are working on a fix.

Sticking new fees on your cousin’s Airbnb is what the Portland City Council votes on today. Agenda items #679 and #680 would impose a $4 nightly “booking fee” on short-term rentals, and a 2% tourism marketing fee–the same that big hotels pay. Anyway, we’ve gone many weeks without a new tax, so I guess we’re due.

Canada is legalizing recreational cannabis, probably effective in September. It’s the first country in the G7 to do so.

Pretty darn important runway maintenance at the airport means the south runway (10R/26L) will be closed for awhile, putting extra air traffic into a line over the Columbia River. So look out for blue ice. Smaller aircraft may be vectored onto the always-popular crosswind runway. It’s fun seeing Skymasters brushing the treetops of Beaumont. With incoming thunderstorms, the good men and women in ATC at PDX will earn their pay today.

The tattered joke about America having a Starbucks on every corner will live on forever…but the company is closing 150 underperforming stores in cities where there’s a dense concentration.

In the College World Series, Oregon State plays North Carolina this afternoon at 4 pm ESPN.

Beaver football fans have a toothy grin over the newest recruit: he’s Bend’s super talented tight end Luke Musgrave. Nephew of Bill Musgrave, legendary Duck QB.

The Hillsboro Hops play their home opener tonight, although I refer you to paragraph one. By the way, the Hops have become a Thing. they sell out. I need to go and find out if what they’re saying is true..that the Hops are a great minor-league-ball experience. Any fans among the Dripsters?

Oof…San Francisco Giants closer Hunter Strickland blew a two-run lead against the lowly Marlins, took a loss, stomped into the clubhouse…and slugged a door, breaking his pitching hand. He’ll be out two months.

Brian Wilson, the otherworldly genius behind The Beach Boys, was born this day in 1942. His gifted daughters Wendy and Carnie are friends of K103–they were even kind enough to sing on our Christmas show. Also on today’s birthday list is good old Lionel Richie–we still chuckle at his shocked reaction when we told him on-air that the Floyd Light Middle School Jazz Band played his “Brick House” at Dr. Seuss Day. (I was there! The kids killed it). Mmm-mmm!

OK! We’ve been tolling the gong of news for long enough here. Let’s ring some joy bells:

–“Smoking rate in U.S. hits all-time low, CDC says”

–“Jimmy Carter leads effort to open a clinic in a small Georgia town that was without a doctor.”

–“High School custodian wows graduation crowd with national anthem”

–“David Spade donates $100,000 to mental health organization following Kate’s death”

–“School Honoring Confederate General Renamed Barack Obama Elementary”

–“101-year-old Florida man still volunteers for Meals on Wheels”

Hey, on a night when the full moon is five days away, the Naked Bike Ride rolls through our town’s (inevitably) east side streets on Saturday night. So there’s still time to book a flight out.

We’re back on the radio this morning from 5 to 9, and then I get stitches out, thank God. Later, if conditions indicate, we’ll fire up the Daily Drip Weather Watch. It might be a very interesting signoff for Spring. Summer begins at 3 AM tomorrow!