Good morning to you, on Tuesday, August 14, 2018, a panting dog of a day with smoke in the air, unhealthy air quality in the Portland area, and highs of 95 degrees. We’d hit 100 if it weren’t so smoky. Today’ll be our 28th above the 90 line, the Portland record is 29, and we’ll probably match that tomorrow. Sunrise 6:10 AM, sunset 8:19 PM, and both will be a dramatic orange–a familiar sight in this fiery summer of 2018.
Thirteen days until the beginning of school in Portland!
Aretha Franklin is now in hospice. Prayers and good wishes for comfort and peace are pouring in from around the world.
One of our country’s most beautiful places–Glacier National Park in Montana–is hit by a lightning-sparked blaze at the very height of the tourist season. A 32 mile stretch on the west side of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, between Lake McDonald Lodge and Logan Pass, is closed, and many campsites and other facilities are evacuated.
Oregon’s biggest conflagration now is the 55,248 acre Klondike Fire, west of Grants Pass, where units from Alaska to Australia are teaming up to fight flames that have crackled since a lightning storm one month ago tomorrow.
The wild Northwest can be as dangerous as it is beautiful. A 23-year old from Berkeley climbed over the safety fence at the top of 113-foot Toketee Falls in the Umpqua country, as many tourists do, and fell a long way. He has not been found. Nor has the 40-year old Ohio man who wore shorts and sandals on a hike near Mt. St Helens last Thursday.
Breaking news from overseas…a man drove his car through security barriers near Parliament in London, and two pedestrians were injured. The driver was arrested for terrorism. And a bridge has collapsed on a highway near Genoa, Italy, killing dozens of people.
The high-water mark in Miami Beach is going up an inch a year, according to the chairman of the University of Miami’s geological sciences department quoted in the New Yorker. He gives much of the region half a century before it’s underwater. The yards of multi-million dollar homes are already mushy.
President Trump signed with his flourish the $717 billion Pentagon spending bill titled the “John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act,” and said, “The NDAA is the most significant investment in our military and in our war fighters in modern history and I’m very proud to be a big, big part of it.” He did not mention the war hero after whom the bill was named.
Japan surrendered unconditionally on this day in 1945, ending World War II, and setting the stage for a peacetime alliance between the US, Canada, and western Europe, called NATO, to provide security against the ambitions of Moscow. Long may it wave.
And then began the baby boom!
There’s a candidates forum tonight at the Crystal Ballroom featuring Jo Ann Hardesty and Loretta Smith, one of whom will be the first African-American female on Portland’s City Council.
A visitor from Germany went to the Timbers game Saturday night, then to a bar for some beers, then rode the eastbound Red Line and somewhere along the line he lost his cell phone. So the word goes out on social media–and the phone turns up–in the TriMet lost and found.
A woman shopping at Staples in North Carolina was confronted by a store security guard who demanded to know what she was hiding under her shirt. She lifted it slightly and said: “Twins.” Oops. Staples let her have her purchase for free.
The Clackamas County Fair and Rodeo gets kicking today in Canby.
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I met a man who sang the blues…and asked him for some happy news…he just smiled and said, sure!
–“When a dad needed a new kidney, his children’s teachers donated theirs — sparking a donor chain that saved not only his life, but seven others’ lives, too”
–“Bonnie the wonder cow flees N.Y. farm, becomes a ‘deer,’ survives winter and is saved from slaughter”
“Governments urged to ring every Church bell in the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War 1 on Nov 11”
“Two women are attaching supportive tags around known suicide spots to prevent further suicides. And it’s working”
The new Daily Drip Link Farm is on the way!
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Happy birthday to Dale Scott, Major League Baseball umpire from Portland who calls ’em as he sees ’em…including the fact that he was the first openly gay ump. He’s retired. He was the plate umpire for a 2001 World Series game where George W. Bush threw out the first pitch, shortly after 9/11, and says he and Bush were chatting and Bush said,” the only thing I know about Oregon is every time I go to Portland, there’s a riot.”
And genius cartoonist Gary Larson was born on this day in 1950. We need “The Far Side” now more than ever. Get back to work, Larson! or at least choose somebody to do an authorized, curated permanent exhibition online. Seriously. Back in the 80’s, John Windus and I led a nationally-covered (on CNN) march on The Oregonian demanding that they not drop your work during a hiatus. Do we need to round up people wearing cow costumes to march on you?
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And there we have the Daily Drip for another day. Thanks for coming by. Take it from here, Dripsters!
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