G’morning! As a crisp Harvest Moon sails overhead, here’s what’s crossing the Daily Drip news desk on this Tuesday, September 25, 2018. No matter that it’s autumn, Portland will experience a perfect summer day, with highs in the low eighties, and our next rain isn’t due until Saturday night. Sunrise is at 7:01 AM, sunset 7:02 PM–which is as close as we’ll come all year to a perfect balance between night and day.
Seems like the leaves are changing early, no?
Six weeks to go until the mid-term election–although Oregon ballots are now in the mail to military and overseas voters.
Embattled nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his wife took to friendly Fox News last night to defend his character and deny the growing accusations of sexual abuse of women when he was a teen in a frat-boy culture at Georgetown Prep and Yale. Even as a Senate committee hearing is scheduled Thursday for his first accusers, a second and soon a third woman say they want their recollections put to the test of an FBI investigation, as part of its background-checking duty.
As of this morning, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has not resigned or been fired. There was a brief media flurry to that effect yesterday, but it came to nothing.
Bill Cosby learns his fate today. The sentencing judge yesterday merged his three conviction counts into one, so if he gets the maximum, that’ll be ten years, not thirty. He’s 81.
The thaw between the states of Oregon and Washington on the issue of a new I-5 bridge continues gradually, with Ted Wheeler’s pronouncement that, yep, we need to start talking again. The wound left by Washington’s backing out on a billion-dollar deal is five years old, and with Vancouver politicians taking the lead, Oregon officials are beginning to say it’s time to come back to the table and get this done, already.
A new law that would require Oregon schools to teach about the Holocaust gets its first look at the Senate Education Committee this afternoon. Its advocates include a 92-year old survivor, now living in Oregon, who was enslaved in Auschwitz when he was 15, but was liberated by Allied forces, and has dedicated his remaining years to making sure the story of what happened is never forgotten.
A mama alpaca saved her week-old baby from the jaws of a cougar that grabbed it in Skamania County. “She’s one tough mama,” the animals’ owner told KGW.
Hey, about that self-inflicted Oregon loss to Stanford on Saturday night: the Oregonian’s John Canzano makes a point on how some Duck fans need to take a page from the Timbers Army playbook. There’s video of some besotted folks screaming profanities, flipping the bird, and throwing stuff as the Stanford players trotted to the tunnel. When something like that happens at Providence Park, the Timbers Army self-polices, and points out the guilty party to security. Time to class up the act, and do our talking on the field.
Big changes at Starbucks, where a corporate shakeup is aimed at jumpstarting flat sales by putting new menu items on a fast track. Apparently the bloom is off our annual supposed fascination with all-things-pumpkin-spiced. They’re also toying with the idea of making deliveries. That alone would switch me from being a sometimes-customer to a daily spender; it’s hard to make a Starbucks run from a live radio studio, no mantter how desperate one may be!
Portland’s unofficial mascot, the Unipiper, has found some of the shirts that were stolen off his porch. He plans to sell them, and give the money to Street Roots.
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The Grammy-nominated alt-rock band Death Cab for Cutie–the unfortunate name comes from an obscure song in a Beatles movie– plays at the Keller tonight.
Actors Michael Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones were born on this date, exactly 25 years apart.
This is the day in 1981 when Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as the first woman on the US Supreme Court.
The Portland Trail Blazers open training camp today! BTW the Blazers gave four tickets to superfan and Portland celeb k.d.lang, to pass along to someone in Portland who’s making a difference…and she tweets that she’s chosen Natasha Butler, principal of the new Harriet Tubman middle school.
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Now the daily Five for Smiling…
–“Revolutionary spinal cord implant helps paralysed patients walk again”
–“Orchestra Delayed At Airport Performs Impromptu Gig For Other Passengers”
–“In Saudi first, anchorwoman presents evening newscast”
–“Police officers give bride and groom ‘something blue’ with ride on wedding day”
–“Indonesian teenager survives 49 days adrift at sea in fishing hut”
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A good week to wrap up some outdoor chores! Gardeners, what do you need to get done this week, while it’s dry and warm? (And involves work gloves, not chardonnay)?
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