Well, it’s time to open up an eye or two and realize that yes!! It’s Friday, September 28, 2018. We have one more sunny day with highs of 85, maybe, but it’ll get windy this afternoon and evening as the weather begins a shift toward October mode. Tomorrow looks partly cloudy and cooler, with highs of 70, and then a chance of showers begins Saturday night, and they might continue to spritz the Northwest at times all next week. Sunrise 7:05 AM, sunset 6:56 PM.
***
So we’re told the Senate Judiciary Committee will take a vote at 6:30 this morning on the Kavanaugh nomination, and barring some shock it’ll be forwarded to the full Senate for a final vote on Tuesday if not sooner. Peoples’ ears are still ringing from the clamor of yesterday’s circus. Sides are starkly drawn. The committee bungled this. Dr. Ford’s charge should have been placed in the FBI’s hands from the start. All we had were two witnesses who’ll swear on their mothers’ yearbooks that they’re telling the truth: one came across sympathetically, the other performed a jaw-dropping meltdown–and both sides are 100%, honest-to-God resolute, that they are right. Somebody’s lying. It’s up to each one of us to decide which.
****
It took four alarms worth of personnel and equipment to defeat a 1 AM fire in a metal fabricating plant off Columbia Blvd. in the North Portland industrial area. Embers floated through the air but no other buildings were ignited.
A baggage handler has been arrested for stealing six guns out of passengers’ checked luggage at PDX.
Kudos to the Portland Mercury for coming up with this nugget: of Portland’s 864 sworn police officers, only 158–that’s 18%–actually live in Portland. More Portland cops live in Washington than in Portland; most live in Oregon City, Happy Valley, Gresham, and West Linn.
A Portland woman says she and her boyfriend were havi ng drinks on Hawthorne and called at closing time for an Uber to take them home. And when the boyfriend felt sick and asked to pull over so he could hop out and ralph, she says the driver jumped into the backseat and started pawing her. Police are investigating, but the driver’s been dropped by Uber. The couple caught a LYFT home.
It’s Oregon International Air Show weekend. The skies above Hillsboro will be thick with Spitfires, Globemasters, SkyRaiders, C130 Hercules, Cobras, Thunderbolts, and the stars of the show, the Canadian Snowbirds zooming around in patterns at almost 500 MPH just four feet from one another, before swooping up into a fireworks finale.
“A game-changer for downtown Vancouver”….”total reconnection to the Columbia River”…”a great place to hang out”…”it’s going to totally transform Vancouver”…”beautiful views of the river, great food and bars”….those are some of the early online reviews of Vancouver’s new Waterfront Park, where a ribbon cutting ceremony will start at 11:30 tomorrow. It’s designed to take a page out of the Portland playbook and make the riverfront a destination, and city leaders hope it’ll attract people from the 503 to come on over. OK!
Portland’s had lots of restaurants and things closing–but here’s an interesting one opening. A Chinese restaurant named Happy Dragon that’s long been a hidden treasure in the Polk County farm country is relocating to Portland and opens today on 82nd Avenue in the Montavilla neighborhood.
Saturday is the SOLVE Oregon Beach and Riverside Cleanup, with the spirit of Tom McCall smiling approvingly over it all.
The Milwaukie community is gathering tomorrow to decorate with art the temporary classrooms that will fill the football field for the next two years while a new high school is built.
Didja watch the “Murphy Brown” reboot last night? I’d had enough hilarity for the day. We hear that Hillary Clinton made a cameo appearance. Aside from that, all I know is that our state does a cameo in a dated gag about a young weather presenter who took a couple of weeks off allegedly for “foot surgery”…and when she returned and stood in front of the weather map, “you couldn’t see Oregon.”
*****
Football! With the inner esteem of our pigskin self at stake, the #19 Ducks get a chance tomorrow night to pull themselves up from their dark night by road-tripping to Berkeley where they’ll face the #24 Cal Bears. The game’s at 7:30 PM on FS1. Show us what you’ve got, Coach. Oregon State is at Arizona State at 7 PM on the Pac 12 network… #11 Washington has #20 BYU at Husky Stadium at 5:30 Saturday on FOX…Utah is at Washington State at 3:00 PM on ESPN…and Idaho visits PSU at 2 PM, on 103.7 FM in Portland. (That took an unbelievable amount of looking-up).
The Timbers are in action as well, playing FC Dallas in the full-throated confines of Providence Park at 7:30 Saturday night. You can catch it, if you can find it, on KPDX 49. And the Winterhawks, who are in Kennewick tonight, skate at home against Seattle on Saturday night, 6 PM, at the MC, with TV on Portland’s CW32, and radio PBP on the Winterhawks app.
MLB wraps up this weekend. Boston, Cleveland, Houston, and Atlanta have clinched, while the Rockies and Cubs have one-game leads.
Def Leppard and Journey are at the Moda Center tonight.
***
Italians have a saying: “Se non e vero, ma e ben trovato” – even if not true, it’s well put!
*****
The chair yields five minutes to the Senator from Good News!
–“Scientists developed a medication that can alleviate or even completely eliminate the symptoms of celiac disease.:
–“7-Year-Old Barber Offers Free Haircuts To Neighborhood Kids”
–“Two endangered Madagascan radiated tortoises that were stolen from a zoo in Australia seven years ago have finally been recovered.”
–“Two dogs seek rescue for their injured owner”
–“Siblings separated in foster care reunite at Disneyland”
Details at Linkville, below.
*****
I had a chance to test the stopping ability of my Subaru yesterday when a very large red pickup truck zoomed out of the Les Schwab parking lot on Beavercreek Road and would have plowed into the right side of my hood had I not stood on the brakes. They work. So do my horn and appropriate digits.
Hey speaking of siblings! Mine are in town from Colorado, Montana, and Albany, Oregon, and we’re going to throw a fire in the fire pit tonight and knock back a couple. So looking forward to seeing them. Have a fine Friday, folks! (Fff).
Portland's Daily Drip 