Morning, fellow sleepy people! Let’s lay out the breakfast nook for the Doily Drip! It’s Wednesday, November 28, 2018. Our skies won’t be as threatening as yesterday’s glowering display, but it will be quite showery with highs in the low 50’s. Tomorrow could be dry. Sunrise 7:27 AM, Sunset 4:30 PM. We’re losing daylight at a rate of just under two minutes a day, on Day 332 of 2018, with 33 left in the year.
Today’s the day the Portland City council votes on final passage for an ordinance aimed at stopping the proliferation of single-use plastic serving ware for takeout food and drink. The measure up for second reading this morning will stop restaurants from automatically giving you a plastic straw or plastic utensils, or those little packets of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. The ordinance cites Oregon beach and riverside cleanup data from SOLVE volunteers, which shows 15 percent of litter( by count) consists of single-use plastics from takeout food packaging, and adds that “over 660 species, including sea turtles, whales, dolphins and seabirds, are known to be impacted by plastic, either by ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic debris.” It’s not a complete ban, since some people with disabilities need straws to take in liquid, but if you want one, you’ll have to ask for it, effective next July 1, assuming it passes today.
Salem, in the meantime, has banned plastic grocery bags, starting next year.
Get ready to hop on the Frog Ferry–the name attached to a nonprofit group’s dream, now building momentum, of creating a network of passenger ferries on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. The first Frog could leap between Vancouver and downtown Portland within four years, according to the group’s president and founder Susan Bladholm, who says the trip would take just 38 minutes. Mayor Ted Wheeler likes it; he’s committing city money to help with the initial studies. One has to wonder what’s taken so long. Look at how empty the river is…flowing along a freeway packed with cars.
A pharmacist at Kaiser Permanente has been indicted on charges of videotaping dozens of people as they used the washroom at a Northeast Portland Kaiser facility.
There may be a ballot measure in Oregon’s November 2020 election that would allow licensed medical professionals to administer psilocybin, the main active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, for therapeutic purposes.
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The results are in from the racially-charged Mississippi Senate runoff election, where Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith easily outdistanced Democrat Mike Espy.
Fox News says it is planning to “discipline” employees of the “Fox and Friends” morning show, who gave advance questions to the staff of former EPA head Scott Pruitt before he appeared on the network last year.
Enron–the Houston energy company that sustained itself through creative accounting, corruption, and outright fraud–collapsed on this day in 2001. For nine years, Portland General Electric was owned by Enron, and many PGE employee pensions, heavy on Enron stock, were damaged by the collapse. But PGE was liberated from the bankrupt Enron in 2006, becoming its own publicly-traded utility, and now provides power to 44% of Oregon’s population.
If you heard yesterday about an active shooter scare at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center….turns out it was a drill gone wrong.
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Did you happen to follow McMinnville’s own We Three on America’s Got Talent? They didn’t win the competition, but they won fans from coast to coast, and afterward, they tweeted: “Our only regret from @AGT was not getting the opportunity to play our finale song for you all. This song will be track 12 on the album and if you come to the show on 11/28 at the @CrystalPortland you’ll get our full finale performance.” And that’s tonight at the Crystal Ballroom! I know there are other wonderful things in their future, and I can say no more. But stay tuned.
Famed and fascinating astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks at the Schnitz tonight and tomorrow.
The Blazers play the Orlando Magic tonight at the Moda Center.
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Let’s a toss a few sugar cubes into the Coffee Cup to sweeten up this November day!
–“Beavercreek Saloon owner donates RV, citizens add donations to help single mom left homeless by California fire”
–“Nurses give lottery winnings to 2 of their own going through heartbreak”
–“Brothers, age 7 and 10, perform CPR to save grandmother”
–“Childhood cancer survivors find love after reuniting years later at St. Jude”
–“Golden Retriever becomes surrogate father to baby possum”
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That’s what’s up for this Wednesday morning. I’d like to invite you to tune in K103 for a couple of specific things: an on-air moment devoted to the Daily Drip at about 6:20 AM, in which I pick a topic and read off four or five of your comments (thanks for the show prep!)…and then Stump the Jock at 7:30, the longest-running feature in Portland radio history, which is always good for office chatter and happy-hour bar bets. We’re at 103.3 on your car or kitchen radio, and the iHeartRadio app on your phone. See you there!
Portland's Daily Drip 