Wednesday, January 16, 2019

So come, and talk of all the news we have today… It’s only 34 degrees, on the back porch, as we greet a Wednesday, January 16, 2019. Cool time, winter in the city! Your Daily Driply weather forecast calls for a tenth of an inch of rain mainly in the afternoon, and highs of 43 degrees, along with a let’s-stay-home concoction of snow and freezing rain in the Columbia River Gorge. Plus those crabbing crews on the coast are heading into rough bar conditions, and at least 17 to 20 foot seas reaching the outer waters by late tonight. Sunrise 7:46 AM, sunset 4:54 PM,

A porch security video has come into the hands of the Portland Police showing a gray pickup truck speeding up onto a sidewalk and chasing three young men on foot, hitting two of them and sending them sprawling, one of them smacking into a park bench. We’re only now learning of this, but it happened last Thursday, at about 5 PM, on NE Beech St at 154th where it meets Wilkes Park. This is a couple of blocks south of Sandy. None of these guys went to the police, and leading us to infer, what?

A 68-year old guy named Ed Lipscomb who’s climbed up and down Mt. Hood 182 times got lost in dense fog on Palmer Glacier yesterday. But he stayed calm, called for help, was spotted by a TV news helicopter, and mountain crews brought him down in a SnowCat. He’ll be back next week for climb #183.

Suddenly gone from the local scene: the familiar squadrons of yellow mixer trucks on Ross Island, as the Pamplin company has abruptly shut down the concrete division of Ross Island Sand and Gravel. Forty people laid off.

We don’t know how widespread it is, but there’s an outbreak of measles among children in the Vancouver area. Two cases were confirmed yesterday among unvaccinated kids, and more are suspected.

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Did you ever have to make up your mind? That’s what Parliament must do today about the future of British PM Theresa May, following yesterday’s blowout defeat of her trade deal with the European Union that would have allowed Brexit to go forward with a minimum of economic chaos. The trouble is that the EU can’t accept what’s acceptable to Britain, and vice versa, and without a deal, the complex wiring will be torn out by the roots on the interdependent economy over there when Brexit takes effect at the end of March. As the song says, time ain’t really on their side. Which will just break the heart of, say, Vladimir Putin.

It’s government shutdown Day 26, and thousands of FAA and IRS employees are being ordered back from furlough to do their jobs–without, until this is settled, paychecks. Something called the “Problem Solvers Caucus,” made up of centrist Republican and Democratic lawmakers, is meeting with President Trump today to look for a way out.

One of the loveliest spots in our town–the Portland Japanese Garden–is offering free admission to furloughed government employees during the shutdown.

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Looks like those annoying but efficient scooters are coming back in the spring–for a second “pilot project.” A PBOT summary finds that scooters fit nicely with Portland’s ethos of encouraging non-automobile transport but, from the executive summary of the report on last year’s pilot project, there’s an “overall concern for traffic safety and the risk that Black e-scooter riders would be targeted for racial profiling and harassment.” The PBOT wants to run another pilot.

Three students at Woodland High School scored a perfect 800 on the Math portion of the SAT. Doing the math…the chances of that are one in a million.

You know it’s not an all-bad day when the headline on OregonLive is: “Portland has the best tiki bar in America,” so named by some trade group. It’s called Hale Pele—“The House of the Volcano Goddess”–at 2733 NE Broadway. From their web site: “…be warned, no true Tiki experience is complete without a little danger: listen for the distant thunderstorms growing closer and the fiery volcanic explosions… many surprises await you deep within Hale Pele.”

Portland’s famous Unipiper is firing up a nonprofit foundation to raise funds that will be granted out to emerging talent with a flair for the bizarre. The goal, according to Uniper Brian Kidd (nice guy, relative newcomer), is to “define the cultural identity of the city by drawing on our weird past, and building toward a hopefully weirder (and more fun) future.” There’s a Unipier Hazy IPA coming out soon to aid in this civic cause.

The Rose City Classic Dog Show begins today at the Expo Center.

The Blazers (26-19) host the worst team in the NBA, the Cleveland Cavaliers (oof, 9-35) at the Moda Center tonight.

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Some better news keeps rolling across my mind….

–“Baby gets first hearing aids, giggles uncontrollably at sound of big sister’s voice”

–“Eight lives left! If this cat could talk, he’d have quite a tale to tell. He rode around the city, stuck in a car engine.

–“Book sales are up over last year, and physical books are thriving”

–“David Whips Goliath: Small Irish burger joint wins trademark battle against McDonald’s”

–“The name of Pocahontas is taken in vain, but the last resting place of the famous Native American princess is marked by a haunting monument—in England.”

Links to these stories are probably in the Daily Drip Coffee Cup! I say probably because we have a new system for posting, and it seems to skip the step where I can doublecheck the link to make sure it’s good before it’s posted. Let me know if they’re up! (The links, by the way, have become a popular feature, and I may find ways of expanding that. It’s a useful tool).

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Say, look who’s playing in Portland tonight: John Sebastian! You know, from The Lovin’ Spoonful! My favorite story about him is that he found himself performing at Woodstock, even though he wasn’t in the lineup, because they suddenly wanted a solo acoustic act after a rainstorm so they could squeegee the water off the stage. Sebastian was backstage acquiring an illegal smile when one of the festival’s overwhelmed organizers said, “We need somebody to hold ’em with one acoustic guitar, and you’re elected.” So he borrowed Tim Hardin’s guitar, floated out in his tie-dye denim jacket, bleached jeans and sandals, and strummed and babbled his way through five songs that Woodstock-era historians described as “peak hippiedom.” He was paid $1,000. Sebastian is at the Aladdin Theater on SE Milwaukie this evening.