Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Good morning, fellow inhabitants of our little green rain globe! It’s Tuesday, January 22, 2019, and the uncompensated night shift at the weather service has been tracking a warm front carrying light rain to our town around daybreak, then pushing the snow level in the Cascades from 2,000 feet up to around Timberline. Highs today in Portland will be around 45, with a quarter of an inch of rain in all. Sunrise 7:42 AM, sunset 5:02 PM. We won’t see a pre-5 PM sunset again until November. Spring begins in less than two months!

It’s so cold back east that Niagara Falls is frozen solid.

People are finding scads of gnarly little plastic pieces strewn along some of Oregon’s beaches, as westerly winds are blowing bits from the North Pacific Gyre onto the coastline we love. The SOLV Oregon Spring Beach Cleanup is two months from tomorrow.

Today is day 32 of the government shutdown. Democrats rejected, without countering, the Trump offer of only temporary security for a million Dreamers in exchange for $5.7 billion for the wall.

The smack of a gavel signals the start of a 5-month session of the Oregon legislature today. Democrats run the show, and their leaders’ priority is a billion-dollar boost in business taxes to bring about the drastic improvement we all know is needed in the schools. Plus, the Governor wants to find $800 million to close a funding gap on Medicaid for low-income Oregonians. Also high on the list are bills to require the safe storage of guns and keep them out of the hands of domestic abusers and people under 21, throttle back greenhouse gas emissions, impose rent controls statewide, which would be a national first, and more. What I know about the legislature is that most of its members are accessible for input from folks like you and me; our local members drive the hour to Salem every day during the session listening to audio books and cursing at slow drivers in the left lane, and they check their email and Facebook pages and some even read the Daily Drip. So be nice, and let them know what you think!

Kamala Harris, Senator from California and former sharpshooting prosecutor, has entered the 2020 Democratic presidential sweepstakes, which brings the official total to eight, with maybe 14 to go. Oregon’s primary isn’t until May 19, and thirty-three states will have already weighed in, whittled down, and culled the herd before we even have a chance to express a choice. Same as it ever was. Wonder why we don’t shake that up and get more of a say in things?

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The details of this are best found elsewhere, but, just as we ache for the family involved, our thoughts are also with the first responders and other personnel who dealt with an unspeakable situation on South Barlow Road outside Woodburn, where a man took the lives of four family members, before a deputy’s bullet stopped him from claiming another.

The Clark County measles outbreak has now officially reached 22 confirmed cases, nearly all among unvaccinated children, and the health department has added Orchards Elementary to the growing list of sites where people may have been exposed to the contagious virus. Beginning this morning, people who have been identified as possibly being exposed to measles will receive an automated call from Clark County Public Health.

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Sweet start to a road trip for the Portland Trail Blazers, who cooled off the Utah Jazz 109-104.

The Oscars don’t have a host, but as of 5:20 this morning they have nominations, and that’s a start, right? “A Star Is Born” is expected to lead the pack, but it was also expected to dominate the Golden Globes, and it pretty much whiffed there.

Fox & Friends has apologized for airing a photo of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg–and the phrase “1933-2019.” It’s being explained as a pre-produced image that was assigned a file number which somebody fat-fingered to the live chain. All networks have obit packages ready to roll on everyone you can imagine, but they don’t generally make it to your screen until it’s time.

The Pope has launched a “click to pray” app.

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We lost Ursula K. LeGuin, the internationally acclaimed science fiction author whose home was in Portland, one year ago today. A thought from one of the page-worlds she created:

“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives … But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed, 1974.

Some other items from the Daily Drip Datebook, and a hat tip to my sister Janice for helping corral this information

Today would have been John Belushi’s 70’s birthday. Journey lead singer Steve Perry is 70..Linda Blair is 60. A year ago today Neil Diamond announced her’s retiring from touring because of Parkinson’s Disease. On this day in 1974 Nike registered the swoosh as a trademark. Ten years later–to the day–Apple introduced the Macintosh.

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Let’s dip a cup of kindness from the fountain of Good News!

–“The hotel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot is now a museum dedicated to his life’s work.”

–“Mail Worker Charms Homeowner by Offering to Hide Package to Protect It From Porch Pirates”

–“UPS driver saves dog from drowning in icy pond: ‘She wasn’t going to make it'”

–“Last week it was air traffic controllers–now Canadian border workers make pizza delivery to unpaid U.S. counterparts”

–“California town sets up ‘goat fund me’ page to finance four-legged firefighters who graze away overgrown underbrush”

This is all in the Coffee Cup below, I hope.

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Back together again today for the first time since Christmas: Bruce, John, and Janine on K103! Join us, please, and let me know how we’re doing!