Friday, March 15, 2019

Hi, there! It’s your friendly Dripster in a grey sedan…won’t you hop inside my Subaru? It’s Friday, March 15, 2019, just five days until Spring, but you know what? Let’s just say it’s here! Portland should officially hit 60 today for the first time in 108 days (since last November 27), and it keeps getting better through next week. Sunrise 7:23 AM, and sunset 7:16 PM Pacific Daylight Time.

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Incomprehensible violence–in Christchurch, New Zealand, where scores of Muslims were killed in mass shootings during Friday prayers at two mosques. (Forty-nine are dead and an equal number wounded, at this writing) Charged in the killings is a 28-year-old Australian suspect who is reported to have published a manifesto before the attack outlining his intentions and espoused far right and anti-immigrant ideology. Security is on high alert at mosques around the world.

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You can bet Portland will be involved as students around the world today will get up and walk out of school, for the purpose of demanding action on climate change. It’s called a Global Climate Strike. In Portland, they’re meeting at City Hall at 11 AM. They’ll miss a day of calculus and AP biology, but reply that they’ll have experience in citizen involvement in the world they’ll be inheriting.

Meantime, the Multnomah County GOP is suing the Portland Public School District over last year’s student walkout demanding stricter gun laws, saying it wasted scarce educational resources and violated the First Amendment rights of those who disagree.

Say–about that move to make Daylight Saving Time permanent in Oregon? Governor Kate Brown was asked for her stance. Her reply: “Hell, yes!”

Oh, KGW, that was fun to watch: in a story about a Portland homeowner who had to pay almost five thousand bucks because his sidewalk had gaps in it, a Channel 8 crew checked out the sidewalks in front of the mayor and city council members’ homes, and showed on the 6 o’clock news that some were much worse than the guy who was fined thousands of bucks. Only Ted Wheeler, looking chagrined, owned up to procrastinating and promised it will be fixed. As, perhaps, will the city’s punitive and unevenly enforced approach to this. Too bad, for them, that it had to happen at the point of a camera, but that’s local TV news, doing its job.

Suddenly, a pulse! After Portland has been without a heart transplant programs since OHSU’s docs in that department all quit last year, the city will have two, and they were announced at the very same hour. Providence is launching one with a $75 million donation from philanthropists Phil and Penny Knight, and the pixels were barely dry on that when this headline was sent out from Marquam Hill: “OHSU to reactivate Heart Transplant Program.”

Music Millenium, where Portland’s been buying records since just before Woodstock, turns half a century strong today. A 50-year celebration tonight at the Aladdin Theater features, let’s see..performances by the Dandy Warhols (hi Zia!), the re-invigorated Crazy 8s, and Jon Koonce of Johnny and the Distractions. Tonight’s event raises money for the Oregon Music Hall of Fame, while honoring one of the best record stores in the country. (It’s at 32nd and E. Burnside, if you’re new to town).

The very popular electronic composer known as Big Wild is playing the sold-out Roseland Theater tonight. He’s called “an artist to watch in 2019” by Pandora while racking up millions of plays on Spotify. Backing him on a world tour of sellout venues is Portland’s Haley Johnsen, an American Idol alum who’s appeared at several K103 events and whose own solo work I love. Welcome home, Haley!

Superbly talented classical-crossover vocalist Sara Brightman brings her HYMN tour to the Keller tonight.

This was the day in 44 BC when Roman dictator Julius Caesar was stabbed by a committee of senators including his friend and protege Marcus Junius Brutus.

And from “et tu” to KATU–Portland’s ABC-TV affiliate went on the air on the Ides of March in 1962.

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From the Daily Drip Smile File…

–“Trooper helps recover lost wedding ring for Massachusetts couple”

–“‘Absolutely Magical’: Southern California Sees Largest Butterly Migration Since 2005”

–“Little lamb dances heart out at Texas animal care center”

–“Physicists Just Reversed Time on The Smallest Scale by Using a Quantum Computer”

–“An Arizona man challenged ‘bored teens’ to pick up trash — and it went viral”

Details in the DD Coffee Cup…first item in Comments…if Facebook will let me post it!

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That’s it..and scram I must. Dual-station duty today. Cheers!