Like a cannonball off the high dive, we’re splashing into a Monday, April 8, 2019. Our corner of the country is emerging from a rainy night into a rainy day, and the cumulative drenching puts the Willamette Valley south of Salem under a flood watch for urban and small stream flooding, along with sharp rises on rivers. There’s also a threat of flash floods and mudslides in the Eagle Creek Burn area, as we’re coming up on two years since that wound was inflicted on the land. Portland’s high today should be around 60. Sunrise 6:38 AM, sunset 7:47 PM.
The heavy rain has created an emergency situation in Lane County, where the Army Corps of Engineers is releasing water to prevent an overflow from the Dorena Reservoir, on the Row River six miles east of Cottage Grove. Evacuations are underway along the Row River and the Coast Fork of the Willamette River from the Dorena Reservoir north to the area of Mt. Pisgah. The Corp says the rates of flow being released from the Dorena will be higher than recorded in the 1996 flood. Shelters are set up in Cottage Grove, and neighbors are helping neighbors evacuate animals to high ground.
A four-block section of downtown Portland is closed as homicide detectives investigate the fatal attack on a man at SW Broadway and Alder just after midnight. A suspect was taken into custody a few blocks away. Broadway is closed between Washington and Morrison, while Alder is closed between Park and 6th.
President Trump has sacked Homeland Secretary chief Kirstjen Nielsen in a move toward tougher border security.
Television and print media across Oregon this week are collaborating on one topic of great concern: the high rate of suicide here, and across the west. You’ll see different reports on Channels 2,6,8 and 12, along with stories in print outlets from The Oregonian to the Pamplin newspapers, the Statesman Journal. Willamette Week and Street Roots, each covering some aspect of a tragedy that claimed over 800 lives last year. Stories explore the reasons for the persistently high suicide rates in the west, the fact that 20% are veterans, the connection between eviction and suicide, and more. You can find links to all of the stories at http://www.breakingthesileneor dot com.
Hundreds of high school students camped out all night to get first crack at free prom dresses distributed for the 15th year by local nonprofit Abby’s Closet at the Oregon Convention Center. Over 8,000 dresses, along with shoes and accessories, were given away on Saturday and Sunday. Many of the recipients would otherwise be unable to attend their prom, both a ritual of spring and a rite of passage.
Former Portland Police Association head Robert King begins his new gig today as Mayor Ted Wheeler’s top adviser on public safety matters–a move that seems intended to build bridges to police who say they haven’t felt supported by City Hall.
The Willamette Queen Sternwheeler is back to gliding the waters near Salem after a weekend grand reopening from a shutdown that followed January’s crunch into some rocks during a wedding.
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The University of Oregon women’s basketball team is home from its first trip to the Final Four, and they picked up some excellent news yesterday as star point guard Sabrina Ionescu announced that she’ll be back for her senior year rather than declaring for the WNBA draft, where she would have been the #1 pick. She tweeted that the WNBA will have to wait while the Ducks attend to unfinished business. That team will be loaded for a run toward taking the title away from Baylor, which defeated Notre Dame yesterday.
Happy birthday to beloved Portland Trail Blazer alum Terry Porter, born in 1963. He went to the NBA Finals twice as a member of the Blazers, and for the past three years he’s been the men’s basketball coach at the University of Portland.
The Blazers beat the Nuggets 115-108 at the Moda Center in a game that saw the return of CJ McCollum.
P!nk comes to the Moda Center tonight where she’ll put on a spectacular show, swinging from chandeliers and bungeeing around the pink-curtained stage while beds levitate and flames erupt, she belts out hit and hit, never misses a note, and mingles with the crowd during the encore…
Nobody, and I mean nobody, saw this coming…but the best team in baseball is the homerun-happy Seattle Mariners. With yesterday’s 12-5 laundering of the Chicago White Sox, the team that everyone expected to be a cellar dweller is stellar, instead, with a 9-2 record, the best start in team history. And they’ve knocked balls out of the park in every single game, just the fourth American League team in the past hundred years to start the season with at least an 11-game longball streak.
The Civil War effectively ended on this day in 1865 when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union leader Ulysses S. Grant after the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. Grant was highly generous to Lee in the terms of surrender: nobody was imprisoned or prosecuted for treason; Lee’s men were allowed to keep their sidearms, horses, and mules for the upcoming planting season, and the starving Southern troops were given food rations. Grant’s men cheered in victory as the defeated Lee rode away, but Grant stopped them in the name of reconciliation. “They’re our countrymen now,” Grant said.
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TMSG?
–“Canadian baby who got organ donation now a healthy 6-year-old”
–“Schoolboys keep California woman from jumping off bridge”
–“New therapy: Changing tumor cells into fat cells stops spread”
–“20-Year-Old Raising Five Siblings Gifted New Car From Anonymous Donors”
–“Netherlands makes trains free on national book day for those who show a book instead of ticket”
Details in the Coffee Cup below.
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Into a Monday we go! My friend Janine Wolf is filling in for my friend Bruce Murdock; and I get to be on the air with the team from 5 to 9 AM Pacific on 103.3 in Portland, and on iHeartRadio’s worldwide app. Tune in there…weigh in here…and have a wonderful day!
Portland's Daily Drip 