Well, hi there, friends! It’s Friday, April 19, 2019. Today we expect a slow-arriving front to finally show up and bring light rain and much cooler weather, topping at 62, down from yesterday’s officially wonderful high of 76..and then it’s back to a springy mix of sun and fluff and Easter Egg candy for Saturday and Sunday with highs around 65. Nice! And way up there, a full Moon looks down and says “oooooh.” Sunrise 6:18 AM, sunset 8:02 PM.
Today is Good Friday, tonight begins Passover, and Sunday is Easter. The observant will observe and most everyone will feast and that’s good. Everyone needs good times.
***
My eyes are crossed and maybe yours are too with swirling visuals of nefarious deeds and legaleze, so I won’t trouble you with my take on the Mueller report. Read it yourself; parts of its are fairly gripping. And there’s some excellent reporting out there, including regarding the pachyderm in the parlor: what the Russians got away with. Not a hoax, no sir. The Russian government sabotaged the 2016 presidential election in a” sweeping and systematic fashion”—or as the New York Times puts it: “The report laid bare that Mr. Trump was elected with the help of a foreign power.” Mueller declined to either prosecute or exonerate Trump, and added, “The president’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” There’s a lot in the Mueller report to unpack, and Congress will have some hard choices.
A crime that dominated Oregon headlines thirty years ago is back in the spotlight after a federal judge ordered either a new trial or the release of the man convicted of murdering Oregon Corrections Director Michael Franke, during a car break-in in Salem in 1989. The judge ruled that Frank Gable’s lawyers failed to protect their client’s right to due process, and that important evidence pointing to another killer was excluded from the trial.
It’s the 24th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, carried out by domestic terrorists. Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of Columbine. Wish our media could manage, on significant anniversaries, not to rip open the wounds with gritty replays. I was at Columbine High School four days after 4/20/99, guided by my brother who was a music teacher in that cluster. We climbed the hill behind the school where crepe paper from a vigil still fluttered in the chainlink fence, while crews in the building below worked to expurgate the horror. As if they ever could.
Headline from the Newsweek Twitter feed last night: “Notre-Dame hero priest Jean-Marc Fournier, who rescued Christ’s Crown of Thorns, is Afghanistan vet.”
***
Channel 8 led last night’s 6 PM news with a report that all over the country, including here, sunroofs are exploding.
That creep with a hair fetish has been banned for life from TriMet, now that they have the authority to do it. Only eighteen arrests.
There’s a bail hearing today for the Portland romance novelist accused of murdering her chef husband last year for reasons unknown.
Somebody stole eight flutes, three saxophones, two clarinets, a trumpet and a bass guitar from Liberty High School in Hillsboro.
The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon is putting on a big ol’ plant sale, called Hortlandia, tomorrow and Sunday at the Expo Center, 10 AM to 3 PM both days. It’s free to get in, but you get to pay 8 bucks for parking.
Oh, hey! Game Three tonight, Blazers at Oklahoma City, 6:30 Pacific. TV on ESPN, radio on Rip City Radio 620! How could this be the last story? It should have been the lead! I hereby suspend myself for one day.
*****
And through it all, there’s good news!
–“Woman Carries Baby for Twin Sister Battling Cancer”
–“Canadian who had heart attack while jogging in Florida saved by stranger — from his hometown”
–“Johnny Cash to replace Confederate statue on Capitol Hill”
–“Notre Dame’s first female leprechaun: ‘Who says the Fighting Irish can’t fight like a girl?'”
–“Meet the kids choosing to forego birthday gifts to raise funds for charities”
The link to the Coffee Cup is always in the first comment, under the main body of the Drip. I do that to avoid angering the Facebook algorithms. When there are a lot of comments, you need to click “View previous comments” until the Cup comes up. Or ask me, and I’ll repost it down deeper when I can.
*******
Friday!!! I’ll be burning a day on Monday, friends, but we’ll gather here just the same. Let’s do something good today!
Portland's Daily Drip 