Monday, Monday, the day so daunting that The Mamas and The Papas said it twice. Today is April 29, 2019, and we’re steering into a straightaway of good weather with 65 or even 70-degree highs all week long! Sunrise 6:02 AM, sunset 8:14 PM.
Folks in the office will be rocking their Blazer gear today, because the Portland Trail Blazers play the Nuggets in Denver tonight in Game One of the Western Conference Semifinals. 7:30 PM tipoff on TNT, and on Rip City Radio 620. We won’t know until game time whether center Enes Kanter will be in the lineup; he has a separated shoulder that needs a month to heal properly.
Sunday was a day of peaceful arrests along the Zenith Energy tracks at 5500 NW Front, where activists planted a garden of forget-me-nots between the rails in an effort to block trains hauling Alberta tar sands oil. Fourteen trespassers were handcuffed and taken away; their ages ranged from 19 to 86, and most were in their 60s and 70s.
Local police have been patrolling synagogues around Portland since a Saturday night shooting in the San Diego area, carried out by a 19-year-old who’d written an anti-Semitic manifesto. The same suspect claimed responsibility for scorching the walls of a mosque in Escondido a month ago.
Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly is giving the tax tree a good shake, in a search for fifty million more bucks to fund help for homelessness and other programs. She requested and received a report from city staff listing seven possible untapped sources, such as a soda tax and a prepared food tax and a personal income tax on the top-earning 5% and a hike in the CEO tax and a business tax and a property tax levy and a clean energy tax hike and a $5K-per-quarter “empty dwelling fee.” She’s not committed to any of those. Just looking.
Some lost soul squeezed a beat-up old camper onto the covered no-motor-vehicles-allowed overpass at SE Steele St. above I-205, where it promptly became jammed and was found abandoned at first light Sunday.
We’ll find out today if Hillsboro will join other districts in closing school for next week’s Oregon Education Association Day of Action. Superintendent Mike Scott writes that he’s sympathetic with the goal but not the tactic: “As a district, we, too, have been in conversations with our elected officials about the need for a predictable and sufficient funding stream for K-12 education, and we support efforts to reach that end; however, we cannot endorse an employee walkout.”
The Washington measles outbreak will be declared at an end today, unless somebody broke out with symptoms this weekend. It will have been 42 days, or two maximum incubation periods, since the last new case. (I thought I’d spotted an announcement of new cases late last week, but happily, that was an old tweet that got bumped up. I’m still learning).
It’s Jerry Seinfeld’s birthday (1954) Our friend Carnie Wilson was born this day in 1968.
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Good news for your Monday? Right here!
–“Woman Didn’t Realize She Dropped Money Until Four-Legged Good Boy Returned It to Her”
–“Cat adopts baby squirrels”
–“Sir Ian McKellen stages free show for 80 octogenarians”
–“Disabled child told to leave movie theatre; donor rents out theatre so they can see movie for free and without harassment.”
–“Teen didn’t have a date for prom so her grandfather got dressed up and stepped in”
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Thanks to the throng that turned out for iHeart Radio’s first annual Corks+Carts event at The Redd in Southeast Portland! It was fun meeting folks who read the Drip, or have listened to me on the radio since they were wee little people, or have no idea who I am. It was a friendly good time and we will do that again!
Portland's Daily Drip 