Morning, neighbors and friends! This here’s a Monday, May 20, 2019. Portland’s weather, in the week leading up to Memorial Day weekend, stays cloudy and cool with a chance of showers and highs in the low 60s. But the holiday forecast is dry and warmer, with highs maybe near 80! Sunrise 5:34 AM, sunset 8:40 PM.
Game Four tonight! Let’s pop the popcorn and enjoy, because whatever happens in the Moda Center this evening, this Blazer team has taken our town for a ride that nobody expected. Success, at the start of the season, was defined as making it out of the first round. Here we are in the final four–where twenty-six other NBA cities would love to be. Golden State players would be delighted to finish a sweep tonight, because that gives them nine days of rest and healing before the NBA Finals. But one Warrior said it’s a mistake to look past Portland tonight: “We’ve got one more game to win, and we know Damian can get hot and change an entire series. We just have to stay locked in because we know he’s more than capable.” True. But Dame’s been playing hurt the entire series, with something called “separated ribs,” in which the cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum is torn. Hurts like hell. Other guys are hurt too. Let’s just watch and cheer and maybe win this game and go down to Oakland and see what happens!
Parkrose High School is in a national embrace this morning, after what might have been a horrible incident Friday has instead put the focus on the heroism of one individual, football and track coach Keanan Lowe, a former star wide receiver for the Ducks in the Marcus Mariotta era. Lowe neutralized an 18-year-old who walked into a classroom with a loaded shotgun, and described what he called “the longest fraction of a second in my life” on ABC’s Good Morning America: “I lunged for the gun and we both had the gun,” he said. “We had four hands on the gun and students are running out of the back of the classroom and I’m just trying to make sure that the end of the gun isn’t pointing towards where the students are running but also not pointed at myself. So I end up getting the gun from him, getting the gun with my right hand and holding him off with my left hand and calling for a teacher to come grab the gun.” “For me,” Lowe added, “I feel like I was put in that room in that very moment for a reason — to protect those kids.”
At least five people were wounded when gunfire broke out during a Saturday night party in a warehouse in the Buckman neighborhood. All will apparently survive. The Police Bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team–formerly the Gang Enforcement Team, and now potentially on the chopping block–interviewed witnesses and victims, but many apparently left without speaking to police.
Yes, indeed, that was an earthquake in the Coast Range, at 9:23 yesterday morning, giving a magnitude 3.4 pillow-fluffing to late sleepers from Lincoln City to Neskowin.
A woman was trapped by high tide on a rock at Ecola State Park yesterday afternoon..her boyfriend climbed up to rescue her…and both had to be airlifted out by the Coast Guard.
Today’s the day, following a test period, for full implementation of a new Uber/Lyft procedure at Portland International Airport. It’s simple. When you order a ride, you’re given a code, then you follow the signs outside to the designated rideshare waiting line, and when it’s your turn, you show the driver that code, and away you go!
If you take SW Madison out of downtown to access the Hawthorne Bridge, be aware that barriers are up for a new protected bus/bike only lane.
Two days left to vote…but too late to mail in the ballot…for your local school board election.
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The eastern world…
–An explosion apparently targeting a bus full of tourists near the pyramids of Giza in Egypt wounded at least 14 people on Sunday.
–Nobody was hurt, but a rocket hit the Green Zone in Baghdad on Sunday night.
–President Trump tweets that a war with the US would be ‘the official end of Iran.”
Oklahoma and areas near it could be in for devastating tornadoes today.
Game of Thrones wrapped up last night, and I guess for some fans it missed the mark, too neat, a little too “storybook”…Game of Thrones has always been about setting convention on its head, and this one literally had characters sailing off into the sunset, and suggesting a multitude of sequels and spinoffs. I personally thought the episode was the best of the season, although…not one but two water bottles were spotted, just two weeks after someone left a Starbucks-like coffee cup in a scene. Just sloppy…or are the filmmakers trolling us?
They say bad news comes in threes. To counter that, this week, I’ll be giving birthdays in threes. Today’s the birthday of Jimmy Stewart, State Rep. Alyssa Keny-Guyer, and Cher!
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Oh, yes we need some good news today!
–“Commencement speaker to pay off Class of 2019’s student loans”
-“West Point is about to graduate its largest class of black women”
–“This Man Jumped Out of a Plane for His Gender Reveal”
–“Mascot School Teaches the Art of Cuddly Cuteness”
–“Capture The Life Of A Little Mouse Who Was Rescued From Cat’s Mouth”
Links are in the Daily Drip Coffee Cup!
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Many thanks to the Drip readers and K103 listeners who came to Vancouver on Saturday for our informal get-together at the Maryhill Winery tasting room! It was wonderful seeing so many of you, spread around that crowded room….and what a beautiful waterfront spot!
And thanks, early risers, for understanding the new experimental posting time for the Daily Drip. It’s going up shortly before 5, instead of 4, and guess what’s happening during that hour? Blessed ZZZZZ!
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