Good morning to everyone who’s successfully found the Daily Drip (Facebook’s futzing with us again)! It’s Tuesday, August 13, 2019, and today looks like the hottest day of the week–a high of 88 degrees in Portland, 71 in Seaside, 86 in Hood River and 74 at Government Camp. My dog and I came in from an afternoon ball-toss with our tongues hanging out from the muggy 83-degree heat, yet it’s so much cooler than recent summers and the air is kinder, too–Portland air quality is steady in the “good” range, with no sign of the dirty orange shroud of the past two years. Sunrise 6:08 AM, sunset 8:21 PM.
Anyone see the Perseids last night? Pix? And who’s picking roadside blackberries, and finding them just a bit too bitter yet?
Mystery at the Oregon Zoo…where the body of a man was found in the new rhino habitat under construction. No rhinos were involved; they haven’t moved in yet.
It must have looked like fun, but a 58-year-old California man’s attempt to swing from a rope into the Molalla River ended up with a broken leg and a technical rope rescue. Clackamas Fire rescue personnel got the job done, and he’s in the hospital mending.
The Hong Kong Airport is shut down for a second day by pro-democracy demonstrators. World travelers are scrambling for new routes; I know two who are trying to get to India, and they found a connection on the Portland to Amsterdam flight.
All this week Portland is doing what it can to avoid becoming another Charlottesville, as fringe elements are coming from a long way and ready to do battle. Kells Irish Pub has canceled its annual Summer Smoker Boxing Match, to keep from getting its 500 patrons involved in our Troubles.
It didn’t take long for Oregon’s new felony-level bias crime law to find a customer, as a 58-year old man is charged with going off on at three Latino men as they left an Old Town gay bar at closing time, telling them to “go back to your country,” then punching all three in the face. According to police documents, this guy kept up the racial and homophobic language and threatened continued assaults–even as he was being taken into custody. As of July 15th, it’s a felony for someone to hurt another person because of their race or other protected factors; until now, in order to be a felony, it had to be committed by two or more people.
President Trump’s administration is now targeting the legal immigration of people in poverty, claiming the nation needs a “merit-based” immigration system. They’re enacting a rule which would deny Green Cards to immigrants who use food stamps, housing assistance or Medicaid. The Oregon Food Bank is shoving back: CEO Susannah Morgan says “No family should have to decide between putting food on the table and securing long-term stability for themselves and their children. This rule is just the latest in a series of attacks from this administration on immigrants of color and people experiencing hunger and poverty.”
There’s been a train wreck in Oregon’s high desert, where a pair of large boulders fell onto the BNSF tracks, causing five locomotives of an 80-car freight to skip the rails. They all stayed upright and nobody was hurt, but 4000 gallons of diesel squirted into the environment.
A sign of the times in densely-built Portland: more and more people are using garbage cans and traffic cones to stake out the parking slot on the curb in front of their house–even though it’s public property and anyone can legally park there. Violators are sometimes met with obscene messages taped to their windows.
Woodburn, Oregon-born Dorothy Olsen, one of the last surviving female pilots who flew in WWII, has died at the age of 103. Twenty-five thousand women applied to be WASPs, but only a thousand made it, and she was one. And they didn’t get full VA benefits until 1977.
The great Boz Scaggs is at Portland’s Revolution Hall tonight. He’s got a new album–“Out of the Blues”–and says he feels like he’s finally found his voice.
The Clackamas County Fair and Rodeo begins today in Canby.
Happy birthday (in 1947) to Portland-born TV pro Gretchen Corbett! We devotees of “The Rockford Files” remember her dearly as Jim’s very good lawyer and occasional and fetching squeeze Beth Davenport. Her name’s also familiar because she’s the great-granddaughter of early Portland pioneer, tycoon, and US Senator Henry Corbett, who had a farm at the west end of the Columbia Gorge. That’s how lovely Corbett got its name.
The NBA season schedule’s been rolled out, and of local interest, the Blazers get red-hot-and-rolling at home October 23 against Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets. Didn’t we just see (and beat) these guys? In all, 20 Blazer games will be nationally televised, the most in a long time. This team has a lot of eyes on it.
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It’s day two of Good News Week! (So named because I’m on final approach to vacation)!
–“Ford restores beloved Mustang for Dad who sold it to pay for wife’s medical bills”
–“Christians protect Muslims as they pray while Muslims protect Christians during mass.”
–“Indigenous Women Are Publishing the First Maya Works in Over 400 Years”
–“First-ever British-Russian orchestra celebrates friendship between WWII composers and friends Britten and Shostakovich”
–“Guy Creates Images That Show How Earth Would Look If Cats Were A Lot Bigger”
Links here.
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Busy day! Hope it’s a good one for all!
Portland's Daily Drip 