Welcome, friends and neighbors, to this Wednesday, September 4, 2019! Portland’s weather is golden and dry, with sunny skies, highs around 82, but what’s this? A slight chance of dry thunderstorms after midnight? So we might be rocked by crashes from the sky on the graveyard shift like a week ago? We’ll see. I was away, but I read your posts describing quite the nocturnal experience. Sunrise happens 6:35 AM, and sunset 7:42 PM.
Let’s check: OK, as of 0400 Pacific, Hurricane Dorian is a Category Two with 105 MPH winds, 95 miles east of Daytona Beach, and has finally become un-glued from its pulverizing focus on the Bahama. The storm is on a northward track that’ll hug the southeast coast of the USA. Dorian’s eye might make landfall where South Carolina juts out around Charleston, but either way, the whole eastern seaboard is in for a whipping from the outer bands, a 5 to 8-foot storm surge, and a genuine dunking. Help from the NW is on the way, including the Red Cross and AMR, and if you know of others, let’s lift them up!
Oregon may have its first death caused by vaping cannabis from an e-cigarette. Something–doctors don’t know what–has caused a nationwide outbreak of severe respiratory distress among young vapers, and although tobacco, and not marijuana, has been involved in what we’ve heard on the news this summer, the Oregon Health Authority says the July death of an unidentified individual who’d been vaping pot may be part of this disturbing trend.
Sad to say that the body of 37-year-old Tracy Allen was recovered from the Willamette River, where she’d been floating over the weekend with friends. She was wearing a life jacket, but the group ran into some tree roots in the river in Polk County.
Most of the kids in the Salem-Keizer district begin the school year today! We enjoyed so much reading folks’ stories yesterday about their back-to-school calamities. I shared some on the radio and will do more in the 6:20 AM Daily Drip break on K103 this morning. For all the children heading off to school, we wish you a calamity-free experience, and yes, your pants are on backward.
Folks who drive to Salem during off-hours are reminded that I-5 night paving is underway between Woodburn and Salem. Hope people zooming up and down the valley are mindful of the men and women at work; seems like we lose one every year or two.
The Trump administration is reportedly about to divert $3.6 billion from 127 military construction projects…to build the border wall. Lawmakers in both parties warn that will hurt military readiness, and scuttle projects that Congress specifically approved.
Today was the day two years when a shift in the winds pushed smoke from the Eagle Creek fire westward into the Portland area, bringing air quality to the danger zone. Happy to say that today’s air is green and clean, with a sparkling AQI, as of 0400, of 20. Hope tonight’s lightning doesn’t start anything to mess that up!
That bright object in the sky the other night? Not a fireball, not a planet, not a UFO, says OMSI’s Jim Todd….it was “an ascending weather balloon.”
Our town became a poorer one on this date in 1982, when The Oregon Journal–the city’s scrappy and nimble afternoon newspaper since 1902–published its last issue forever. The Journal featured the likes of Doug Baker (who did a daily news-gossip column; he interviewed me once by phone without identifying himself, but I knew); Dick Fagan, whose running bit created tiny Mill Ends Park; sports guy George Pasero, who chronicled milestones from the first NCAA basketball championship in 1939 won by the Oregon “Tall Firs,” to the great Portland baseball years, to the mighty Duck football teams in modern days. Even a young and gifted photog named David Hume Kennerly, the West Linn graduate who later won a Pulitzer in ’72 and became Jerry Ford’s White House photographer was on the Journal staff. And Dripster Mike Alesko, you were part of that crew too, weren’t you? Portland was a smarter place when we had two vibrant daily newspapers slugging it out. Good times.
Today would have been Paul Harvey’s 101st birthday. Miss him too.
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Page Two!
Good news! Check the Coffee Cup for the rest of the story.
–“Former Navy SEAL enters Yale as a 52-year-old freshman”
–“One-year-old boy beams with joy after hearing music for the first time thanks to cochlear implants”
–“‘I’m Just For Animals’: The Veterinarian Who Rescues Animals From Conflict Zones”
–“Two French guys save kitty in distress”
–“Owner of Pho King Good noodle shop says he’s not in on joke”
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Oops, sorry about that last one, especially for folks with tender ears who read this stuff aloud over the breakfast table. Off we go into the second day of a four day week, in which we who toil must accomplish five days of work. So with that, I’ll just sign off….”Radio Daddio…….
……….”Good day!”
Portland's Daily Drip 