Morning, good neighbors! It’s Tuesday, September 10, 2019, and Portland’s weather looks like this: Showers in the morning, rain in the afternoon with a chance of thunderstorms. High 69. Sunrise 6:42 AM, sunset 7:31 PM.
The union for 20,000 grocery workers in the area is expected to announce some kind of “economic action” against stores today. Could be leafleting or targeted picketing. Fred Meyer is advertising for replacement workers.
Thumbs up to Channel 8 weekend anchor Maggie Vespa, who ran the risk of feeding a troll by delivering an on-air retort to a viewer named Jeff for emailing a suggestion to “dress like a normal woman” instead of wearing high-waisted pantsuits, and wondering why KGW didn’t “pay her enough to afford a wardrobe makeover.” She talked on the air about “the pressure women face to embody the epitome of female attractiveness at all times,” pointed out that male co-workers don’t generally have that pressure and posted photos of herself wearing five different nice pantsuits. I have to say I’ve never even noticed Maggie’s wardrobe. What I notice is that she’s damn good. And that her retort has over 100,000 views.
Meteorologists from the National Weather Service ran out to the pumpkin patch that was roughed up by a twister on Sunday, and they tweet that, yup, “the #tornado that hit the farm is a confirmed rating of EF-0.” As tornados go, that’s the puniest, with winds from 65 to 85 MPH. The same cell hopped over and scared the Orchards area, but that instance has not been given tornado status.
Tornados are not the primary natural hazard here.
Oregon’s beloved and scenic sleeping giant Mt. Hood gets big-time ink in the New York Times today under the ominous headline, “We’re Barely Listening to the U.S.’s Most Dangerous Volcanoes.” The story reports that “A thicket of red tape and regulations have made it difficult for volcanologists to build monitoring stations along Mount Hood and other active volcanoes.” It recounts the hoops that the Cascades Volcano Observatory has jumped through to install seismometers, GPS instruments, and gas emissions detectors on the mountain, so whenever Mt. Hood does what Mt. St. Helens did 39 years ago, we won’t have to rely on a radio guy in an airplane to tell us that “eruptive activity has begun.” I haven’t seen anything about this in our local media. Thanks again, NYT!
Benson High School has canceled its 2019 football season because only about sixteen kids turned out. Serious question: would you let your kid play?
A fighter jet had to make an emergency landing at PDX yesterday, and deployed the drag hook that they use on aircraft carriers. Inbound flights were diverted or kept in a holding pattern until the situation resolved.
The MAX extension to Portland International Airport opened on this day in 2001. The attacks of 9/11 happened the very next day, so a week’s worth of celebrations was canceled. To this day, MAX is an excellent way to get in and out of PDX.
Are kids trying to take an Uber to school instead of a bus? That seems to be the implication of a tweet from the Salem-Keizer district, which says, “A special reminder from our friends at @lyft and @Uber – riders must be at least 18 to have an account, and drivers cannot transport unaccompanied minors. We’re always happy to have students on our original rideshare program – those big, yellow buses! ”
Hurricane Dorian was “one tough mother”…so it makes sense that starting today, Columbia Sportswear will match any in-store donations at all Columbia retail and outlet stores dollar-for-dollar up to $50,000 to support Dorian relief efforts in the Bahamas and the U.S.
Deep Purple is at the Keller Auditorium tonight! The touring lineup features three key members from their early iteration: the band’s original drummer Ian Paice, bassist Roger Glover (who dreamed up the concept and the title for “Smoke on the Water” after witnessing the famous fire at Lake Geneva), and vocalist Ian Gillan, who wrote the lyrics and sang lead on “Smoke.” (He also sang the part of Jesus on the original recording of “Jesus Christ Superstar”).
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The best part of waking up…is good news in the Cup!
–“Listen to Police Captain’s Amusing Conversation With Phone Scammers Threatening to Arrest Her”
–“Woman turns newspaper boxes into emergency food pantries”
–“Dog falls 100ft down cliff while chasing birds and survives”
–“The Icelandic Postal Service delivered a letter addressed using a rudimentary hand-drawn map”
–“Drought Has Revealed Spain’s Long-Submerged ‘Stonehenge’”
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Say, a tip of my old Rip City cap to my iHeart colleague Travis Demers, who’s been named the new radio voice of the Portland Trail Blazers! He did the job on a fill-in basis during the team’s deep playoff run last spring, and now officially follows only Bill Schonely and Brian Wheeler as the radio play-by-play announcers for the Blazers. Way to go Travis!
Happy Tuesday, friends!
Portland's Daily Drip 