Happy stormy Tuesday, September 17, 2019! You’re waking up on what promises to be a wet and windy day, with moderate to heavy rain, turning to showers in the late afternoon,, with winds gusting to 35 MPH, and highs of 60. Sunrise 6:51 AM, sunset 7:18 PM.
Oh…sad to say that one of our favorite broadcast journalists, Coke Roberts of ABC and NPR, has died at 75. And Alex Trebek is back in chemo.
Meteorologists say we’ll get a pretty healthy saturation out of this second early-season system, with maybe 1.5 inches of rain in the Willamette Valley and 3.5 in the mountains by the time it all blows out. If it weren’t so early in the season, we’d be talking about a major snow dump in the ski areas, but right now the snow level is around 7K. Big, pretty flakes were floating down at Timberline yesterday. Not exactly Columbus Day material, but today’s weather will be breezy enough winds to prune off some limbs, push over some trees with saturated roots, and maybe douse the lights.
PBOT’s trying a new tack at getting folks to scoop the gunk from their neighborhood storm drains. The city is inviting you to adopt a storm drain! In PBOT’s words, “Our crews work hard to keep the drains clear, but hey, with over 58,000 drains in the city they just can’t get to them all. That’s why we’re asking Portlanders to adopt storm drains in their neighborhoods to keep them free and clear of leaves.” Fine, then! Can we claim them as tax deductions?
Down here on the ground yesterday afternoon we had strong showers, sharp sunbreaks..rainbows…lightning strikes..and on my favorite radar app I watched a storm cell slide across downtown Portland and move directly over Portland International. So I listened to the PDX air traffic control frequencies and heard exchanges like this, from a departing jet heading into the storm: “We need a little left of the weather.” Which the pilot was granted, at a very specific altitude. The tower then radioed an incoming Delta jet, “we’ll have traffic taking off from Portland and deviating off the departure path to get around some weather. He’ll be below you, well outside required vertical clearance” And everything fit perfectly, like cards shuffled by an expert. They even accommodated a Cessna 152, departing from a busy airport at rush hour into rough weather for a trip up the Gorge. There’s always a drama in the skies…we’re just unaware of it.
An ex-private security guard is on his way to pen for seven years after he pleaded guilty to harassing a Muslim family for wearing hijabs; breaking a Latina woman’s hand with a metal baton for shooting video of his outburst, sending her phone into the Willamette; and pepper-spraying two other people…all during one racist meltdown on the dock along SW Harbor Way last year.
Portland’s been offering one-way bus tickets out of town for homeless people, but only to a place where there’s housing waiting. KGW reports that about half of them…go back to the streets.
Glad to say my favorite radio play-by-play guy…Mike Parker of the OSU Beavers…is okay, despite getting in a spinout wreck on I-5 at the Santiam River. Judging by the photo he posted on Twitter, it looks like his car was stopped by the cable barrier in the median!
A new report from WalletHub…which gets itself on the news by issuing new reports… ranks Portland as the eight most fun city in America. Vegas is #1, San Francisco is just ahead of us at #7, we Beat LA (a Portland mantra), and Seattle doesn’t crack the top 10.
The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile is in town.
It’s Constitution Day! Our country’s single most important document, representing the sacrosanct principle that all people are created with inviolable rights, is honored today because this was the date in 1787 that it was signed by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Not that they got everything right, which is why we have 27 amendments. But did you know there’s a glaring grammatical error in the Constitution that has gone uncorrected? In article 1, Section 10, the document uses “it’s” when it should be “its,” even in 18th-century grammar. Tsk! They also thought about calling the chief executive “His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties.” That one didn’t make it to the final draft, and good thing!
On the local birthday list! Portland radio greats Joe Joey Gee Cooper Giannunzio aka Joe Cooper (KGW) and Inessa Anderson (KINK) are celebrating today. And two rightfully famous and movieworthy Oregon authors were born on this date. The “Wild”ly successful Portland author Cheryl Strayed on the planet in 1968…sharing the birthday with the sometimes-a-great-prankster Ken Kesey (1935).
It’s “Something Great from 68” night at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, as genius composer Brian Wilson and his band (including Al Jardine) play some huge Beach Boys hits–the show begins with “California Girls and “I Get Around”–while also venturing into his personal favorite tracks from two less-celebrated albums, “Friends,” and “Surf’s Up” (which is my own BB fave). Also on the bill are recent Rock HOF members, The Zombies (“Tell Her No” is the opening number), led by the band’s founder, Rod Argent (“Hold Your Head Up”).
For your future bingeing needs: All 180 episodes of the Emmy-Award winning Seinfeld are coming to Netflix starting in 2021. Last time I had a root canal, I asked the dentist to play Seinfeld DVDs. Between Season 2 and the nitrous oxide, I was laughing so hard they had to stop the procedure!
Today’s life hack you can use: next time you have a loved one who’s traveling by air, and you’re in a helicopter-parent mood..try Googling their airline and flight number…and it will show you exactly where the flight is, their airspeed, altitude, and ETA. Even a map, if you poke around.
In the Department of Something Good….all but one of the links that I posted for this morning are coming up dead. I have no idea what the problem is…but I’m done wasting time on it. The Coffee Cup will return when we fix whatever is wrong. Grr. Can you tell that I am pretty damn frustrated with this?
Nevertheless…I hope everyone has a very fine and manageably dry day!
Portland's Daily Drip 