Good morning, Dripsters, visitors, and folks looking for an excuse to read for five minutes before rolling out! Today is Tuesday, October 15, 2019, and Portland’s weather is about to go straight in the tank: the NWS is tracking a plume of subtropical moisture coming straight from Hawaii, followed by remnants of Typhoon Hagibis, which flooded Japan last weekend. Today is the transition day: cloudy and breezy with highs of 62, a good time to wrap up outdoor tasks, because rain rolls in late tonight and continues at various levels of intensity, well, gee, every day into next week. Sunrise 7:26 AM, sunset 6:25 PM.
Going on nine days…and still no sign of Owen Klinger. The search for the 18-year-old University of Portland student is getting national news attention, and tremendous local volunteer support; there’ll be another organized effort tomorrow. The young man seems to have turned off his phone. His parents are baffled.
The San Francisco Bay Area was shaken up around 10:30 PM by a 4.5-magnitude earthquake epicentered near Walnut Creek.
Do you ever drive by and check out the house you grew up in? A woman named Teri, who grew up in the 50s in the peaceful, edge-of-town Rockwood neighborhood, did just that, while driving around with her 6-year-old grandson Jack. She found her old house, hopped out of the car with the motor running, and was having a nice chat with the new owner, while Jack was strapped in the back seat playing on her phone. Suddenly a guy jumped in the car and goes roaring off, Jack in the backseat. The carjacker went a few blocks, then stopped in front of an elementary school and yelled at the kid to get out, which he did, unbuckling himself from the seat taking Grandma’s cell phone with him. He called his Dad, family’s all reunited, the thief abandoned the car and disappeared, and people everywhere are reminding themselves not to leave the car running anytime, anywhere, and especially in a neighborhood that’s changed a LOT since you grew up there.
That GOP effort to recall Governor Kate Brown–who won the office by 120,000 votes just a year ago–failed to attract enough signatures by yesterday’s deadline.
It’s the last date to register to vote in Oregon before the November 5 (2019) election.
Quick update on the N. Going Street bottleneck, caused by a train wreck hitting the bridge supports back in September, leaving just three lanes open to carry thousands of cars and trucks to and from Swan Island each day. PBOT has determined that reversible lanes would be too dangerous, since they’d be managed by barrels and cones that could easily get shoved around, so it remains two lanes westbound, and one jammed-up lane eastbound. They’ve changed the timing of the traffic signal at Port Center Way, giving folks a 30% longer green light when they’re driving home at the end of the day.
Paul Allen died one year ago today.
KOIN-TV Channel 6 went on the air on this date in 1953; then as now, Portland’s CBS affiliate.
Fifty years ago today, peace demonstrators staged a nationwide moratorium against the Vietnam War, consisting of marches and sit-ins and lots of singing.
American was pranked 10 years ago today by a false report that a 6-year-old boy was flying away on runaway balloon in Colorado. It drew serious wall-to-wall cable news coverage, like the baby in the well a few years earlier, and it was a total hoax. The kid was never in the balloon; his parents made him hide in the garage. But the ruse was unmasked when he was asked on live TV why he stayed in the garage while people were looking for him, the kid blurted out to his parents…with Wolf Blitzer filling in for Larry King on CNN… “You guys said that, um, we did this for the show.” Dad did 90 days in jail, and the family now travels around renovating homes, and selling back-scratchers for $25 online.
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Here’s today’s journalistic equivalent of a back-scratcher. Good news in the Coffee Cup!
–“Game-winning field goal kicked by…Kaitlin!”
–“Fisherman In Middle Of Lake Makes An Adorably Unexpected Catch”
–“Idaho Farmers Unite To Help A Neighbor Harvest His Potatoes Hours Before A Deep Freeze”
–“Airline’s Act Of Kindness Saves Teams’ Disney Trip”
–“Seemed like a good idea.. Birds taught to say “Howdy” are set loose in Texas A&M atrium.”
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Happy Tuesday, all!
Portland's Daily Drip 