Morning has broken, friends, or it will soon, wherever you are on the fragile blue marble! It’s Thursday, October 17, 2019, and here’s a quick morning readup from Daily Drip Central (actually a desk, with my feet on it). Portland’s weather starts with a second rainy onslaught, but it downshifts to showers punctuated by thunder, and highs of 58. The storms brewing offshore are driving a powerful surf with impressive breakers. Sunrise 7:29 AM, sunset 6:21 PM.
Portland woke up yesterday to the astonishing sight of Mt. Hood casting its own shadow up into the glowering orange dawn. You could almost hear the opening piano chords of “Morning Has Broken” rolling forth….and you’ll find an interesting local fact about those later in this report.
House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings–a powerful player in the impeachment probe…died this morning at age 68 due to longstanding health complications. Today’s the day Portland business figure and impeachment witness Gordon Sondland testifies to Congress about the president’s pressure push on Ukraine to investigate political rivals.
The search for missing UP student Owen Klinger swings in a potential new direction with this revelation from Portland police: “Investigators believe Owen had been watching videos about hopping freight trains. The direction he was walking was an area where freight trains are commonly staged. He had also watched the movie Into the Wild in which a young man leaves to go to Alaska to ‘go live off the grid.'” His parents don’t think so, and want the search to continue locally, but police believe he might have been influenced by Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s story of Chris McCandless, who dubbed himself “Alexander Supertramp” and hitchhiked to Alaska where he lived off the grid then died in an abandoned bus, miles from civilization, a victim of his own idealistic but ultimately self-destructive decisions. The film used a couple of Oregon colleges campuses–Reed and George Fox–as locations. Hope Owen is back on his own UP campus very soon.
Aw, we were afraid this might happen…now that Alpenrose Dairy has been acrimoniously sold, Little League International is scouting for a new location for its Softball World Series. For 26 years, this event has invited young female athletes and their families from around the world to Portland, where they’ve stayed with host families, and brought global attention including live ESPN coverage to Portland’s friendliness and beauty. Unknown, at this point, is whether those impeccably-manicured fields will be available at all next year for young ballplayers; I coached many a game there, and it was always the best experience of the season.
Over 700,000 Oregonians are signed up to practice their desk-diving skills for today’s annual Great Oregon Shakeout. Lots of schools, the Secretary of State, and even the Oregon Zoo are on the participation list, though it’ll be interesting to see what the elephants are supposed to do at 10:17 AM when the signal will go out to “Drop, Cover, and Hold.” Interestingly, today happens to be the 30th anniversary of the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake that rocked San Francisco and shocked millions who were just getting ready to watch Game Three of the World Series, in which the Giants swept the cross-bay Oakland A’s in four games.
Here’s a good time to be out of town next year: ODOT is spreading the word of a nine-day maintenance closure of the Interstate Bridge’s northbound span from September 12 through 20th, 2020. They’ll squeeze all of the traffic onto the southbound side and its sidewalk, with movable concrete barriers allowing two lanes in the heaviest direction depending on time of day. These things are always preceded by massive media coverage, and overuse of unpronounceable cliches like “trafficapocalypse,” so I think I’ll make sure I’m off the air that week!
The Blazers, who defeated the winless Utah Jazz 124-118 last night, wrap up the tuneup games at the Denver Nuggets tonight; those teams begin the regular season in Portland next Wednesday.
The Irish singer Hozier is at the Theater of the Clouds at Moda Center tonight. (Notice I didn’t say “the Moda Center. Their official news releases have dropped the article “the,” and I’m trying to as well. Feels weird though.) Anyway. Hozier’s big hit, which K103 plays with ample frequency, is ‘Take Me to Church.” His social media team has a sense of humor. On his website, there’s a link called “Take Me to Merch.”
Prolific rock keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who did five tours with “Yes” and played on Bowie’s “Space Oddity” LP, and did session work on all kinds of old hits like “United We Stand” and “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes),” plays tonight at Portland’s Revolution Hall on his “Grumpy Old Rock Star” tour. You’ve definitely heard his work: the musician who’s playing tonight in Portland, a city that experienced such an otherworldly sunrise yesterday, both wrote and played the rolling arpeggio piano accompaniment that makes Cat Steven’s “Morning Has Broken” the beautiful classic that it is.
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Tell me something good, please? And put the links where people can find them, please?
–“Good Samaritan finds an ingenious way to contact a man who lost his wallet”
–“‘Next Home Run I Hit Will Be For You’: Carlos Correa Hits Game-Winning Home Run”
–“Zoo releases video of adorable baby pandas cuddling with mom”
–“Stranger’s act of kindness goes viral”
–“Some help on a subway..”
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Let’s close with something written by Chris McCandless, referenced in the story about Owen Klinger:
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
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