Good morning, friends! It’s Thursday, December 19, 2019, and here comes the second-to-last Daily Drip before I metamorphosize into a butterfly or a slug of whatever evolves when the alarm clock’s tyranny is overthrown. What I can promise is that the butterfly or slug will still keep the Drip flowing, with the core principles intact, including a love for mixed metaphors, and we’ll keep the band together.
Hey, it’s Bud Clark’s birthday! More shortly. But first…
The weather is too much of a mess for me to put into words any more concise than those of the National Weather Services, which synopsizes as follows: “A complex combination of fronts will produce rain, Cascade snow, with freezing rain mainly for the Upper Hood RiverValley and Central Columbia Gorge now through Thursday morning. Then, a very wet and slow-moving frontal system will produce significant rain across the region Thursday night through Saturday. Additionally as well as gusty winds and dangerous seas on Friday. Showers will decrease on Sunday followed by a dry start for next week.”
So today, for Portland, we have a 100% chance of up to half an inch of rain, and highs of 50. Sunrise 7:46 AM, sunset 4:28 PM.
Impeached. Trump makes three. All NW congresspeople voted with their parties on both articles. Earl Blumenauer says “History will thank us”–but says the House should hold off on sending the articles to the Senate to allow further investigation. Everyone is convinced that the law and the Constitution are on their side, and that opposing views are a result of idiocy, cultishness, or treasonous intent. We’re in deep trouble and we need leadership to lead us out. Nominations are now, literally, open. In the meantime, with holiday gatherings ahead, I refer you to the last headline in today’s Good News Coffee Cup.
Latest CNN poll, ahead of a debate tonight: Biden – 26% Sanders – 20% Warren – 16% Buttigieg – 8%.
It appears that a bank robbery is what led to the murderous chaos that started in the Murrayhill area of Beaverton, where a 20-year-old man used a machete to stab two people in a Wells Fargo branch; one, a female customer, died, the second, a bank employee, is in critical condition. The man then stabbed a man while stealing a car outside the nearby Planet Fitness, and a woman was stabbed in Tigard, where the suspect was arrested. Police now ID the man as Salvador Martinez-Romero, and we don’t know anything about him.
An Oregon State Trooper was startled to see an injured red-tail hawk flapping in the fast lane of I-5. So he pulled over, bravely grabbed the stunned bird, put it in his back seat, and brought it to a rehab facility. Hope it’s OK!
Folks in Astoria are a-grumble over plans to cover up a mural at Astor Elementary School, featuring a playful giraffe, that was featured in the 1990 Schwarzenegger flick “Kindergarten Cop.” The school’s being remodeled under a $70 million bond, and the mural–which has been restored periodically by the artist–is apparently doomed.
I’d like to send up a birthday whoop to a great Portlander, John Elwood “Bud” Clark, Jr., who was born December 19, 1931. People laughed when this elfin barkeep, with his twinkly eyes, twirly mustache, and oom-pah lederhosen, dared to challenge the stentorian Frank Ivancie for the mayorship of this city. But Bud, as all knew him, connected with real people and when he toppled the incumbent and suffered sudden national celebrity, he made like St Nick, whom he so closely resembles, and went straight to his work– and earned a whole lot of sometimes-grudging respect. And, since his tenure coincided with my return to Portland from five years working grim AM radio jobs in bigger markets, Mayor Clark, along with City Commissioner Mike Lindberg, took time and generously explained Portland’s new realities in ways that I understood, and deepened my love for this place. I’m grateful to Bud, as I’m grateful to Mike.
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There’s good news in the Coffee Cup!
–“A Man Gave Up His First Class Seat for an 88-year-old Woman — and Her Reaction Was Priceless”
–“Rescuers free humpback whale entangled in fishing gear near Monterey”
–“Father And Daughter Publish Book Highlighting Children Doing Good”
–“A family is celebrating Hanukkah by performing 18,000 acts of kindness in 2020”
–“‘Alexa, change the subject’: Amazon adds feature to avoid Christmas arguments”
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Penultimate.
Portland's Daily Drip 