It’s Friday, do you feel it? Welcome to October 6, 2017. Weather’s taking a turn, but wasn’t that a spectacular evening to gaze skyward? The Harvest Moon popping up orange with the International Space Station zipping by….anyway, today’s fine, sunny, and 70, and then weekend showers show up around midnight. Sunrise 7:15 AM….sunset 6:40 PM.
Fall harvest is underway at the Willamette Valley’s hundreds of vineyards. The growing season got a late start because of spring rains. What I didn’t know until I talked to the winemaker at Duck Pond: many of the growers do their harvesting at night. And they’ve had lots of moonlight all week!
Well dang…¡Oba! Restaurante has suddenly shut down. It had been a mainstay in the Pearl for two decades, though we haven’t been there since I got in a beef with a guy over a parking spot. The owner abruptly clammed up his Beaverton seafood spot, Hall Street Bar and Grill, earlier this year.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a Geneva-based coalition of non-government organizations around the world.
President Trump made an odd comment to the press pool covering a White House photo shoot with military commanders and their spouses. Said he, “It’s the calm before the storm.” Meaning? “You’ll find out.”
Elon Musk is offering to have Tesla rebuild the Puerto Rico power grid.
PTSD is a terrible thing…a 35-year old vet at JBLM near Tacoma threatened to commit a Las Vegas-style killing, tried to ram the MP’s who chased him, then sped south on I-5 up to 100 MPH swerving around bumping cars and trucks, and ended up wiping out up against the BNSF tracks just south of Kalama in Cowlitz County. No serious injuries in any of this, amazingly. He’s locked up in jail.
A Multnomah County Health Department employee found a sticker in a break room advocating violence against Muslims. The county government is dealing with multiple instances of racism in the ranks, and its leaders have vowed to change the culture.
The NRA has made the rare move of agreeing to a gun control measure–a clampdown on those conversion kits that make machine guns out of semiautomatic weapons.
Gun-rights people are steamed after their failure to collect enough signatures to force a repeal vote on a new Oregon gun law, which allows a court to deny a gun to anyone deemed at risk of hurting themselves or someone else. They say Governor Brown waited until the last possible minute to sign the bill, depriving them of enough time to round up signatures by the deadline.
Harvey Weinstein was one of Hollywood’s biggest moguls, producing armloads of Oscar-winners like The English Patient, Chicago, The Lord of the Rings, Good Will Hunting, Shakespeare in Love, and on and on. But now he’s been exposed as a decades-long sexual harasser and creator of a toxic work environment at Miramax and other companies that have paid out settlements for his creepy behavior eight times over the years. He’s apologized and says he’ll take a sabbatical and work with a therapist. And sue the New York Times for doing the story.
Local media in New Hampshire report that a fireball crashed into a mountainside, touching off a wildfire–and the military immediately sealed off the area.
Tomorrow is Vladimir Putin’s 65th birthday. Think he’s about to retire? No way. It’s just getting good for him.
Howard Stern moved to satellite radio on this date in 2004. He’s got the maturity of a 9-year old, but he’s one of the best interviewers on the air.
McDonalds has absolutely no comment about an incident in the UK, where fifteen people dressed as Ronald McDonald marched into a Burger King chanting, “You’re s*** and you know you are.” The BK employees took it well, mostly ignoring them, and shaking hands with them when they left.
A woman in South Carolina ordered a yoga mat…and was delivered 20,000 oxycodone tablets from Mexico.
Three cheers for Charlie Svato of Iowa, who won $25,000 a year for life from the state lottery. Thing is…he’s 92.
Tomorrow’s the day of the international porridge competition in Carrbridge, Scotland. The winner of the Golden Spurtle (that’s a porridge-stirrer) last year was Bob Moore, the founder of Bob’s Red Mill in Clackamas, Oregon. He’s there again, trying to keep the Golden Spurtle.
Big day for the Blazers’ superstar Damian Lillard: today his second rap album, “Confirmed,” is released…as well as his line of Adidas shoes.
Football! Cougars at Ducks…5 PM Saturday at Autzen on FOX. The Beavers take on the USC Trojans at 1 PM at LA Memorial Coliseum. And the Portland Thorns play the Orlando Pride in the NWSL semifinals at 12:30 PM at Providence Park. Of the people in my little group, the team that seems to draw the most interest and attendance…is the Thorns.
So we’ve been through another week together! The concept of this space is holding strong, a reality-based and friendly hangout for perhaps somewhat shy people with a Portland interest or connection. I’m toying with adding an audio option, because the nice folks at iHeart have created a channel on the iHeartRadio app for me to use, creatively dubbed the John Erickson Channel. I think that’s what we called the annually flooded crawl space at the old house. Anyway, we might do something with that. Meantime let’s have no mean time, y’know?
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