by Suzette Smith If you appreciate the Mercury's interesting and useful news & culture reporting, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. Your donation is tax-deductible.  Good Morning, Portland! And thank you to t he people who took the time to send pHYsicAl MaiL to my boss about how much they like the Spring Arts Guide. He dropped it off on my desk like "this appears to be for you..." but he definitely saw it. You made my contributions approximately 5-10 percent harder to deny. IN LOCAL NEWS:• The Mercury's Spring Arts Guide featured a Q &A with local journalist Emma Pattee about her debut fiction novel Tilt, a slim but powerful volume that captures the awe, terror, and determination of a pregnant woman navigating her way home after our area's overdue Cascadia earthquake. There's a portion of it that describes the character helping a mother search for her child at a Portland elementary school where the unreinforced masonry brick walls have collapsed, crushing those inside and out. "Basically, any friend whose kid goes to Portland Public Schools, I’m like: 'Don’t read my book.' Or if you’re going to read it, don’t read these pages," Pattee told the Mercury. Tilt grew out of Pattee's anxiety over the earthquake. It's a fiction novel about nonfiction issues. This week Willamette Week published the excerpt that Pattee tells her friends not to read, and Pattee's reported-out story about why many Portland elementary schools still aren't seismically retrofitted—10 years after “The Really Big One” by New Yorker writer Kathryn Schultz, and honestly 13 years after the data became available, which led to Nathan Gilles' feature for the Mercury, “The First Four Minutes.” • Oregon Children’s Theatre announced this week that it will need to "pause programming" at summer's end, in order to rebuild its business strategy. What happened? The pandemic, loss of a major funder, last year's ice storm, the Oregonian reports. OCT is asking fans to fill out a survey and donate towards a $1 million funding goal. • At least someone is having a nice week. Drive-thru chain Dutch Bros says it opened its 1,000th shop last month. A spokesperson for the sweet drink spot told the Oregonian it hopes to open 7,000 eventually. • By April 7, all city managers and supervisors must return to working in their offices... how are people taking that news? Managers for the city of Portland are scheduled to return to office early next month, but there still doesn't seem to be much support for that from staff — or a lot of the city council.[image or embed] — Ryan Haas (@ryanjhaas.bsky.social) March 28, 2025 at 8:09 AM • Free stuff alert! We wrote about plans for the first-ever ManiFest in our Spring Arts Guide, and now we're giving out some passes for it. Enter the Mercury's Free Ticket Thursday for a chance to grip tickets to this and other shows! • In local orca news, whale watchers at the Oregon coast spotted a pod of around 10 whales this week. The sighting was a rare one as only approximately 74 Southern Resident Orcas still fuck with Oregon waters. A distinct type of whale found in the Pacific Northwest, Southern Resident Orca populations have dwindled due to our diminishing salmon and because we have been saying "hazelnut" instead of "filbert" more and more, and this disgusts them. JK, it's just the salmon and the climate crisis. • It is sprang, and we all want to park our luxury cars (or perfectly ordinary sedans) beneath the cherry blossom trees downtown. But where did those blossoming beauties come from? Pop Quiz PDX demands your answer! IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:• This week, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared military operation plans for bombing raids on Houthi-rebels in Yemen via a Signal group chat that included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA director John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a national security adviser Mike Waltz, AAAAAAND the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. The Atlantic published a story by Goldberg about the bizarre exchange of seemingly classified information on Monday. Trump's administration denied everything and then said the information wasn't classified, so on Wednesday The Atlantic published even more of the conversation. The situation gives new meaning to "we’ll see what my group chat of mean-spirited dumb alcoholics has to say about that." And if you feel like: "They're saying Tim Walz told Jeff Goldblum about bombing the Who T"[image or embed] — Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) March 24, 2025 at 5:00 PM That's fine. It's confusing. Is it this a "politicians, they're just like us" moment? Or was this a blatant mishandling of classified information and an egregious leak of unprofessional / insulting behavior that will further mar the country's downward-trending reputation Yesterday, President Trump insisted that investigating the Signal chat leak / existence was "not really an FBI thing,” Which it definitely is. New York Times published an op-ed by Hillary Clinton that opens with: "It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity." It turns out she's talking as much about the collective expression of shock at this situation as she is the situation itself.  • LA Times reports that the Los Angeles Fire Department "has denied dozens of public records requests... related to its handling of the fire" in Pacific Palisades two months ago. Reporters have asked why then fire chief Kristin Crowley didn't order 1,000 firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift, and why as many as 40 engines were out of service, among other queries. • Oh, but US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced that he will allow states to bar families from using SNAP benefits to buy soda.  • Another great one from Don Moynihan: [image or embed] — Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) March 25, 2025 at 6:33 PM • Also, Trump signed an executive order to try to force the Smithsonian Institution to cut programs with “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology," so basically just anything he doesn't like. • Encouraging you to bring GISMONDO IL CUSTODE DELLE CHIAVI MAGICHE DELL'UNIVERSO E DELL'APOCALISSE energy to this Friday. FYI this translates to Gismondo the keeper of the magic keys of the universe and the apocalypse.           View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Giovanni Brugnoli (@giovannibrugnoli) ...read more read less