As a lad growing up in Montana, I spent a few years attending Sacajawea Elementary School in Great Falls. (The school is still there, and it doesn’t look as though it’s changed its signage since I attended.) Now, of course, we spell the name of the Native woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition “Sacagawea” — and a growing body of evidence suggests that much of what we thought we knew about her is wrong. This week’s really long (but fascinating) read from The New York Times Magazine outlines the latest historical research.

It used to be, of course, that people sought relief from heat waves by heading outdoors. Nowadays, when summer days are getting really hot, many of us take refuge from the heat by heading inside into air-conditioned rooms. Some experts worry that makes us vulnerable to a seasonal variant of what sounds like seasonal affective disorder. Yasman Tayag writes about the issue for The Atlantic.

If you can stand the heat, though, there’s still something to be offered by the summertime pastime of finding a (relatively) cool spot and cracking open a book. (I know you thought the words that were going to follow “cracking open” were going to be “an ice-cold beer,” but the two phrases are not mutually exclusive.) The Atlantic offers summertime reading suggestions.

Here’s an interesting piece from The Oregonian/OregonLive that broke last weekend, too late for last week’s Reader: It’s the latest installment in its “Oregon Insights” series, a weekly look at numbers that shed light on the state’s economy. The most recent piece examined the ratio between births and deaths in each of Oregon’s 36 counties. This is a number of some concern in Oregon, because of the state’s relatively low birth rate — in fact, Oregon last year had 1.1 deaths for every birth. Benton County broke even. Linn County matched the state rate, with 1.1 deaths for every birth. Curry County, down in the state’s southwest corner, had three deaths for every birth, the highest mark in Oregon.

You might recall Alden Global Capital, the rapacious hedge fund that’s been buying newspapers and gutting their newsrooms, from its attempt a few years back to buy Lee Enterprises — owner of the Gazette-Times and the Democrat-Herald. Alden was back in the news this week, with an offer to buy The Dallas Morning News — which has been locally owned for 140 years. MediaNews Group, the Alden subsidiary that runs its newspapers, already is the nation’s second-largest newspaper publisher, according to this story from The New York Times.

In newspaper news closer to home, the Carpenter Media Group has pulled the plug on two more smaller papers: The Sandy Post and the Estacada News, two weeklies serving Clackamas County. The one reporter working for those two papers has been laid off. Subscribers to the papers will now receive the Outlook, a weekly newspaper out of Gresham — which has one reporter on staff, according to this story from The Oregonian. Carpenter, a privately owned company based in Mississippi, became one of the major players among Oregon newspaper companies with its recent acquisitions of the Pamplin and East Oregon media groups. One of Carpenter’s officials says the company is committed to saving local newspapers, even if that requires “tough decisions.” The Oregonian story reports that three-quarters of all Oregon newspaper jobs have vanished since 2001 — and, shocking as that sounds, it’s right in line with the U.S. numbers.

U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz is the only Republican member of Oregon’s congressional delegation, but he hasn’t been particularly visible lately in his mammoth (and deeply red) 2nd Congressional District. That’s why it was interesting to hear about Bentz’s Friday speech in Pendleton, his first public appearance since President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law. Bentz, who voted for the bill, said he doubted reports about the bill’s impact on Medicaid coverage, an important issue in his district, where more than 700,000 people rely to some extent on Medicaid. He did say that he thought those cuts could be challenging to rural hospitals — like, you know, almost every hospital in his district — but said he had been talking to Mehmet Oz, the former TV host who now heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, about the issue. I’m not sure that makes anyone feel better, Rep. Bentz. The Oregon Capital Chronicle’s Alex Baumhardt made the trip to Pendleton to cover Bentz’s remarks.

Speaking of Medicaid, Oregon may be unusually hard-hit by the federal cuts to the program, in part because the state has been aggressive about embracing opportunities to expand it. The Oregonian’s excellent Kristine de Leon explains why — and introduces you to some of the recipients who have every reason to worry — in another of this week’s long reads.

Gov. Tina Kotek this week signed a bill to create a new statewide homeless shelter system. As Lillian Mongeau Hughes explains in The Oregonian, the measure creates several regions to coordinate all local shelters that receive state funding — and lays out requirements for those shelters. As is the case with all these initiatives, much will depend on how state officials roll out the program — and whether the state has allocated enough money ($205 million) to meet the need statewide.

This is either a stroke of genius or the dumbest idea in crisis communications in marketing history: Astronomer, the company whose CEO resigned after being caught on a KissCam at a Coldplay rock concert embracing a woman who was not his wife, has hired Gwyneth Paltrow as a spokesperson. Paltrow, as you may remember, was married to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin for 13 years.

The New York Times has a story about Hunter Noack, the Portland-based classical pianist who specializes in performing outdoors in locales such as the Oregon coast or Yellowstone Park. Noack is in the midst of celebrating the 10th anniversary of his “In a Landscape” concerts. “I get excited at the idea of bringing a piano where no piano has gone before,” he says.

And that’s it for this week. Let’s meet up again next week at about this time — and, if you have a suggestion for an excellent summertime read, share it in the comments below.