It’s the weekend before Tuesday’s primary election and I suspect most Weekend Readers readers already have taken care of their ballots.

But maybe some of you have misplaced your ballot or are still pondering its choices: Benton County turnout in Tuesday’s primary election was just 21.3% as of Friday afternoon. By contrast, turnout in the 2022 primary election – the last primary election that included a gubernatorial election – was 45.15%. Looks like we have a lot of ground to make up to match that mark.

As longtime readers know, I’m still routinely flabbergasted that so many Oregon voters don’t bother to cast ballots in a state where it’s so easy to do so. And let’s be honest: You can’t be entirely sure you’ll even get the opportunity to vote the next time around.

To be fair, the Benton County turnout number is a little higher than statewide turnout as of Friday. Interestingly, a hotly contested Republican primary for governor appears to have pushed GOP turnout above Democratic levels, Jamie Goldberg reports for The Oregonian/OregonLive. 

If you have yet to drop off your ballot, don’t mail it: You just can’t tell what the U.S. Postal Service will do with so little time before Election Day. (Of course, the law says a ballot counts as long as it arrives in election offices within seven days after Election Day.) Still, the smart decision is to take an extra minute or two and leave it in one of the county’s ballot drop boxes. Here’s a list of where to find those.  

Or, you could drop your ballot off by hand at the county’s elections office. And, if you do so, take a minute to thank an elections worker or two – these people really are heroes for democracy. 

Meanwhile, we’re moving quickly into graduation season, which means somebody has to be lined up to speak at all those commencement ceremonies. Oregon State University didn’t have to look far to line up its speaker – in a fairly inspired choice, Jade Carey, the OSU gymnast and Olympic gold-medal winner (and one of OSU’s 2026 graduates), will give the speech. 

But what sort of speech should Carey prepare? Ian Bogost, writing in The Atlantic, has advice: The best commencement speeches, he argues, are the forgettable ones. 

Here’s your long read for the week: It’s an Atlantic cover story by Helen Lewis about what she calls “masculinism,” a movement to “fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men.” As you might have imagined, the movement is giving shape to very specific policy proposals. And perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that not all of the advocates of masculism are men. (Apparently, The Atlantic plans no more cover stories on topics like the best free restaurant bread in America.)

The Thursday edition of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is its last one; CBS canceled the show last year, for reasons that remain dubious. In this thoughtful piece, The Atlantic’s David Sims takes the measure of the show – how it found its voice, how Colbert leaned into the job by embracing his intellectual (if wonky) side and how it never challenged the traditional forms of late-night TV – and why that turned out to be a good thing.

To add insult to an already-injurious ski season, a spring snowstorm Saturday forced Timberline Lodge to shut down its ski area. Timberline officials said the heavy snowstorm created unsafe visibility conditions on the upper mountain, not to mention the fact that the snow made road conditions to the area treacherous – especially since we all had to remove our snow tires some six weeks ago. The only redeeming feature here is that forecasters said there was a possibility for “thundersnow,” which is exactly what you think it is. Jamie Hale, a workhorse at The Oregonian/OregonLive, has the details. 

Remember the summer band camp that you loved so much when you were a teenager? It’s probably inevitable, as The Associated Press reports, that band camps for adults are now a hot trend. Discuss among yourselves. 

Steven Soderbergh, a filmmaker whose work I admire, says he used AI to create some sections of his new documentary, “John Lennon: The Final Interview.” As you might “imagine” (I’m so sorry), Soderbergh’s announcement has generated considerable heat. He’s articulate on the issue, as you would expect, in this interview with the AP’s Jake Coyle. 

Meanwhile, pressure is building to expand the 12-team College Football Playoff to 24 teams. Does this mean more playoff slots for teams like Oregon State, which will be playing this next season in the revamped Pac-12 Conference? No, it does not. Is it a bad idea? Yes, and Stewart Mandel, writing in The Athletic, explains why.  

The Corvallis School District plans to close two schools, including Cheldelin Middle School, at the end of the academic year. Seventh- and eighth-graders will be funneled to what is now Linus Pauling Middle School, and the school itself will be simply renamed Corvallis Junior High. 

That’s bad news, of course, for admirers of Pauling, the two-time Nobel Prize winner and Oregon State University graduate, and Vernon H. Cheldelin, a longtime member of the Corvallis School Board. But there is an upside: The combined school will need a new mascot. Writing in the Gazette-Times, Hans Boyle reports that the finalists include the Panthers, the Cobras, the Crows, the Banana Slugs, the Sasquatch and the Unicorns.

I don’t have a vote in this matter. But, nevertheless, I vote for the Sasquatch. No offense to the Panthers – I like felines – but plenty of other schools have that nickname. You want something memorable for your school mascot. I cannot remember today what the mascot was at North Middle School in Great Falls, Montana. But I would remember if the mascot had been the Sasquatch.

That’s it for this edition – and my apologies for posting later than usual. I should be able to get back to my normal schedule next weekend. In the meantime, vote.