It’s April, the start of National Poetry Month — a reference to the famous “April is the cruellest month” opening line in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Eliot’s meaning is deeper and more nuanced than you might remember. Here’s the full poem, if you want to go back and spend some time in this challenging, infuriating masterpiece. And here’s an interesting new piece about the poem itself, and its numerous links to “Hamlet.”

I mention the start of National Poetry Month because I want to give you time to participate in one of the month’s trademark events, Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 27. This is the day when you’re invited to find a poem you like, print it out, put in your pocket (which explains why it’s called Poem in Your Pocket Day) and look for opportunities to read it aloud. This is one of the few days of the year in which you can pull something out of your pocket and read it aloud without drawing undue police attention.

The Poem in Your Pocket Day site contains additional instructions — and a link to poems you might want to consider for the day. The site also includes a way to sign up for a service that will email you a poem every day, which some days will be the best thing in your inbox. So start planning now for Poem in Your Pocket Day and let’s meet back here on the weekend of April 22-23 to compare notes.

On the other hand, maybe Eliot was just among those gardeners lamenting how a chilly spring thus far has pushed back outdoor planting season by at least a couple of weeks. Karen Richards at KLCC has the story, for OPB’s website.

Or maybe Eliot had an inkling about the weather forecast for the next week, which includes the possibility of rain, snow, hail and even thunderstorms in the mid-valley. And you might be well-advised to steer clear of the Cascades this weekend, unless you’re prepared to deal with yet another storm.

An Oregon woman is facing federal criminal charges that she helped to sell a drug smuggled from China and Hong Kong to treat a fatal cat coronavirus disease. But the story is more complicated than that, Maxine Bernstein of The Oregonian/OregonLive reports: Despite considerable evidence that the drug is effective at treating the cat ailment, it has yet to be approved by the FDA for use in animals or humans. That’s because the company that developed the drug has refused to license the drug for animals: The company, Gilead Sciences, is worried that because the drug is similar to its remdesivir, such an approval might interfere with the FDA-approval process for remdesivir to treat COVID-19.

Martin Baron, the former editor of The Washington Post, tossed fresh fuel recently into the debate over objectivity in journalism with an op-ed piece in the Post. Here’s a thoughtful response to Baron’s argument from New York writer Eric Levitz, who also helpfully traces some of the history of how “objectivity,” whatever that slippery word means, took root at newspapers.

Thomas Patterson, a professor of government and the press at Harvard University, argues in a new piece that public radio could have a role to play in solving the local-news crisis. Patterson identifies two big hurdles, though: First, and most importantly, most public radio stations are understaffed. Second — and this likely is connected with the first — most public-radio stations don’t offer that much local programming. Recent layoffs at NPR might not be helpful.

Speaking of layoffs puts me in mind of Gannett, the owners of two Oregon papers, the Eugene Register-Guard and the Salem Statesman Review. Gannett executives again are talking about selling off some of the company’s 217 properties. CEO Mike Reed told a symposium recently that he expected Gannett to increasingly focus on its top 100 markets, but added that some of its properties outside the top 100 still are profitable. Gannett, of course, also has at least one newspaper without any local reporters, which probably helps the bottom line. Alert readers of the Weekend Reader may remember that the University of Oregon Journalism School has asked Gannett to donate the paper to the school.

Would you guess that Oregon is a “tight” state or a “loose” state? Would it help if I gave you definitions? OK, here goes: A pair of academics say “tight” states exhibit a higher incidence of natural disasters, greater environmental vulnerability, fewer natural resources, greater incidence of disease and higher mortality rates, higher population density and greater degrees of external threat. Does that help? Would it help if I told you an academic study identifying the top “tight” states and top “loose” states also found that the top 10 tight states all voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020? Oregon, as you probably expected, is among the 10 loosest states. In a piece this past week for The New York Times, Thomas Edsell explains how this characterization helps explain the nation’s increasing polarization. Edsell can be a dry writer, but this piece is consistently interesting. (Like all pieces from the Times, this one is available to subscribers, but I can email a “gift” link to any Times story to an interested reader; just leave your email in the comments section below.)

Speaking of tightness and looseness: Times economics writer Peter Coy has penned a lament for his 252 neckties. I get the sense that he still enjoys wearing them — and so do I, but I haven’t had an opportunity to so yet this year, and I’m a little sad about that.

Finally this week: Former Oregon State University baseball standout Adley Rutschman had a really good Opening Day for the Baltimore Orioles: Rutschman, already considered one of the best catchers in all of Major League Baseball, homered Thursday during his first at-bat en route to a record-setting 5-for-5 game. As I write this on Saturday morning, his batting average is 1.000. I expect that to drop, but I’ll have to see if I can snag Rutschman for my fantasy baseball team, the Corvallis Virtue Signalers.

That’s all for this weekend. Stay dry out there and watch out for lightning. Reports that neckties are linked to lightning strikes are, as far as I can tell, unfounded. And cruel.