In all my excitement last weekend about April (I still think spring is my favorite season, although I understand I’m in the minority), I forgot to mention one of the best things about the month: It’s National Poetry Month, the celebration now marking its 30th anniversary and which is held in April because, as you remember, it is “the cruellest month.”

As longtime readers of the Reader know, I am a fan of poetry, in part because its insistence on exactly the right word in exactly the right place has much to teach us ink-stained (pixel-stained nowadays?) wretches who practice journalism. (How wretched are we journalists? Consider: One of my own religious professionals this week urged her followers to “consider turning off the news” – I know what she meant, but still.) 

But, already, I digress. (Which could be the slogan for Your Weekend Reader!) 

A highlight of National Poetry Month is that it includes Poem in Your Pocket Day, which falls this year on Thursday, April 30. The day invites participants to share a favorite poem – and, if possible, to find ways to read it out loud. In previous years, I have left a poem on my voicemail on Poem in Your Pocket Day, and invited people to call me to read their selected poem (and, if I didn’t answer, to leave it with me as a message). This year, I might do that again, or I might invite readers to post a favorite poem on a future edition of the Reader. The Poem in Your Pocket website offers a number of other suggestions and poems for your consideration.

In nonpoetry news this week: 

Gov. Tina Kotek says she’s considering vetoing House Bill 4177, the measure that could make it easier for elected officials to engage in so-called “serial communications” outside of public view. These serial communications occur when elected officials use texts, phone calls or other chain conversations to deliberate and decide issues without the inconvenience of doing so in a public meeting. Admittedly, the law governing this issue is vague. The bill on Kotek’s desk seeks to clarify what sort of communications might be out of bounds, but journalists argued that the bill as written would ease the way for officials to conduct public business outside of the public spotlight. Kotek rarely uses what journalists love to call “the veto pen.” In fact, if she follows through with this veto, it would be her only one from the 2026 legislative session.

In a somewhat related item, did you celebrate the first Local News Day, which was Thursday? It’s meant to be a day to celebrate, well, the importance of local news. (Take that, religious professional!) This year’s debut effort could have been better marketed – I hadn’t even heard about the day until earlier this week, but I was pleased to notice that the effort was launched by journalists in my native Montana. I should have an easy time remembering the date next April 9 – it’s the birthday of my long-suffering spouse. Happy birthday, Diane! 

Despite Local News Day, this wasn’t a great week for journalism, as The Associated Press offered buyouts to more than 100 of its employees. AP officials said the buyouts are part of its plan to pivot toward visual journalism and to seek additional revenue sources. It’s not clear to outsiders what that actually means, but the backstory here actually has a local connection: The AP’s revenue from newspapers – its traditional customers – has declined by more than 25% over the last four years as big chains like Gannett and McClatchy have dropped the wire service. This week, news broke that another big newspaper company, Lee Enterprises (the publisher of the Gazette-Times and the Democrat-Herald), is seeking an early exit from its AP contract that was due to expire at the end of the year. It’s not clear yet what source Lee newspapers will tap for their national and world content; today’s e-edition of the G-T included 20 AP bylines, although I notice the paper is also using stories from sources such as Reuters and USA Today.

In an unsurprising bit of news from Corvallis, the effort to recall all five members of the Corvallis School Board appears to have fallen short. The deadline to turn in sufficient signatures to force an election was Tuesday, and the day passed without any word from the recall leaders, who were angered in part by the board’s decision to close two schools. In previous editions, I’ve expounded at length about Oregon’s recall law, and I won’t go over that again except to note that elections for the school board will be held in May next year, and it would be a good thing to see a full list of candidates on the ballot then.   

The two frontrunners for the Republican nomination for governor, Christine Drazan and Chris Dudley, both bowed out this week from a debate sponsored by The Oregonian/OregonLive and Portland TV station KGW. The two likely are betting that their robust campaign finances give them plenty of opportunities to reach out to GOP voters without the risks of a live debate. It raises a question: Are these big-time, high-stakes debates an endangered species? And if so, couldn’t we just replicate them through AI? 

Oregon is among the eight Western states that has just set a worrisome record: The amount of water contained in Oregon’s snowpack as of April 1 is the lowest on record. The upshot: Enjoy spring while you can; summer, which is expected to be warmer than usual, likely will be long and brutal. 

No wonder that you’re anxious these days. And it’s not at all unusual for anxiety to be affecting your sleep. So, here’s The New York Times with advice about how to sleep better, even in troubled times. Among the advice is, well, turn off the news – actually, turn off the news an hour or two before bedtime. So that means I shouldn’t be watching “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” just before bedtime? 

To mark the country’s 250th birthday, Coca-Cola has rolled out a series of 52 collectible Coke cans, each emblazoned with an image meant to symbolize a state or territory. Veronica Nocera of The Oregonian/OregonLive argues that Coke missed the mark when it picked its symbol for Oregon. (At least the can doesn’t feature Haystack Rock. Or empty podiums at a gubernatorial debate.)

Writing in The Atlantic, Rebecca Boyle ponders how new images of the moon have allowed her to see Earth’s faithful companion in a new light. I was struck in particular by these sentences: “This moon is three-dimensional. It is being walloped by space rocks right now, and seeing its scars, boy, am I happy we have our atmosphere.”

Now, those are words – “boy, am I happy we have our atmosphere” – that should ease your way into sleep tonight.

That’s all for this weekend. Hit those poetry books and let’s gather here next weekend.