I’m late posting this weekend’s Reader, and I blame for this a number of excursions with family members in from California for a couple of days. I was going to apologize for that, but then I remembered that I compile the Reader mostly for fun. Still, I’ll try to return to the Weekend Reader’s regular schedule next week.

This is the weekend when everyone you know is asking you to pitch in five bucks for their NCAA basketball tournament pool — and who knows, maybe this is the year that St. Francis goes all the way. But before the dancing begins, let’s pause a moment to appreciate what a job Oregon State University’s Scott Rueck has done with this year’s women’s basketball team. You all remember the backstory: As the Pac-12 Conference disintegrated, eight of the team’s players from last year’s Elite Eight team entered the transfer portal (and you can’t really blame them). Rueck rebuilt his team — not quite from scratch, but pretty close — and the resulting season had its expected ups and downs. But with the season on the line in this year’s West Coast Conference tournament, the Beavers came up with three big wins, won the title and are returning to the NCAA tournament. It’s the ninth time Rueck has taken the Beavers to the NCAAs. Steve Gress at the Gazette-Times, who’s covered Rueck and the Beavers for years, has a nice column putting it all in perspective. He thinks this was Rueck’s best coaching job, and I can’t disagree. Considering the circumstances, this might be the best coaching job in OSU history.

If you’re interested in a deeper dive into one of the many ways in which the Trump administration’s cutbacks across the board might play out in Oregon, you’ll be interested in this story from The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Ted Sickinger about how the cuts could very well leave firefighting agencies woefully understaffed to deal with wildfire season. For those of you still trying to follow the bigger picture behind all these moves, pay attention to the comments in the story from Sen. Jeff Merkley, who argues that the endgame here comes straight from the Project 2025 playbook: The goal, he says, is to create enough chaos that the government can claim the agencies don’t work, paving the way for returning those lands to the states — which won’t have the resources to manage them. All of which will set the stage for privatization. (Looking for a useful overview to Project 2025 but don’t have time to plow through all 900 pages? This Guardian story from September, written by someone who has read all of it, appears to be right on the money thus far.)

Speaking of Merkley, the town halls he’s been holding throughout the state over the last couple of months have been packed. Hillary Borrud, at The Oregonian/OregonLive, asked this question: Will that make a difference?

Now, you might be asking yourself this question: How can this get worse? Well, here’s one way: Chances seem good that the Trump administration’s moves to dramatically cut back foreign aid could set the stage for yet another resurgence of what this Atlantic article calls “the world’s most dangerous infectious disease” — tuberculosis. (The administration says that the cutbacks have not disrupted the distribution of lifesaving medicine, but perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that this does not appear to be true.)

David Enrich, a New York Times reporter and editor, has a new book out, “Murder the Truth.” It’s about the effort to undermine the 1964 Supreme Court ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. In that ruling, the court found that in order to succeed in defamation cases, public figures must prove that a published statement is false and (this is a big “and”) that publishers acted with “actual malice’ — essentially, that the publisher knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Sarah Scire of the Nieman Lab interviewed Enrich, who said that the effort to junk Sullivan has only picked up momentum in recent months.

The United States has paused negotiations with Canada over updates to the 61-year-old Columbia River Treaty that covers cross-border water and hydropower management. Alex Baumhardt, the very good reporter who covers environmental issues for the Oregon Capital Chronicle, explains in this story how the United States almost certainly will be the loser if it chooses to completely walk away from the negotiations.

Do you think we need something here to lighten the mood? Here are some suggestions:

Speaking of Canada, here’s Eliot Cohen for The Atlantic with a very funny piece about why it might be a bad idea to invade that country. Let me just note that this story also includes an Oregon reference.

Even as the Pew Research Center has released findings suggesting that the long-term decline in Christianity in the United States has slowed — and might even be leveling off (at least in the short term) — one major U.S. city leads the nation in godlessness. You probably already have a hunch which city this might be, but here’s a clue: It is now home to an adorable baby elephant. (The very fine newspaper that serves this particular city apparently has devoted full-time coverage to this baby elephant, the way that Gannett recently hired a full-time reporter for the Taylor Swift beat, but I have to confess: I would have done the same thing. With the elephant, not with Taylor Swift. Nothing against Taylor.)

Did cloudy skies block you from seeing the lunar eclipse — the so-called blood moon — late Thursday night and into Friday morning? The skies were partly cloudy over Corvallis on Thursday around midnight, but they cleared up a bit in the early morning hours, around totality. If you’re curious about what you missed, The Oregonian/OregonLive has a nice wrap-up.

You probably think you’re pretty good at interpreting your dog’s sign language — and, truthfully, dogs can be expressive. But a new study from an Arizona State University doctoral student suggests you might not be as good as you think. The New York Times has a fascinating story on the study.

If you think the Weekend Reader needs to give equal time to cats, you have a point: Here’s a Times story about how we know relatively little about many medical aspects of cats — especially when compared with what we know about dogs. The good news is that there are signs the gap finally might be closing. (Because this story wasn’t available as one of those I can link to for free, this might be behind a paywall. It’s another example of the Times’ long-running prejudice against cats.)

And that’s it for this week. I need to make final arrangements for a trip up to a certain unnamed city to see if I can catch a glimpse of a certain baby elephant. Let’s gather back here next weekend to compare notes.