Today is Oct. 5 — exactly one month before Election Day. I presume most of my Weekend Reader readers are registered, but if not, click here to start the process. If you’re looking for a link to allow you to “un-register,” I sympathize — but hang in there a little longer.

The Gazette-Times’ Ella Hutcherson reports that Christy Wood, the CEO of the Corvallis Chamber of Commerce, is resigning; Wood says the cost of living in Corvallis is too much for her and her partner to afford. I suspect Wood isn’t at all alone in feeling the financial pinch that Corvallis exacts. Hutcherson’s story quotes an interesting statistic from the Portland Business Journal, which says some 21,000 people commute to Corvallis for their jobs, presumably at least in part because they can’t afford to live here.

Indulge me here in a little math: The population of Corvallis was 61,087 in 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau says. If you subtract the roughly 25,000 Oregon State University students who attend the Corvallis campus, that leaves us with 36,000 or so people. About 30 percent of the people in Corvallis are either under 18 or over 65 but presumably some of those people still are in the workforce because they can’t afford yet to retire (like me). So for the sake of our argument, let’s knock that 36,000 number down by about 20 percent to get a rough guess about the number of Corvallis residents in the workforce. I end up with about 29,000 residents in the workforce.

You see where I’m going here: If my assumptions are right, about 40 percent of the city’s workforce comes from outside Corvallis. Corvallis prides itself on its sustainability, but this doesn’t seem sustainable.

I worked with Wood on this year’s Celebrate Corvallis event, and had a great time. Here’s hoping the best for her after she and her fiancé return to North Carolina.

In a related story, Oregon reported this week on its progress in putting a dent in homelessness. The results are mixed: According to the numbers from Oregon Housing and Community Services, 529 formerly unsheltered people are now living in permanent housing, a promising sign. (Most of those cases are in Lane County, which makes me wonder if something is going on there that might be of interest in Benton or Linn counties.) The bad news is that the state is lagging far behind its goal of preventing 11,856 Oregon households living on the brink from slipping into homelessness. Just 2,853 households thus far have been able to remain in their homes thanks to programs offering rent or utility assistance. 

In Benton, Linn and Lincoln counties, the area served by the area’s Community Services Consortium, the number of unsheltered people has more than doubled since 2023: At least 1,437 people were homeless in the tri-county region in January 2024.

Former Oregon State University football coach Jonathan Smith was back in Oregon on Friday night, leading his Michigan State University Spartans into Autzen Stadium for a game against No. 6 Oregon. Oregon swamped Michigan State, 31-10, a score remarkably similar to the 31-7 shellacking the Ducks handed the Beavers last season in what turned out to be Smith’s last game as OSU coach. (As a player, assistant coach and head coach, Smith is 1-10 in Autzen — which, to be fair, is a tough place for opposing teams.) Everyone knows that Smith inherited a program in disarray at Michigan State (just like he did at OSU), and no one expects a fast turnaround. But it’s possible — not likely, maybe, but possible — that the Spartans, now 3-3. could rack up the six wins this year necessary to go to a low-level bowl game, and that would be a remarkable achievement.

Perennial college basketball power Gonzaga University will join the Pac-12 Conference beginning with the 2026-27 school year, a nice win for the rebuilding conference. Gonzaga doesn’t play football, though, so it doesn’t count under NCAA rules as a full partner; the Pac-12 still needs to find at least one more football-playing school to get to the eight full members required to remain in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the highest level of U.S. college football. Nick Daschel of The Oregonian/OregonLive explains all in this story.

Big news this week from the Weekend Reader’s rodent desk: Nibi, the Massachusetts beaver that apparently doesn’t want to go back into the wild, won’t have to, thanks to decisive action from the state’s governor.

And forget about getting anybody at the Reader’s bear desk to focus on work this week, not with Alaska’s Fat Bear Week heading for its championship round this Tuesday.

Meanwhile, it has been, of course, another busy week for the Reader’s collapse of civilization desk, which calls to your attention this new story from The Atlantic about how college students — even high-performing students — don’t read books. But it’s not higher education’s fault necessarily; it turns out that many of these students never were required to read a full book in high school.

That’s it for this weekend. As for the remainder of your weekend reading, let me recommend a book. Any book will do.