Just a note below that Wendell Berry will be giving the Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities in DC on Monday. There are no tickets available (I checked a while back). If you do come across some of tickets, let me know. Berry is a writer that just knocks you over (like C.S. Lewis). Even when you think he is wrong, you find yourself agreeing with him and wondering what sort of wizardry is being practiced on you. If you are looking to start reading Berry, I think that the best intro is some of his short fiction in a book like That Distant Land. If you would like the black coffee way of starting, I think that his most powerful essay (one of the most powerful that I have ever read and one of the few that I have read or heard 50 times) is his essay "The Work of Local Culture." You can find it in his brilliant book What are People For? Anyway, hats off to Wendell:

Information on the Jefferson Lecture