I delighted in this New York Times article about bookstores in the Berkshires becoming cultural centers where townspeople go not only to buy books but rub shoulders, chat, meet for discussions, and hear authors read -- local authors especially. The reader-writer alliance that will govern the future is not just a pipe dream. If you need to see something in The Times before you believe it, here it is, just as if writers had conspired and planned it. Does it not seem like Paradise Found?

The future will look like this, except it won't be just white, urbane, and middle-class. Where such alliances don't exist, they'll be created.