Matt Laslo, WEKU

Kentucky native Wendell Barry delivered a prestigious lecture in the nation's capital last evening.  He used the address to rail against corporate greed and to call people back to the land.   The government says the Jefferson lecture is the nation's most prestigious honor it bestows on academics. Berry - a farmer, conservationist and writer - now joins the ranks of John Updike and Toni Morrison who have delivered the annual address in the past. In the hour long talk Berry exhorted the more than two thousand people in attendance to resist greed by connecting themselves to the earth as he's attempted to do on his Kentucky farm.

Organ and tissue donors and recipients gathered with doctors and nurses with UK Healthcare to recognize a special month on their calendars. A new flag flies below the stars and stripes in front of UK Chandler Hospital. It reads “Donate Life,” highlighting April status as Donate Life Month, an effort to bolster organ donor registries across the country. More than 800 Kentucky residents are on waiting lists for life-saving organs. Teresa Schladt was lucky enough to receive a liver five years ago.

The US Senate wraps up work this evening on a bill to fund the nation’s highways, but Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul says it’s a bad piece of legislation. The bi-partisan legislation reauthorizes the federal highway program for another two years and keeps funding at current levels. Democrats say it’s shortsighted. And Republican Senator Paul says Kentucky’s not getting nearly enough. Kentucky needs federal assistance so several ailing bridges can be repaired.

Joleen Frederick Phipps, the Morgan County attorney, stood on the sidewalk clutching one of her few possessions that wasn't smashed or blown away when the tornado ripped through her hometown. The figurine had been a gift from her late sister-in-law, and she had just found it unharmed in the rubble of her office, across Main Street from the shattered courthouse and not far from her demolished home. "We're all still in shock," Phipps said. "Our town was struggling before this. These little businesses along Main Street were barely making it. But this is a close county; everybody here cares. We will come back."

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul opposes a transportation bill that’s vital to Kentucky, but he’s introduced his own budget that funds those projects through elimination of government agencies.  The current highway authorization expires at month’s end – without an extension projects throughout the commonwealth will languish. Kentuckians have already felt the impact of the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges.