Sad news for any radio fans with the passing of Alistair Cooke at 95 - just a month after announcing his retirement. Every week since 1946 he gave a 15 minutes essay on life and politics in the USA on BBC radio called Letter from America. He was also the host of PBS's Masterpiece Theatre for years. I heard my first of his essays in the late 70's when I got into shortwave radio listening and BBC World as a teen in an attempt to distance myself from cool as much as I could, giving me an inkling that there was something to the south more than crisis, news, Ronnie Ray Gun and cheap shopping in Maine. With the advent of cable TV in our house at much the same time, the folks turned on his show every Sunday night at 10 pm in the Maritimes. Dry and intelligent, he was a soft target for Saturday Night Live during its good years more than anything, I suppose, for being an example of what broadcast media could be.