Letter from A. Broad

Is Back.

It was bound to happen, but I was never sure how or when. Now this blog section is birthed from letters produced biweekly for KWMR.

The Letter from A. Broad title came from a suggestion by Susan Stone when we were mulling over what would be fun and ‘different’ to air on KPFA radio. It was she who laughingly came up with A Letter from A. Broad as a catchy title.

“You should do it.” She said.

“Can’t.” I replied, “It would be too like Alastair Cook’s ‘Letters from America,’” (1946-2004) But the idea stayed. We continued to joke about it long after we had both left KPFA. In the spring of 2004 while in England something, probably political, got up my nose. I decided to write, record and produce a piece. It was no doubt too long but I did write and edit, record and edit, bounce and burn the CD. Then packaged it up and sent it off to KPFA and KWMR. But as I turned to leave our local post office, which is tucked in the back of the newsagents, I was stopped by the evening papers headline, “Alastair Cook has died.” It was stunning news in itself but the timing was shocking. I felt that permission had been granted, maybe even a blessing of sorts and so, for the next six and a half years, I produced a Letter from A. Broad for KWMR. Occasionally I managed to post them on PRX and other stations would pick them up. But I was never as together with marketing as I could have been. I was happy to be in the hands of Pete Horner at mixmonkey.com who composed and recorded the theme music and somehow slipped the programs into podcasts.

Eventually the letters became over-demanding, cutting into all other written or radio work I wanted to do. It was hard to let them go. But having done so, other work has been able to emerge, including this little website and its blogs. Though I wonder why is so much so often bundled in threes? Is it the strands of life folding over each other to make one big braid? So here again these blog posts fall in three strands. The Farm writing, the Nursing notes and now Letter from A. Broad.

It is fun to see and read the news from those of us lucky enough to travel in our lives, Janet Robins sends us fascination PostCards from Paris where she spends half the year with her husband. Beatrice writes and posts her photography from Buenos Aires while Amy Scott has a podcast of interviews with intrepid travelers like herself.
Maybe in the not too distant future I will get back to broadcasting. At the moment I’m thinking about bird song and memory. But for now this writing will hold.