Glad to hear some concurrence. I sort of did some of that sussing out in terms of 'who is available,' by talking to a relative who is a prof at U Colorado, where I nearly applied but decided not to on his advice. I learned from him that it just wasn't worth applying to his program, because all the people who work with anything even tangentially related to my topic of interest (I work with Appalachian industrial slavery) are/have retired. This was really useful knowledge, since I'm interested in going to school in the mountain west/northwest, and only a few schools in the area have strong faculties in terms of American slavery. I just didn't see the point of the letters as it seemed rather unctuous and forced from my point of view and less valuable than the time I spent reading the books and articles that profs I wanted to work with had written so that I could write a really dynamic statement of purpose that showed full comprehension of their work...