Web links related to the Back of the Book program of April 30, 2011


It's Wednesday, May 11, 2011, 09:09, and I've posted the location of the LSB meeting. Previously I'd updated the information on our archive situation. This was the first Back of the Book program where the Sun rose while the program was still on the air. That was bizarre. And the Sun will be up on this program until early August! We did read through a little bit of the mail on this program, More updates to come. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Well, here we are again. This may be the first program we've done where the Sun will actually rise before we're off the air! Oh, that is an odd prospect. We plan to talk about various things on this program, and we may even get through some more of the mail. I do plan to update this Web page, although it may take a while.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of many of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday, May 11, 2011, at Brooklyn Commons, 388 Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn.

The April 13, 2011, LSB meeting was held at Alwan for the Arts at 16 Beaver St., in Manhattan. We heard from the General Manager about things, I gave a Treasurer's Report and we had a bizarre departure from agreed upon past practice with LSB members being allowed to talk during the Public Comment segment of the meeting. Pacifica Executive Director Arlene Engleheart was at the meeting too, and she spoke about Pacifica's struggle to survive financially. Not a rosy picture, that. Faction operatives asked her to un-ban various of the faction operatives who are banned from entering the premises of WBAI, mostly for violence. I certainly hope that she does not un-ban them. Those creeps need to stay away from the radio station.

Also on the agenda was a report from WBAI General Manager Berthold Reimers. He reported on the off-air fund raising efforts and noted that the Spring 'thon will start on May 2, and will run till June 3 (ouch!). And the General Manager answered questions from LSB members.

After public comment we went to an executive session. And while I can't talk about what went on at this executive session I can say that it was mostly a waste of an hour.

At a previous meeting the WBAI LSB voted to hold its meetings on the second Wednesday of every month and/or the last Thursday of that month, subject to change by the LSB, which gives us the following schedule:

All of these meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.

WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.

WBAI has an official Web stream of what's on the air at any time! You can go here and pick which type of stream you want! If this stream isn't working let me know. And you can see the status of the streams at any time by clicking here. The stream was working at 2:11 this morning. The station has a Flash stream here, make sure you enable Javascript so it can work for you.

WBAI is archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to this program any time for the next couple of months. You may need to scroll up one line to see the audio archive. Let me know if you find this feature useful.

If you want to listen to any part of the WBAI archive click here to go right to the archives. When you first go to the Web page you'll only see the WBAI programs for the past 7 days. If you want to see older programs you can click on one of the “See ALL Shows” buttons. Or to see only the two shows in this time slot click here.

UPDATE: We are suddenly, and without notice, being cut back to being on the archives for only 14 days. And you can only play the archive during that time, you can't conveniently download it, although the file is still up there. We are attempting to find out what's going on here.

Back of the Book is no longer one of the programs that you can download, as well as listen to on line.

In the table on the archive Web page Back of the Book and Saturday Morning With the Radio On are both in the “Show” column. The “Date and Category” column shows the date of the program. After the program I go in and write the details of the program and say which program it is. Of course I'd recommend that you just listen to both programs in this time slot!

In the Summer of 2009, there was a Pacifica National Board meeting held in New York. Here's the Web page I did about this PNB meeting and the amazing things that went on at it.

And the PNB has also met in Houston from Friday October 9th, through Sunday October 11th, 2009. The official audio archive of that meeting is here. It was not disrupted as the New York meeting was, although some of the same miscreants got out there to say stupid things.

The Pacifica National Board (PNB) met in Manhattan the weekend of October 1-3, 2010. The audio has been posted for the first day of the meeting, the second day of the meeting and the third day of the meeting.

Subject: [WBAI-LSB-PUBLIC] Announcement: Berthold Reimers appointed GM of WBAI

Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:43:09 -0500

From: Mitchel Cohen

To: wbai-lsb-public@yahoogroups.com


I've just received word from Arlene Engleheart, Executive Director of Pacifica, that she's appointed Berthold Reimers as the General Manager of WBAI.

Mitchel Cohen
Chair, WBAI Local Station Board

On our next program, May 14th, we'll be pitching. The schedule has us starting to pitch at 4:00 AM! We don't know how that's going to work out. But we'll do a radio program. So tune in one hour earlier to see if we raise any money.

If you would like to contribute but you figure you may not be able to catch the program when it airs you can always send your donation in ahead of time. A regular one year membership is $25. If you want to send more than $25 that would be great. So, if you can, please send a check made payable to “Pacifica/WBAI” and send it to:

R. Paul Martin
% WBAI
120 Wall St. 10th floor
New York, NY 10005

And we hope that everyone who listens pledges or sends in a check.

R. Paul with V.A. issued sunglasses
R. Paul Shows Off His Fashionable Eyewear

So I had to go get my eyes examined again. Turns out that my eyes have gotten even worse since the last eye exam. I'm to get a new, stronger, prescription for my reading glasses. I'll have some real Coke bottle bottoms. I know that for some young folks that phrase doesn't make much sense. Here's a fast definition.

Meanwhile they dilated my eyes to they could look to see if I had any of those dreaded internal eye cooties. And they gave me these fashionable “sunglasses” so that my saucer eyes wouldn't get burned out of my head. Luckily it was a cloudy day. And I really wore my regular sunglasses. But I modeled these V.A. issued cardboard and film sunglasses for Pickles of the North as we ate at a diner after the exam.

The first time I got an eye exam where my eyes were dilated, in 1989, I hadn't known that the dilation would last for hours. So I had nothing at all on my eyes as I left the softly lit office of the eye doctor's. I realized something was wrong when I got out on the sidewalk. It was a very sunny day in June and I could hardly move at all. I'd taken the day off from work to go to the eye doctor and had planned for some fun wanderings in Manhattan after the visit to the doctor's. Well, those plans got scrapped fast as I headed for the subway and went home to escape the intolerable, strong sunlight. I have always had sunglasses with me for every eye exam after that.

It sort of starred in a movie 32 years ago, but right now the Voyager spacecraft is set to become the first human made solid object to enter interstellar space.

We plan to talk about the prospect that a same gender marriage bill will pass in New York state some time this year.

There is the possibility that this may be the first Back of the Book program where the sun will rise while we're on the air. The Sun will rise at 5:57 AM (EDT) on this date. We're technically supposed to be off the air and doing carts by 5:55 AM. But we could slip by a minute or two.

Our next program, on May 14, will definitely be on the air when the Sun rises then at 5:40 AM. This is a very odd experience for us. We're used to decades of radio in the deep night. We already have a morning twilight sky when we're on. We'll have to see how we adjust to this.

Pickles of the North and Uncle sidney chow down
Pickles and Sidney at Ikea

Pickles of the North and I accompanied our pal Uncle Sidney Smith to Ikea in Red Hook, Brooklyn to get him some stuff, mostly drapes and things. During the shopping spree we chowed down on some stuff that I don't usually eat.


Sidney and R. Paul in reclining easy chairs
Saddle Pals Hard at Work, Shopping

Uncle Sidney and R. Paul can be seen in this photograph exerting themselves mightily in an effort to find the best bargains. It turns out that a lot of the window stuff they sell at Ikea is really made for Scandinavian windows. Getting a proper fit to American apartment building windows requires a bit more effort.

We weren't shopping for chairs at all, but we felt an obligation to find out if the Ikea chairs would fit flabby, old American derrieres as well as those tight, fit Swedish ones. They do.

Spring flowers against a glass building
Spring Blossoms in Battery Park

After the last program we went to Battery Park. Spring was busting out all over. On the left is a photograph I took of a tree blossoming right on cue, with the semi-circular 17 State Street building right in back of it.

Going to Battery Park on a Saturday morning is quite different from going there on a Monday morning, which had been our custom before the program got moved to its current time slot. There are a hell of a lot more tourists around, and there are far fewer water taxis and private ferries. The Staten Island Ferry is still operating, of course.

So these days we see less harbor traffic and the entire demeanor of the park is different. We try to get away from it all before too many vendors and tourists show up and make the entire experience wearing.

It was a breezy day. The tide was pretty high when we got down there so we even had some Battery Park geysers to look at. I may be able to post some graphics about those at a later date.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even now that the gag rule has been lifted. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.

Probably the most popular list that's sprung up is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. This one is very lively and currently includes over 400 subscribers coast to coast.

Being lively, of course, it sometimes also gets a bit nasty. All sorts of things are happening on this list and official announcements are frequently posted there.

You can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too. If you subscribe to the “NewPacifica” mailing list you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list.

There is the option to receive a “digest” version of the list, which means that a bunch of messages are bundled into one E-mail and sent to you at regular intervals, this cuts down on the number of E-mails you get from the list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

This list also has a Web based interface where you can read messages and from which you can post your own messages.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. It is sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as “the bleepin' blue board,” owing to the blue background used on its Web pages. This one has many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary “WBAI people” board that's just totally out of hand. UPDATE: The bleepin' blue board has had to add a step for folks to get onto it because it's under attack by spambots. When you click on the above link you may be asked for a username and password. Type in Username: poster Password: enternow

When the computer in Master Control is working we sometimes have live interaction with people posting on the “Goodlight Board” during the program.

Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Carrier Wave alternates with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

My voice mail number at WBAI is 212-209-2996. Leave a message.

You can also send me E-mail.



WBAI related links

WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site


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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2011, R. Paul Martin.