Back of the Book — October 3, 2020


Once again I'm ready to pass out here. We covered the below topics and more. This Web page will have to wait till later this weekend for me to update it.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings?

I have also posted a whole lot of the minutes of the Pacifica National Finance Committee on this Web site. I'm a member of that committee because I'm the WBAI LSB Treasurer.

The next WBAI LSB meeting is scheduled to be held on October 14, 2020, it will be held as a teleconference meeting, as the seven previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, September 9, 2020.

The LSB meeting started at 7:16 PM (ET). The LSB went into executive session at 8:19 PM (ET), and the entire meeting ended at 9:53 PM (ET). The Report Out from this LSB meeting is, The WBAI LSB met in executive session to discuss personnel issues of a confidential nature and to adopt the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Management Evaluation Committee. The committee has now been discharged.

The technical difficulties were not as bad this time on a certain service that has privacy and security problems. Before the meeting I had put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.

Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every 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.

Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.

WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. You can take a look at it and see if I've been able to post anything on it lately. There are still some limitations, but I am assured that I can plug in the archive blurbs that were lost in the latest upgrade.

This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display, and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.

For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display, and find Specify Date, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Yeah, it looks like they'll have some alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.

Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. There is another program in the alternate week's time slot.

Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

More to come.

sars_cov-2
1,025,567 Dead

Covid-19 cases in the whole world reached 34,460,100 on Friday, and deaths reached 1,025,567. In America the number of cases as of Friday was 7,325,715 and the death toll in America was 208,600, so more than 10,403 people have died of Covid-19 in America since our last program. By the time this program airs on Saturday morning all of those figures will be higher.

Part of why they'll be higher is because states and countries are re-opening all sorts of places that will spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And every place that gets a ways into re-opening starts seeing the number of cases rise, in some cases quite dramatically. Why do some people think that opening a bar is worth human lives?

Radio's Pickles of the North has devised a three week schedule for defrosting our formerly frost-free refrigerator. We're living with the fact that we just are not going to have a fully functional refrigerator until after this pandemic is over.

Pickles of the North also told about how her elderly parents are faring in Montreal, where there seems to be a resurgence of Covid-19. She noted that the disease has spread through old age homes in Quebec Province because the same personnel work at multiple old age homes. The workers pick up the disease at once home and bring it to others. And since they deal directly with the elderly people they infect many of them. She noted that the rules that were set up to fight the spread of the virus through the province were mostly just suggestions, with no enforcement. So the rules were widely ignored.

We mentioned that some idiot is smashing windows on subway trains wholesale, and the MTA has posted a photograph of the person whom they think is the main culprit. He has cost the MTA around $400,000 so far, and the MTA is running out of replacement windows. There's a reward out on this guy for $12,500. Other bad behavior we're seen during this pandemic include the motorcycle riders who start revving their engines at night, and who race through the less crowded than usual streets in the wee hours of the morning, making a great deal of noise. Motorcycle deaths are up so far for 2020. The general driving habits have deteriorated. People don't watch where they're driving and they seem to think that the traffic laws have been entirely repealed.

The influenza virus
Influenza Virus

While we're on the topic of diseases, flu season is right around the corner. It is being predicted that having influenza and Covid-19 simultaneously would be a real invitation to disaster, for an individual. For that reason I decided to brave the streets that I've been romping through for decades, running the gauntlet of people who are serving as carriers of SARS-CoV-2, in order to not automatically get killed by either disease.

A syringe, as used in vaccinations.

I had been sequestered for more than six months, since March 7, 2020, when Pickles of the North and I journeyed to the Brooklyn V.A. Medical Center to get me my flu shot. I had tried to get a free flu shot at a Target with a CVS pharmacy in it. The V.A. had put out literature saying that you could get a free flu shot there by showing your V.A. card. Well, when we tried that the people working there claimed to have no knowledge of this arrangement. So off we went to the V.A. Hospital. It was a bit strange to me, being out in the world for the first time in more than six months. Although we saw quite a number of people wearing masks we saw lots of people with not masks or with their masks under their chin, where they do not good. At the V.A. Hospital they had the spacing in the waiting rooms greatly increased over their usual cheek to jowl seating. The actual vaccination of the high potency vaccine, which is what old guys like me need, took very little time, less than a minute.

On our bus trips we encountered people not wearing masks, a dozen or so young girls from some religious school most of whom were wearing masks, but wearing they under their chins. We also spotted a guy walking along the street with his face mask strapped to his upper arm. We're hoping that we didn't catch anything from that outing.

Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg_2016_portrait (34K)
The Late Ruth Bader Ginsburg

As we had been in the final stage of production for our previous program we had heard of the passing of Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She did great things in her life, and she fought for what she believed in.

Amy Coney Barrett
Amy Coney Barrett

Unfortunately, her death gave President Trump the opportunity to really pack the Supreme Court by having gotten one third of it appointed.

Trump has nominated a crazy eyed fundamentalist Catholic to fill the Notorious RBG's seat on the Supreme Court. This Supreme Court looks like it will become so very right wing that it will reverse Roe v. Wade and a lot more. Many basic right looks like they could go out the window now. With a super majority they could reverse the Miranda Decision. They could even reverse Brown v. Board of Education, although I suspect that they'd try that one. Generations are going to suffer because of this.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. 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.

One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI specific Goodlight Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board, owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people board that was just totally out of hand.

In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.

Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board during the program.

Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

One formerly popular mailing list is the NewPacifica mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list has been moribund for a couple of years due to de facto censorship by the group owner. As of October 4, 2020, it had 678 subscribers coast to coast, but postings on it had become very infrequent. During the WBAI Coup of 2019, traffic picked up on that board again, for a while.

Back in the day it sometimes also got a bit nasty. All sorts of things used to happen on that list and official announcements were 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.

We like to stay interactive with our listeners. Here are the various options for you to get in touch with us.

You can also send me E-mail.

And now you can even reach me on Twitter Twitter logo


WBAI related links

A WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site

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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2020, R. Paul Martin.