Web links related to the Back of the Book program of September 15, 2003
It's the wee hours of Sunday morning 9/28/2003 02:00:40 and this page is done. I'm glad to announce that the Pacifica bylaws were passed at long last! So this was the program's 17th anniversary! We talked about that a bit, and maybe we had some fun into the bargain. I've got the E-mail we read on the program below plus some more updates. As always, the tense of the below changes according to whether it was written before or after the program. Shouldn't be that upsetting.
Here is the latest on the saga of Pacifica. The big meeting of the interim Pacifica National Board (iPNB) took place in New York City, September 19-21, 2003, at The Synod House of The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue (at 110th Street), New York, NY 10025, moved from its previous location of a hotel in midtown.
Mr. Roger Manning from the listener group Coalition for a democratic Pacifica New York (CdPNY) attended and has posted his notes from the meetings, along with other documents on the group's Web site.
As of September 15, 2003, the Pacifica Foundation has new bylaws! More about that here.
WBAI now 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's a schedule made by a listener who has Web links for various programs and producers.
Our colleagues from Off the Hook now have both a RealAudio streaming web cast operating, and a new MP3 stream both of which were working at about 9:28 PM last night. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed.
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The Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, has revamped its Web site and now has something called the Pacifica Lounge where you can post messages about Pacifica, WBAI and other Pacifica radio stations. This may be a good thing, and of course there are other, long term fora in which to participate.
WBAI also has a forum on its Web site now. You have to register to post messages, but anyone may read the messages.
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This program marks the 17th anniversary of Back of the Book! We'll be reminiscing a little bit as well as doing the usual ritual of reading Franz Kafka's “Before the Law.” You can read the story here.•
I'm glad to report that the Fox News Channel's lawsuit against Al Franken has been bounced out of court, and Franken's book started out on the New York Times Best Seller list. Ah, the wages of attempted media suppression.
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Pickles of the North will tell about her journey to the North Pole to fight the oppressor Santa Claus.
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The Middle Third is over and the Autumnal Equinox will arrive on Tuesday September 23, 2003, at 6:47 AM (EDT). Here are some more dates.•
So I told about my date with an endoscope. Yes, they took a scope and they stuck it up my endo!
What I had was something called a Flexible Sigmoidoscopy, which was no fun at all, and which was pretty dreary preparing for. It was done because I'm at an age when this procedure is a good idea.
The worst problem I had with this procedure was that they fill your gut up with air in order to get a better look at the lining of the colon. That was painful! I felt like I was going to have to show up at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! And afterwards it got worse. Of course the air they pumped in was expanding because my innards are a lot warmer and more humid than the room temperature air was.
The bottom line is that the doctors and nurses had such a good time doing this that they want me to show up again in October so they can perform a full fledged colonoscopy on me. If I survive that procedure I'll certainly tell all about it on the second program in October.
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Of course we got to some of the mail on this program. Besides some birthday cards, we also had some E-mail, which I'll post here.
We start with a little computer joke from a listener.
Next we have a listener who E-mails us via his cell phone commenting about the murdered New York City Councilman Davis.
Next we have a compliment from a listener who also has a link to a photograph of this planet from our Earth Invasion Fleet which is heading for Mars.
Regular listener, contributor and correspondent Zigman sent us something from the ACLU site about the USA Patriot Act. For reasons of copyright I'm just providing the link to the article here. Oh, and the operative phrase is “Bite my shiny metal ass.”
Egad, another complimentary one!
Actually, Micky Rooney is a trifle taller than I am!
Next we have an E-mail from an Internet listener.
Jeez, Susan I'm sorry to hear that you've been going through an ordeal here. I'm glad that the program has given you some laughs though. Ethel's candy store was a 175 7th Avenue. The building is still there, although the entire half block of buildings which were across the street from us in my youth are gone. In about 1960 or 61 a guy bought the building and kicked Ethel out, consolidating her candy store with the junk store, formerly a beauty parlor, at street level in order to make a larger space for his dry cleaning business. I never found out what happened to Ethel. There was no warning, she was just gone one day.
Yeah, Saint Pickles. She's one of the six women on the planet who can stand me (one in a billion).
You take care of yourself too, Susan. We need all the listeners we can get!
OEM? Original Equipment Manufacturer? WBAI, of course, doesn't have a backup generator or anything. I've been told that during the 1977, blackout the Chief Engineer rigged some power up at our transmitter room in the Empire State Building and put some coils of wire on a broomstick handle which he stuck out the window. This allowed WBAI to have a limited broadcast range during that blackout. Gone are the days.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI. But there is an Internet list called “Free Pacifica!” which you can subscribe to, and these issues are discussed there. If you subscribe to it you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.
If you want to subscribe to the “Free Pacifica!” list just click on this link and follow the instructions, and you'll be subscribed. Could open your eyes a little bit.
The above list has occasionally produced a high volume of E-mail because of the attention that these issues have drawn. If you would prefer to subscribe to a low volume list that only provides announcements of events related to these issues then subscribe to the FreePac mailing list.
Another 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. With that warning in mind, you can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too, although you'll have to deal with Yahoo! to do so.
There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. This one has a great many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary board that's just totally out of hand.
The “Goodlight” Web based message board has expanded to cover all Pacifica stations.
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