Back of the Book links for the December 22, 2003 program

Merry Solstice! It's Sunday evening 1/4/2004 17:37:36 and this page is done. As the official radio program of the 2003, Winter Solstice we did okay. We counted down to tjhe event and celebrated its arrival on the air. We also covered the below topics and got to some mail. The E-mail we read on the air is posted below.

This is the special Solstice episode of Back of the Book!

The Winter Solstice will occur at 2:04 AM (EST), which means it will happen during this program.

Yes, Back of the Book is the official radio program of the 2003, Winter Solstice!

We spoke on the air about the impending arrival of the Earth invasion fleet. More about this on the next program.

I was also talking about ancient pre-humans on the air. It turns out that some creatures which may have been Homo habilis or Homo erectus, or a missing link between the two species, was living in Eurasia as long as 1.75 million years ago. I was basing this part of the program on an article titled “Stranger in a New Land” in the November 2003, issue of Scientific American.

Our species, homo sapiens, didn't show up until about 160,000 years ago, and didn't do things differently from their predecessors until some time between 35,000 to 70,000 years ago. The above mentioned pre-human species were long gone by then.

We got through some mail on the air. Some were seasonal greetings, which we read out of order, and the E-mail we read on the program we present here.

Subject: Pickles could form a Canadian Club...
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 06:30:22 -0500
From: Len/ Black Lotus
To: rpm@glib.com

UNEQUAL EQUALITY: After joining the Gay Straight Alliance at her Oakley, Calif., school, high school freshman Lisa McClelland, 15, noted the school had a Black Student Union, a chapter of Latinos Unidos, and an ALOHA Club for Asian Americans. Why not a Caucasian Club, wondered the girl, who is of Scottish, German, American Indian, Latino and Irish descent, so she got more than 300 student signatures on a petition to start one. But “Some people would say words like 'racist' when they see me,” she said later, and the NAACP called the club's name “culturally insensitive.” She says the proposed club would be open to anyone who wanted to talk about race, or express pride in their European heritage.

But she says she was harassed so much for her idea that she transferred to another school. The school she left? Freedom High School. (San Francisco Chronicle) ...“We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back.” --Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968), American minister and civil rights leader.

Subject: Almad Chalabi
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 05:22:08 -0800
From: ______________
To: rpm@glib.com

I guess the brains at the American Enterprise Institute like tauting convicted Felons as ''George Washingtons of Iraq!

Subject: love love love
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 13:38:45 +0000
From: "mister charm"
To: rpm@glib.com

Dearest child of love:
Happy Thanksgiving to you and to all of your fans out in Radio Land.
Gobble gobble, as I advise all I know.
Love love love,
Mr. Charm

And here's an E-mail from a listener outside the official listening area. He offers a reason for why we didn't get really blasted by that big coronal mass ejection that happened a couple of months ago.

Subject: solar storm effects
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 20:33:50 -0500
From: eric
To: rpm@glib.com

The reason that the last solar eruption was less noticed on Earth is that its polarization matched our planets, whereas the storm back in the 80s was polarized oppositely.

Eric in Boston

Subject: car insurance
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 05:51:36 -0800
From: ______________

To: rpm@glib.com

Think the high cost of auto insurance in New York is related to the trucks crashing into bridges R.Moses designed?

Well, I think there's more to it than that. Robert Moses was a bad guy, but I don't think that the high car insurance rates can be attributed to him.

Subject: Hi! R. Paul
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 01:26:06 -0500
From: Barbie
To: rpm@glib.com

Do you remember the following:

1) Bosco
2) The Soupy Sales Show
3) The Show "Something Else (A pop music sydicated TV show)
4) Manfred Mann
5) Kinescope recoring
6) Swiss Cream Sanwich Cookies
7) John's Bargain Store
8) Two Guys from Harrison

Please respond if this is going on the air tonight. Huck H. (cartoon figure) wants me to listen to your show right now. More to come.

Happy Thanksgiving

Barbie form New Jersey
(The state of CoNfUsIoN)

I remember most of that stuff, although some of it I never really had much to do with. But I did get to meet Soupy Sales at the “Friends of Old Time Radio Convention” in New Jersey in October 2002. Unfortunately, I can really predict which piece of mail will get read on which program, so I guess I read this one without alerting you ahead of time. Sorry.

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.

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

And then there is the historic “Free Pacifica!” list, which has been used to help organize resistance to Pacifica Management hijackers since the mid-90s. It's become a low volume mailing list because it's been eclipsed by some of the newer, more technologically advanced, lists. Just click on this link and follow the instructions, and you'll be subscribed. This is a mailing list only, it doesn't have a digest option nor does it have a web interface.