It's Sunday night, November 16, 2008, 20:01 and this Web page is done. I've updated it a little bit. We did do a bunch of the mail. I've been a producer at WBAI for 27 years as of this month! We plan to get to a number of topics tonight and we also plan to get through a lot of the mail backlog.

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

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Monday, November 3, 2008, at 7:00 PM, at the Judson Memorial Church Assembly Room, 239 Thompson Street (just south of Washington Square Park, between W. 3^rd & W. 4^th St.), in Manhattan. The space is wheelchair accessible and the public is welcome to attend.

There was a meeting of the WBAI LSB held on Wednesday, October 15^th, 2008, at the Cathedral Parkway Towers Community Room, 125 W. 109^th Street in Manhattan.

We learned a bit about the layoffs and other Staff cuts that are being implemented at WBAI in order to keep to the FY09 budget. Some of it's pretty bad. I think that Management needs to share much more in these cuts, instead of almost everything landing on the Paid Staff.

I delivered a truthful report on the finances, as I know them. Let's just say that this was not the sort of Treasurer's Report that has been delivered in the past. It was not rosy.

We elected three members to the new Management Evaluation Committee.

The General Manager's Report was, um, interesting.

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.

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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. The stream was working at 10:22 PM last night.

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WBAI is archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to the program any time for the next couple of months. 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.

Back of the Book is now one of the programs that you can download, as well as listen to on line.

I'm glad to announce that with a new person doing the archives there have been some positive changes. In the table on that Web page Back of the Book and Carrier Wave 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!

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The Hubble Space Telescope is operating again!

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India has launched a Moon mission, and China has orbited astronauts. America continues to do its best to kill its space program. We'll be talking about this stuff tonight.

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The economy continues to be, er, interesting, so we'll talk a little bit about that tonight.

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My major letter for running cross country track in my senior year in high school.

And, gosh, I guess I missed running in the New York city Marathon, which was held some hours before our program aired. Yes, I'm sure that an overweight, out of shape ex-runner would do so well, in such a thing. I'd probably throw a heart attack!

I used to run on the track teams in high school and college. I didn't do a whole Life Day thing on this program, but I did talk about cross country track and this time of year a little bit.

One of my high school track coaches used to run in marathons. What he ran in was the Boston Marathon. I think that might have been the only one back in those ancient days.

Cross country track is not run on a track. It's run in other areas, areas that are not level. In the New York City area the big cross country track meets are held at Van Cortlandt Park in The Bronx.

Cross country was my first introduction to track competition. I really hadn't known that such a thing existed when I joined the St. Francis Prep Track Team. The idea that we were running up and down hills, and that the race went for 1¼ miles was what I should call a surprising revelation. When I was a high school freshman and had just joined the track team, without ever having participated in a track team before, I'd thought that track meant stuff like the 100 yard dash. One and a quarter miles was an impossible sounding distance.

As freshmen in high school we ran the freshman course, which was that 1¼ miles. For the next three years of high school we went to the full high school course which was 2½ miles. In college everybody ran a 5 mile course.

I really got to become familiar with Autumn weather through cross country track. I was out there running through the falling leaves and grass of Van Cortlandt Park and the rolling hills and paths among the trees of Prospect Park in Brooklyn among other places. I'm sure that as a very small child being wheeled through Prospect Park in the carriage and later the stroller I really learned the sights and smells of Autumn, but the cross country track experience is what's much more cognitively accessible when I experience Autumn now. I really remember being that young kid with a healthy body running through the grassy meadows, dusty plains and forested hills. I can smell cross country track season even now. And that's what I was talking about on the radio program.

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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.

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