Okay, it's Sunday evening, December 28, 2008, 19:07, and this Web page is done. I've updated this Web page with more about Pickles' tree and our final tally. In Iraq they're throwing shoes and here we are pitching! We hope you'll pledge tonight. I'm hoping to get even more updates done for this Web page soon.

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.

Even though it lasted for almost five hours the last LSB meeting did not get around to setting a meeting date for the next LSB meeting. When we figure out when and where this next LSB meeting will be held, it'll be in January, I'll post the information here.

There were meetings of the WBAI Delegates' Assembly and LSB held on Wednesday, December 10, 2008, at the Judson Memorial Church Assembly Room, 239 Thompson Street in Manhattan

So this Delegates' Assembly was a continuation of the one that didn't get a quorum right before the last radio program on December 1^st. This one was still short of a quorum and the time was approaching seven o'clock, when the LSB meeting was supposed to start. Also, this meeting was no longer relevant. The bylaws amendments that it had been supposed to deal with had a deadline for voting on them and this meeting was held after that deadline. So I suggested we start the meeting and adjourn it, which we did. Well, we got that out of the way.

The LSB meeting started minutes after the Delegates' Assembly adjourned and it lasted for quite a while, over 5 hours, but we got some things done.

The so called Justice and Unity Campaign operatives, aka the FoBs, had put out a call for all of their crazies to show up because I'd rightly referred to one of their disrupters as an asshole during the November 3, meeting. As it turned out most of their regular crazies didn't even show up for this meeting.

We held elections for the four officers of the LSB, and the same four officers as were elected in April got reelected.

• Chair: Mitchel Cohen
• Vice Chair: Andrea Fishman
• Secretary: Gail Blasie
• Treasurer: R. Paul Martin

We also elected members of the new Programming Committee and actually got a few other things done. We passed motions about the loan that Pacifica is seeking to take out on the building that houses sister station KPFK in Los Angeles. Basically, we want to know that Pacifica will be able to repay this loan.

This LSB meeting didn't end until 12:19 AM Thursday morning!

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 9:40 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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We are pitching on this radio program! If you can please call 1-212-209-2950 during the radio program and pledge some amount of money to help keep Back of the Book on WBAI and help keep WBAI on the air.

Update: We pitched a lot on this program, and it was tough getting folks to pledge. In the end we got a tally of $820. We'd like to thank each and every person who pledged to this radio program, and we'd also like to thank the folks who answered the phones and took the pledges for us while we were pitching.

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Think 2008, has been a long year? Well, it's going to get longer! They'll be adding a leap second to this leap year on December 31^st.

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Scientists have used the best precision infra-red telescopes to look at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, where we all live, and after 16 years of this study they now know a lot more about it.

They have established that the Solar System is about 27,000 light years away from the center of our galaxy and that the black hole there weighs about as much as 4 million Suns.

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Pickles of the North read some excerpts from the Gospel of Mary Magdalen, the Secret Gospel of Mark and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Wow, is she getting all religious on us? Nah, she read us tales of a female Apostle and of a 4 year old Jesus H. Christ who killed his playmates when they pissed him off. It reminded me of an old Twilight Zone episode.

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The Winter Solstice will occur on Sunday, December 21^st, 2008, at 7:04 AM (ET). Pickles of the North and I will be celebrating it, how about you? For more about the seasons and sub-seasons look here.

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Pickles' Isaac Newton's Birthday Tree

On the last radio program we talked about Pickles of the North getting ripped off when she bought a tree. Call it a Christmas tree, a Chanukah bush, or an Isaac Newton's Birthday fir she got ripped off on it.

Well, Pickles had started to put decorations on the tree and after she'd had it for about a week she noticed that some of the branches were not looking at all well. She peered into the tree and discovered that even more branches than we'd know about had been tied onto the trunk of the tree with the same green string!

There were chunks out of the tree in various places and Pickles was not at all pleased.

Here are the gory details of the voids in that tree.

But she removed the decorations she'd put on those branches, untied the green string and removed the deceptively attached branches. She added some more decorations to fill in the voids and in the end produced a serviceable tree for the holidays.

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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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