It's Sunday night, October 17, 2010, 21:24, and this Web page is finished. I've updated this page with a link to that F.C.C. map that a listener sent in with an E-mail we got to on this program, I've also updated the election information. Previously I'd added the address and information about the October 13^th, WBAI LSB meeting and the latest news about the WBAI elections. I've provided a link to the official announcement. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Well, we're going to talk about homophobia and death tonight. But we'll talk about other things as well. We plan to get through more of the mail backlog tonight.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 13, 2010, at 7:00 PM at 388 Atlantic Avenue, between Bond and Hoyt Streets in Brooklyn starting in EXECUTIVE SESSION (to review Management Search Committee recommendations), followed by a public meeting presumably at 9 PM to review and send recommendations on the budget.

There was a LSB meeting on Thursday, September 23, 2010. We got to talk about the FY11 budget a little bit. Faction operatives were disruptive during the meeting, as usual. one of them got up and started haranguing the interim General Manager about letting the faction operatives who've been banned from the station return. I got up and talked about how they shouldn't. And faction operatives Vajra Kilgour and Lisa V. Davis started disrupting over that. LSB members aren't supposed to try to shout down people during the public comment section of the meeting. But these two couldn't handle the fact that I brought up their hypocrisy in supporting that idiot Russell Dale in his in-her-face attacks on a former interim General Manager at the station during the September 9, 2009, LSB meeting. If any white guy who was not a part of their faction had behaved that way towards a black woman Manager they'd have been screaming that he was a racist and a sexist. As usual, the faction operatives couldn't handle the truth. There was an executive session after the public session.

Faction operatives once again made noises about the Management Search Committee. They just want to see if they can stop it from hiring a new General Manager and then they think they can plug their larcenous faction boss into a position at WBAI where he can reign over a kleptocracy and reward his cronies with the fruits of listener donations again.

At its January 21, 2009, meeting the LSB voted to hold its meetings on the second Wednesday of every month and/or the last Thursday of that month, subject to change by the LSB, which gives us the following schedule:

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.

WBAI is archiving the programs! Just go here and you'll be able to listen to this program any time for the next couple of months. You may need to scroll up one line to see the audio archive. Let me know if you find this feature useful.

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

In the table on the archive 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!

And the PNB has also met in Houston from Friday October 9^th, through Sunday October 11^th, 2009. The official audio archive of that meeting is here. It was not disrupted as the New York meeting was, although some of the same miscreants got out there to say stupid things.

The Executive Director of Pacifica, Arlene Engleheart, appointed another new interim General Manager of WBAI on June 24. So far there's been a Staff meeting to introduce Berthold Reimers as the new iGM, but Pacifica Management has not issued anything in writing yet. When they do I'll post a link to it.

The 2010 Local Station Board Elections Are in Progress!

The Local Station Board (LSB) is the primary governance body for WBAI. When meeting as delegates the LSB members elect the Directors of the Pacifica National Board, which is the governance body for the entire Pacifica Foundation. The Pacifica Foundation owns WBAI.

Here is the official time table for this crucial election.

June 1^st, to ~~midnight June 30^th~~ The nomination phase was extended to 6:00 PM on July 19^th. The official announcement is here.
July 19^th - All Nomination package materials should be complete and returned to the Local Election Supervisor by 6:00 PM (ET).
July 1^st - Campaign Phase begins. Candidates are given equal airtime with respect to candidate cart rotation and on-air forums. In person forums are also an integral piece of the campaign.
August 16^th - All ballots are mailed. If you do not receive a ballot, please contact Local Election Supervisor Nichole Justice Hylton.

Ballot Return Snafu - are you affected?

September 30^th - Ballots are due by midnight. WBAI Local election Supervisor Nichole Justice-Hylton will be at the station until midnight September 30^th, to receive last minute ballots.
October 1^st - The local election supervisors will make the final P.O. Box pick up.
Saturday, October 23, 2010, to Monday, October 25, 2010, ballots are counted* See October 4, 2010 update below. ~~The final ballot count will take place at WBAI 120 Wall Street, New York, NY.~~ The final ballot count location has been changed to “CCNY 135^th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY,” There is no more detail provided than that. The latest notice also says, “Contact Nichole Justice-Hylton to confirm details, les_wbai@pacifica.org”. † And here's the 10/13/2010 notice

This election is crucial for the survival of WBAI and Pacifica. The Sixth WBAI LSB, which will be created by this election, will last for two full years. WBAI and Pacifica are in a precarious position right now as current interim Management attempts to reverse the death spiral that the station and the network have been in for years. If some bunch of chuckleheads gets a majority on the WBAI LSB they'll be able to change the composition of the Pacifica National Board and revert to corrupt, incompetent and malfeasant Management, they might even sell WBAI.

We need decent people on the WBAI LSB who will be interested in preserving the station, not in selling it or running it into the ground. I hope that the listeners will educate themselves about the candidates and vote for good ones.

The official Web page where you can see updated information about the election is here.

UPDATE: Voting in the WBAI listener election is officially over. The WBAI Staff election failed to meet quorum. If this is true then one has to wonder if the screwup of sending many of the ballots to the wrong ZIP code has resulted in a lot of those ballots not getting to the proper P.O. Box. This is a problem.

The 2010, election campaign has officially started. I got my ballot already! Pickles has only gotten hers as of . The ballot arrived with no booklet about the elections. And the return envelope has no stamp on it. The lack of a stamp on the envelope will affect both the Staff and listener elections, but it will potentially really affect the listener election. This, I think, favors a certain faction on the listener side a lot.

The listeners may not even realize that they've gotten a ballot! And then they will not know who the candidates are at all, but there will be at least two names that they'd have heard on the air. And those are faction candidates.

The lack of a stamp on the envelope will get a lot of people to NOT bother voting at all.

On our next program, on October 17/18, Back of the Book will be participating in the WBAI 2010, Fall 'thon.

WBAI has to raise a decent amount of money at this 'thon if we're to get through the next six months or so. Yeah, it's always something, but that's because we're so hand to mouth at WBAI.

We hope that you'll pledge to WBAI while Back of the Book is on the air in the wee hours of October 18.

If you listen to the radio program on tape or via the archives you probably won't be able to pledge during the program, but you can send us a check ahead of time. A regular one year membership is $25. If you want to send more than $25 that would be great. So, if you can, please send a check made payable to “Pacifica/WBAI” and send it to:

I should also point out that we'll need help answering the phones. In order to answer the phones you'll have to get into the building. The building Management requires that you get your name added to a list so you can enter 120 Wall St. So if you want to volunteer to answer phones for this 'thon you should call the WBAI switchboard at 1-212-209-2800 during business hours and let the folks in charge know you want to volunteer so they can put your name on the list. We always need more folks to answer the phones so if you want to volunteer to answer the phones for another program during this 'thon the above procedure is the way to do it.

The Pacifica National Board (PNB) met in Manhattan this weekend. I guess those of us who didn't attend will hear about what happened at it some day.

We are of course going to talk about the harassment, invasion of privacy and suicide of Tyler Clementi on this program. There are so many tragedies like this.

There will be some experimenting on this radio program. I have been familiarizing myself with what are called Portable Apps and I'm going to see if using some of them on this program will make things go a little more smoothly.

During the mail segment of the program we read an E-mail from a listener who gave us a link to the official Federal communications Commission map of WBAI's signal area. In reality we cover a bunch more area than this, but this is our official broadcast area. The map and legend are here.

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.