Back of the Book — February 2, 2013


It's Friday, February 15, 2013, 21:06, and I'm having to update this page yet again, second time today. I wanted to get out the news that we were informed at 8:30 tonight that this was not our last broadcast from 120 Wall St., due to technical difficulties at the CCNY broadcast facility. I have posted a couple of photographs on this page showing one store that was devastated by super storm Sandy but is back in operation, not a common outcome. I have also amended the notice of the next LSB meeting. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Mad Rush! This will most probably be our last program from 120 Wall St. I'll update this page later on. No, really, I will.

The 2012 Local Station Board Elections Are Over!
And the results are in!

Here is the list of those elected in order of their finish:

Listeners

RUNNERS UP in order

Staff *

* Staff aren't allowed anymore to run as a part of the same slate as listeners, but the designations above show the affinities of the elected Staff.

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

The regular WBAI LSB meeting scheduled to be held on Wednesday, February 13, 2013, has been cancelled. A meeting of the LSB may happen on February 28, 2013, if space can be found for it.

There were meetings of both WBAI LSB and the Delegates' Assembly on Wednesday, January 9, 2013, at Alwan-for-the-Arts, 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, in downtown Manhattan.

The LSB meeting met to mostly elect its officers for 2013. Here are the results of those elections:

Here are the Officers elected for 2013

The Delegates' Assembly met right after the LSB meeting in order to elect Directors from WBAI.

These are the WBAI Directors elected for 2013

At a previous meeting the WBAI 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:

All of these meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.

WBAI has a program schedule up on its newly revamped Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.

Because WBAI was forced out of its studios by the flood waters' destruction of the building's electrical system we still have this alternate, temporary stream for the radio station! I do not know how long this emergency stream will be up for. If this stream isn't working let me know.

New WBAI stream! WBAI has put up an experimental stream for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. This is a brand new, experimental stream. So if you have one of those devices you might try the link out. And let us know how it works for you one way or the other. That way the folks implementing it can iron out any kinks in the system.

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. There is also another version of the archive here.

If you want to listen to any part of the WBAI archive click here to go right to the archives. 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. Or to see only the two shows in this time slot click here.

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 Saturday Morning With the Radio On 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!

In the Summer of 2009, there was a Pacifica National Board meeting held in New York. Here's the Web page I did about this PNB meeting and the amazing things that went on at it.

And the PNB has also met in Houston from Friday October 9th, through Sunday October 11th, 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 Pacifica National Board (PNB) met in Manhattan the weekend of October 1-3, 2010. The audio has been posted for the first day of the meeting, the second day of the meeting and the third day of the meeting.

We will be pitching on our next program on February 16th. We'll be pitching as a part of the WBAI Winter 'Thon. We'll be hoping to raise enough money for the station to survive in our new split situation.

Usually we ask that people send us a check if they can't listen to the program live. However, WBAI is moving. We are not sure where the mail should be sent to in order that we might be able to get it on February 2. We will have a new address, and Management says that they haven't figured out how to handle the Staff mail with the new situation where the station is in two parts that are located miles apart. Where will our physical mail be sent? Well, as a result of that situation we figure that we should not ask anyone to send a check this time. But we will be pitching on the next program, maybe on the next two programs, and we hope that everyone who listens will pledge then.

Well, we're rushing. We'll be doing all sorts of things on this program, but I don't have the time to do this Web page right now.

The AT&T Store restored
The AT&T Store Restored After the Flood

Well, at least one place is back. The AT&T Store on the northwest corner of Wall and Water Streets is back in operation. This was a photograph we took as we hurried down to the station for our January 19th, program.

A lot of businesses have folded in lower Manhattan as a result of the flood. Quite a few street level and basement stores are simply gone because the space they'd occupied is still not inhabitable.

The AT&T cell phone store is somewhat below grade, as you can see from this shot of the steps leading down from the sidewalk level, and it got destroyed. But AT&T is a wealthy company and they could afford to totally replace everything. Of course we haven't been in that store so we're not sure if they have completely defeated the mold that is plaguing so many of the buildings down there.

AT&T store demolished
The AT&T Store in November 2012

We had taken photographs of the stripped down store after the Wall St. Flood that was the result of super storm Sandy. They stripped everything in there down to the bare concrete and steel of the building. I think that they had to replace 100% of the electrical setup of that space too. When the East River came down Wall St. that store was well under water, so it had been flooded to above the level of its ceiling.

I guess that shows that if you have lots of money you can really recover from something as devastating as that flood, and do it fairly quickly. Of course it took time to dry out that whole space and all. And WBAI should be leaving that area pretty soon.

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. 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.

One popular list the “NewPacifica” mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list is sometimes lively and as of mid-2011, has 687 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 Saturday Morning With the Radio On alternates with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

My voice mail number at WBAI is 212-209-2996. Leave a message.

You can also send me E-mail.



WBAI related links

WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site

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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2013, R. Paul Martin.