Back of the Book — March 30, 2013


It's Wednesday, April 10, 2013, 05:07, and I've updated this Web page with the location of the next LSB meeting. More to come. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ We plan to get to the below stuff and more on this program. We'll hope that we can get to the temporary studios all right again. And if we're lucky we may even do a radio program that you can listen to. I'm glad to say that we have gotten to where WBAI will be broadcasting through April at least. We still have a lot of dough to raise though. I do plan on updating this Web page at some point, so check back in.

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.

I have also just posted a whole lot of the minutes of the Pacifica National Finance Committee. I'm a member of that committee because I'm the WBAI LSB Treasurer.

The next regular WBAI LSB meeting is scheduled to happen on Wednesday, April 10, 2013, at 7:00 PM at Alwan-for-the-arts, 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, in downtown Manhattan.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, at Alwan-for-the-arts, 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, in downtown Manhattan. Of course the current crisis was the main topic.

I got to give a Treasurer's Report for the first time in a long time. I think it was last Summer that I was last able to give a report. The LSB has had better things to do than find out more information about WBAI's finances. The General Manager's report was even pushed down the agenda the last time. Yeah, why let him report?

So I give a fast report and some idiots didn't like it. Now they want written reports before every LSB meeting. This pretty much insures that they won't get to Treasurer's Reports during the meeting and I doubt that most of them will read the reports I put out.

There were a lot of attacks on the General Manager both from faction operatives and from one Staff member who actually heckled and interrupted his report!

On the previous program I pitched for what is variously called “The Antenna” or “The Transmitter” which all comes down to the back rent we owe the Empire State Building.

I am glad to report that we have made it to the end of March and we're still here. The following is a report from the WBAI General Manager on the campaign to pay off the back rent at the Empire State building. Thanks to all of the listeners who have contributed to our emergency transmitter/antenna fund.

Subject: [Staffannounce] Update on the status of the antenna and of WBAI finances
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:21:45 -0400
From: Berthold Reimers
To: <staffannounce@wbai.org>, <wbailsb@yahoogroups.com>
CC: 'Summer Reese'....

Congratulations all,

We have done it for now. As of now, we have paid back rent for the antenna up to and including March 2013. We have also made a $10,000.00 payment towards the April rent. Our stipulation with The Empire State is about to be signed and will state the following: We will pay about $60,000.00 a month on a timely basis between now and August and thereafter we will begin with a clean slate. We therefore need to make timely payments on April 30, 2013; May 31, 2013, June 30, 2013 and July 31, 2013. That is a total of about $240,000.00.

Thank you all for your hard work. As you can see, we are out of the red danger zone but we need to continue to find creative ways to make money steadily to make sure we do not default on our agreement.

Berthold Reimers
General Manager
WBAI Radio 99.5 FM
120 Wall Street - 10th Floor
New York, NY 10005
(212) 209-2820

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.

closed circuit TV images at CCNY
Yeah, We've Got surveillance at CCNY, All Right

So the March 16, program was our second one at the temporary CCNY studios. Actually, it was my second one, Pickles of the North was away at the North Pole for that radio program.

The photograph I took before the program, as I neared the entrance to the building on the CCNY campus from which we do our radio programs, did not come out well. That's because it was too dark for the camera to catch much.

You can see that we're being looked after in the temporary studios. It had been rumored that the studio that we're now using for Master Control had cameras watching it, so that people could watch us doing live programs. It turns out that this is not the case.

You can see me in one of the frames from this mosaic of surveillance videos, I'm taking this photograph in that frame.

the hallway outside of the radio station at CCNY
It's a Long Walk From the Studios to the Men's Room at CCNY

Here's a view down the hall outside of the radio station at CCNY. The Men's room is way down at the far end of this hallway. That's also where the entrance to the hallway is. The women's Room is much farther away! A certain amount of bladder capacity is certainly a prerequisite for doing late night radio here.

That's my coat and stuff on one of the tables in the middle distance. There are all sorts of hallways branching off from this one that lead off to rooms of all sorts. It looks like we're in a basement, but in fact this is still the first floor of the building we're in. You could probably film a science fiction movie about people surviving a nuclear war in a fallout shelter here, and it'd look authentic.

Cramped quarters and long walks to the can are better than not having studios at all though.

Mayor Bloomberg is going on about how great it's going to be in about five years when you can't walk a foot in New York City without the police watching you. I think he means Manhattan and not Greater New York though. There's no way they'll be able to get every place wired like that by then. But the Mayor seems to think it's great. I disagree. We plan to talk about this tonight.

The new Luna Park with all of the rides going
New Luna Park in the Early, Early Spring of 2013

Pickles of the North and I went to Coney Island this past week to see how things had progressed since our last visit there.

The Coney Island amusements officially opened the 2013, season on Palm Sunday, March 24th. Here you can see the new Luna Park all abuzz with people bringing their kids, who are off for Spring Break this week, to the amusement park for some shaking, spinning, lifting, dropping, rattling and a general going around in circles that can be so much fun when your of an age when neither gravity nor arthritis places so much of a toll on the sudden movements of your joints.

We also saw the latest evidence of the severe damage done to the area by superstorm Sandy last October. It's going to take quite a while to clean all of that up.

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.