Transmutation Can Be Tough!
It's Saturday afternoon, August 17, 2013, 12:07, and I've updated this Web page with a photograph and a short bit about how Pickles of the North spent her Friday night. More to come. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ We plan to get to the below topics and more on this radio program. The Pope appears to no longer be so worried about the Vatican's “gay lobby,” and the discovery of the origins of gold will probably not affect its current valuation. Speaking of gold, we'll be pitching on this program, so we hope that some of you will pledge. And another WBAI Staff person has passed away. I'll try to update this Web page at some point.
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 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, August 14, 2013, at 7:00 PM at Alwan-for-the-arts, 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, in downtown Manhattan.
The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, June 12, 2013, at Alwan-for-the-arts, 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, in downtown Manhattan.
We didn't get to a Treasurer's Report at this meeting but I had posted a written Treasurer's Report the night before.
The LSB rescinded a badly worded and ill considered motion to set up a Program Director Search Committee, which had been passed at a previous meeting. The station can't afford to hire a Program Director at this point anyway.
The LSB had a report from the General Manager on the state of some things, and then LSB went into executive session for a while. The official report out of that executive session is that, “The WBAI LSB met in executive session to discuss personnel, financial and operational issues in relation to the PNB mandate.”
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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Ritchie Arakelian
1934 — 2013
As we were preparing for this radio program we received word that Ritchie Arakelian, who worked as WBAI's mail clerk and more, has passed away from a sudden heart attack.
Ritchie was quite the character around WBAI. He will be missed.
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It's mid-Summer and that means it's time for the WBAI Summer 'thon! We are pitching on this radio program! If you can please call 1-516-620-3602 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.
If you want to pledge to the program via the Web it's best to do so while we're on the air, you need to go here and pick the amount you want to donate, then click on “Add to cart,” and then be sure to pick Back of the Book as the favorite show from the drop down menu. Otherwise your pledge won't be counted towards the program.
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So Pope Francis has seemed to soften the Vatican's stance on gay priests. While speaking to reporters on the plan ride back from his trip to Brazil this past week he said, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” And while he didn't break with previously announced Roman Catholic Church anti-gay doctrine he at least didn't condemn gay people as, “An intrinsic moral evil,” which is what his predecessor did. He joked about the “gay lobby” which he'd reportedly been so concerned about a couple of weeks ago. He did, however, say that, “The problem is not having this orientation, the problem is having a lobby.” He also added, “Lobbies are not good.”
Maybe the Church will come out against allowing lobbyists to marry.
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Got any gold? If so, you may have the end result of two colliding neutron stars from long ago.
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The exact minute of mid-Summer this year will occur on Tuesday, August 6, 2013, at 8:54 PM (ET). For more on the dates of the seasons, and sub-seasons, look here.
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So this is a sign that Pickles of the North and I saw on our way between two subway stations on the upper east Side of Manhattan this past fortnight.
The dictionary defines a clairvoyant as, “A person claiming to have the power to foretell future events.” So why do people need to call for an appointment? Can't this clairvoyant tell when someone's going to show up for a reading or occult foot bath or whatever they're offering?
And whoever's doing this is making enough money to maintain themselves at an upper east side location! I suppose that this is just more proof that there are an awful lot of suckers in the world.
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Since Pickles of the North and I got married some years ago I actually have more relatives than I used to. Here we see a photograph of Jennifer, our niece, and her friend Steph, who were both in the Big Apple for a short vacation. They had a long weekend to spend here, thanks to something called only Civic Holiday that affects the province where they work.
So they got to discover that Greater New York is rather larger than Manhattan, and that the free car service their hotel provided wouldn't drive them into Brooklyn. They then got a bit familiarized with the F Train and eventually met Pickles of the North in Coney Island. A fun time was had by all.
In the photograph we see Jennifer and Steph in the area under the Wonderwheel wearing their Mini-Mouse light-up bows, only one of which is lighting up. Pickles came home with one of these things too.
This Civic Holiday long weekend coincided with our radio program, so I had to stay home preparing this program on Friday night while Pickles got to go to Coney Island and hang out. Damn! I wish I could have gotten a pair of those Mini Mouse light up bows. Maybe if I'm real nice Pickles will let me wear hers.
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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.
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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2013, R. Paul Martin.
