Back of the Book — September 27, 2014


It's Friday night, October 10, 2014, 22:25, and I've updated this Web page with more from Pickles of the North on the climate change March. We should get more updates in here pretty soon. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Bring Back Uncle Sidney! That's what we say. And we'll talk about the below topics and try to get some mail in too. Cosmology and other stuff on this edition. Check back for updates.

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 WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 8, 2014, at 7:00 PM at The Theater for the New City, in the “Cino room,” at 155 1st Ave. between East 9th and East 10th Sts. i Manhattan.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, September 10, 2014, at 7:00 PM at The Theater for the New City, at 155 1st Ave. between East 9th and East 10th Sts. on the lower east side of Manhattan. Yes, we met in “the Community Space room.”

The meeting started a mere half hour late. We were supposed to pass a motion regarding a Management Evaluation Committee and then hold elections to populate it. Well, all sorts of stuff was going on at the meeting.

Once again the LSB did not get to a Treasurer's Report at this meeting; in fact there wasn't even a Treasurer's Report on the agenda. But I put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.

The faction had some members show up for this meeting who usually don't show up. And we all got into voting during the “excused absences” portion of the meeting, where the LSB routinely excuses the absence of everyone who hasn't attended. At the last meeting we voted and not all of the faction operatives got excused. This time the faction had the majority for this part of the meeting and they excused all of their members, but they didn't excuse one of the non-faction members who wasn't there. If you have three unexcused absences in a row you're off the LSB. Maybe this stuff about excused absences isn't just people venting. Maybe this will become a bone of contention now. What a way to spend time.

After the LSB meeting there was a Delegates Assembly to consider a proposed amendment to the Pacifica bylaws. The amendment wold have allowed the PNB to try to amend the bylaws twice a year rather than the current once per year. I got to chair this meeting. What fun. The meeting did not pass the bylaws amendment. The meeting lasted an entire five minutes. Well, that's good, I think.

At a previous meeting the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular 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 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.

WBAI has put up a stream for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. 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!

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.

The Pacifica National Board (PNB) met in Washington, D.C. February 7-10, 2014. The big news is that they have mandated that there be no negotiations with the four candidates for the PSOA for 60 days.

Given that the PNB has had a change in its membership that has affected the balance of power, this postponement of any negotiations may actually be a ploy by the people who want to sell WBAI to make that sale more likely. It is possible that a PSOA would allow WBAI to come back after a few years, but it would also not result in a big cash influx to the rest of Pacifica, and that is what some people at other Pacifica stations want. Well, things are pretty much up in the air with WBAI right now.

You can listen to the public parts of the quarterly PNB meeting by clicking on the below links:

The Friday session
The Saturday session
The Sunday session
The Monday session

Chaos and fighting continues on the PNB and at the Pacifica National Office a number of workers have quit their jobs in disgust. The people who want to sell off WBAI started on their destructive path with the firing of the Executive Director at a critical time. The Executive Director, Summer Reese, said she had a contract with Pacifica and that the PNB can't just violate that and fire her the way that they did. So the Executive Director barricaded herself and the National Office workers in the National Office along with some supporters. Yeah, Pacifica got some great publicity from all of this.

The disputed Executive Director issued a press release giving her side of this episode. Here is her press release. Luckily for the Pacifica stations Ms. Reese worked to get the CPB filings done by the March 14, deadline despite having been fired the day before. Had she not done this work Pacifica, and all of its radio stations, would have been ineligible for CPB funds, which have been a significant part of every station's budget.

UPDATE: There have been lawsuits filed, and judgments rendered in the cases brought by the minority PNB members against the actions of the majority PNB Directors. I'll keep this running battle updated on the appropriate Web page.

Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

There's a posting here about it. More to come.

We plan to talk about a variety of things tonight, one of them will be a controversy on a science topic we've covered before. Has cosmic inflation been proven or not? Or is that wheel still in spin?

Pickles of the North was at the Climate Change March. Here's what she had to say about it.

The Climate March on Central Park South
Climate Change Marchers and the French Barriers

My dear pal Lulu of the Far South and I decided to go see what the Peoples' Climate March was all about. We joined in along Sixth Avenue in the fifties — to our surprise there were no french barriers at all lining the sidewalks there, probably because there were way more people marching than viewing the march. We walked for a little bit, then went back just off Columbus Circle to cheer folks on as they went by us. Right off Columbus Circle there was a double row of french barriers, which are those interlocking metal barricades that are now ubiquitous at almost every NYC public event. Ugh. The double row was set up so that emergency vehicles and control vehicles could move around quickly. At different points motorcycle cops whizzed by, and then an ambulance made its way through with lights flashing.

We really enjoyed the jumbled feel of the event. People from all walks of life, from all over the place, some marching, some dancing, mostly just walking with signs, and so many homemade signs! One of our favorites was a banner that had a little planet earth with arms and legs saying “I'm with stupid” and an arrow pointing to a little balding round guy with a dopey placid expression. That and “Friends don't let friends live in denial” and “Old Lesbians for Change!” Also many handmade signs sayings “Believe the Science” and words to that effect. It wasn't the biggest march ever, but it was a pretty huge gathering of folks, many of whom ordinarily couldn't stand to be in a room with each other, but uniting to say that global warming is real and we need to pay way more attention to how we live on our planet both for ourselves and future generations. Phew!

R. Paul had quite the time trying to retrieve the photographs of the march. I used what I affectionately call the “soda cracker camera” because it's a tiny little thing the size of a soda cracker. We couldn't get the photos out of the camera and onto the computer until right before the program. It's a cute camera but if the triple A cell dies, the photos go poof! And I hadn't used it for years. Oh, well, back to the more reliable large camera!

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.

We like to stay interactive with our listeners. Here are the various options for you to get in touch with us.

You can also send me E-mail.

And now you can even reach me on Twitter Twitter logo


WBAI related links

WBAI Listeners' Web page

WBAI Management's official Web site

Back to the Back of the Book page

Back to my home page.

The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2014, R. Paul Martin.