It's Saturday morning, December 27, 2014, 02:42, and I've updated this Web page with a photograph and a little bit about Pickles of the North's annual Winter Solstice party, previously I'd updated it with the link that will take you right to this program's official WBAI archive. I have also updated the LSB meeting information below. Unfortunately we did not get to the mail on this program. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Well, I have lost my notebook, that's going to affect this program, and maybe more. 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, January 14, 2014, at 7:00 PM at a location to be announced.
The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, December 10, 2014, at 7:00 PM at The Theater for the New City, at 155 1st Ave. between East 9th and East 10th Sts. in “the CINO Theater,” on the lower east side of Manhattan.
The LSB held elections. This year's officers are the same as last year's officers. I was elected Treasurer again.
There was no Treasurer's Report at this meeting. As usual I put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.
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.
Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. The stream does appear to be working at this time.
WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to a new archive Web page. I appear to have succeeded in getting an archive blurb posted to that official archive page.
There are two ways to get to the archive, you can try this page and see if you can find the archive of this radio program. Or, if you don't want to root about through a great many listings on a rather unorganized Web page, try clicking on this link to get to the place in the archives where this program is listed, and which includes a description of this program and the link to the audio archive itself.. Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI there's no telling what's on in the alternate week's time slot anymore.
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.
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 and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?
There's a posting here about it. More to come.
We plan to talk about the above ship, and its companions and what happened to them and how we all have to think that we can be mistaken at times.
Pickles of the North threw her annual Winter Solstice party on December 13. Various people from our lives were there, some were WBAI producers and some were WBAI listeners, all were friends.
In the photograph you can see, left to right, Maxwell J. Schmid, R. Paul and Uncle Sidney. Max is still wearing his paper crown from the crackers that we'd popped earlier in the party. Pickles really feels that the crackers, paper tubes that make a popping sound like a small firework when you pull them apart, are a necessity for these Solstice and New Year's celebrations.
Yeah, a good time was had by all, and some of us ate some stuff that we're not supposed to eat, but it's a rare treat to do so.
The Saddle Pals used to see each other all the time at WBAI, and we even went on the air together a few times. That can't happen anymore with the station in two different places now, neither one very conducive to doing radio. We also can't get together at the station because General Manager Berthold Reimers has banned Uncle Sidney from WBAI for life, for some reason that Reimers is keeping secret from Sidney. Between abuse of Staff by Management, and the station's still declining finances, one wonders — will WBAI still be around for the next Winter Solstice?
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.
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.
