Back of the Book — August 15, 2015


It's Thursday night, September 10, 2015, 21:33, and I have updated this Web page with Pickles of the North's piece about her ancestors' arrival and adventures in New France in the 17th Century. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Oh, mid-August, a time when it can be so lovely, unless you don't like heat and humidity. I like it hot, although I could do without the humidity when it gets really high. We have a hot and humid week coming up though. We hope that this program helps you deal with it all. We plan to talk about the disgusting ISIS/ISIL creeps and why they are getting recruits. The Sun has been acquitted of global warming, and Pickles of the North will tell us about the first of her ancestors to set foot in North America. I hope I update this Web page at some point in time.

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, September 9, 2015, at 7:00 PM at a location to be announced.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, August 12, 2015, at 7:00 PM at the ARC Central Harlem Senior Center, 120 West 140th St., New York, NY 10030, between Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. in Manhattan.

This meeting started pretty late, as is usual these days.

There was no Treasurer's Report at this meeting. As usual I put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.

The meeting had all sorts of things going on in it. There were elections for the non-LSB members of the Program Director Search Committee, I think that all f the people who applied for the positions were FoBs. Well, that could be a problem. We'll see if WBAI can survive that.

At a previous meeting the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every 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 yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. We have to put archive blurb copy in before the program airs. The person in charge of the WBAI Web site says, “If you fail to create a playlist, your show may not show up in the archives at all.” So we made an archive blurb long before the program.

This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive To get to this program you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says “Display,” and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click “GO” and you'll see a list of programs, most of which are Back of the Book programs. I will see if this can be made easier to get to, but they've only recently implemented this new page and I haven't had time to see what I can do with it. Good luck.

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 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 and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

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

l-aigle_d-or_1665 (10K)
L'Aigle D'Or

Pickles of the North talked about her search of one branch of her ancestry on this program. This involved what she'd thought was probably the first of her ancestors to arrive in North America. He will have arrived 350 years ago this coming Tuesday! She has added an update to her research on this Web page.

Pickles of the North here.

My Eighth Great Grandpa Antoine Bazinet dit Tour Blanche was just a teenager when he joined the la Motte company of the Carignan-Salieres regiment in France. The regiment was under the aegis of King Louis XIV of France, who had them fighting the Turks in the 1660s. I don't know whether or not he took part in any of those battles, but I did find out that he sailed to New France in 1665 aboard one of the King's crappiest ships, named l'Aigle D'or, the Golden Eagle. He was about 16 years old, one of 1,200 soldiers voyaging on several ships.

The soldiers were all big, tall, strong youths. They set out across the Atlantic in May and landed in New France on August 18, 1665.

The Iroquois had been egged on by the English to mess with their rival colonists the French, and also the allies of the French, the Huron and Algonquin, and had been doing so for decades. So Louis XIV sent the regiment to stop the raids.

North American Colonies 1700.
New France and Other Colonies

Well, they had a terrible time - most of it spent trying to stay alive. The new governor general of New France, an incompetent aristocrat named Daniel de Remy de Corurcelle, sent the Carignan-Salieres regiment off on a military mission to attack the Iroquois in January 1666. The soldiers didn't have the right clothing or enough provisions. Many of them got sick, some died, but others survived the extreme cold of the bitter Winters. They were confused and lost in the Winter wilderness and ended up attacking a small, Dutch village on the outskirts of Schenectady in New Holland. The burgomaster of Schenectady allowed the regiment to buy provisions, and this probably saved their lives. Daniel de Remy de Corurcelle was afraid that the frozen lakes would thaw and strand him and his force in English territory and so he left New Holland and lost more men on the way back to New France. The raids stopped because so many Iroquois had gotten sick from smallpox and a peace accord was reached.

By 1668 Louis XIV decided that most of the soldiers should remain in New France to increase the colony's population. So Eighth Great Grandpa Antoine stayed. Became a coureur du bois, an unlicensed fur trapper - he got in trouble for that one - and then later on he became a voyaguer, a man employed by a fur company to transport furs and other goods to and from remote stations in big canoes. He even traveled west, up part of the Mississippi River. In Spring and Summer he farmed. He got married and had kids, which was supposed to be his main mission.

I had thought his bride, Eighth Great Grandma Francoise Janot, was a fille de roi, poor girls sponsored by the king to go to the colonies and marry the guys. I was wrong! She was born 1658, in Fort Ville-Marie (Montreal), and her dad, Marin Janot dit Lachapelle had sailed to New France in 1653, age 27, aboard the Saint Nicolas. There were 120 passengers on board, 108 of whom were soldiers sent to protect the colonies. There were a couple of bigwigs too - Paul de Chomedy Sieur de Maisonneuve, founder of what is now called Montreal (he was coming back with the soldiers he had requested), and Maguerite Bourgeoys, who founded a congregation of nuns that lived out with the people, unheard of at the time. These are both very big figures in Canadian history. Francoise' mom sailed to New France in 1654, on a ship called Fortune. Why would she do this? She was one of les filles a marier - healthy women who were marriageable, with not many prospects in their villages in France, so the king or the parish put them on a ship with a contractual obligation to get married at the other end! Which she and Marin did in 1655. They had three children, including Eighth Great Grandma Francoise.

The upshot of all of this is that if you are a francophone or part francophone in the province of Quebec, you are related to those early colonists. So pretty much everyone's your cousin!

People often incorporated the name of their village as their last name - using “dit” - loosely translated as “of” and the village, so dit Tour Blanche.

Scientists have cleared the Sun of accusations that its variability has caused the temperature and heating increases we've been seeing for so many years. Yes, this means that people are causing global warming, also now as anthropogenic Global Warming or AGW.

We were only able to briefly mention that on this program. We covered the topic more fully on the next program.

No ISIS/ISIL
Those Creeps Have to Go

We plan to talk a bit about the ISIS/ISIL group that's been terrorizing parts of the Middle East. They have been adding to their long list of atrocities, and they are still recruiting all over the world. They have officially instituted slavery in the territories they have temporarily conquered. They're even using mustard gas on the Kurds. Why are they getting recruits from all over? Maybe we have some answers to that question.

We're still in mid-Summer now, but we'll enter late Summer next Saturday night, August 22, 2015, at 11:06 PM (ET). So we should enjoy what's left of the Middle third and of the Summer season while we can. You can see more about the seasons and sub-seasons here.

Master Control at WBAI August 1, 2015
Master Control on August 1, 2015

We went on about the changes, mostly positive, in Master Control the last time we were on the air. The table is larger, and has been moved out from the wall. The mixing console has been moved to that table, so it's a little easier to see the controls on it.

One things that we noticed was that the the gray plastic blister which we've noticed in the corner of the room looked different. I took a photograph of it, and zoomed in on it. Yep, looks like a camera, all right.

Looks like a camera watching Master Control.
Is There Any Way This Couldn't be a Camera?

We've had General Managers who wanted to put cameras in Master Control before, one of them even did it all over the station. That particular person, Utrice Leid, even had the electronics for a camera set up in Master Control at 120 Wall St., but there was enough pressure that she stopped short of actually getting the camera itself installed.

I think that this is the first time that we've had surveillance of Master Control at WBAI. I am not sure that the camera is working or that it's hooked up to a monitor or a recording device, but it is a little bothersome that there's a camera in Master Control at all.

How are we to speak against what is being called “The Surveillance State” when we're being surveilled as we speak live on the air?

I plan to ask about this camera.

Pickles of the North at Coney Island
Pickles of the North Cooling Her Toes at Coney Island

We went to Coney Island again this past fortnight. Pickles of the North got to cool off her toes in the surf while we were there. It was one of those very hot days, and she was glad to be able to get some relief from the heat.

She has her parasol and she's wearing her Crocs knockoffs. Yeah, she was all dressed to contend with a hot, Summer day in Brooklyn by standing in what passes for the surf at Coney Island.

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 formerly popular list is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list has been moribund for a couple of years due to de facto censorship by the group owner. As of early 2015, it has 693 subscribers coast to coast, but postings on it are very infrequent now.

Back in the day it sometimes also got a bit nasty. All sorts of things used to happen on this list and official announcements were 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

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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2015, R. Paul Martin.