I'm Having To Go To An Old Friend
It's Thursday afternoon, June 22, 2017, 16:06, and I've updated this Web page with information about the Summer Solstice, the visibility of the planets Venus and Saturn these days, and with a link to Uncle Sidney's currently active blog. More updates to come. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ How rusty will we be when we get into the studio after not having been in there for six full weeks? Well, at least we won't have to pitch this time. We plan to talk about Trump, his hijinks and the fact that this is Pride Month. Oh, there could be some old antics talked about on this program. I do hope that I update this Web page some day.
Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings?
The LSB met on Wednesday, June 14, 2017. I made a written Treasurer's Report for that meeting, and was able to actually give a verbal one as well. You can read the written Treasurer's Report for June 14, 2017, here.
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 is scheduled to be held on July 12, 2017, at a location to be announced. The meeting is supposed to start at 7:00 PM.
Some years ago 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.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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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.
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Things have improved this year on the PNB. I'll be trying to update my pages about all of this in the near future.
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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.
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We plan to talk about Trumpageddon on this program. Jeez, it really looks like we're just rerunning Watergate!
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And why would I be using such an old turnip instead of my really liked, fully digital wristwatch? I'll tell you about that, if we get to it on this program.
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The Summer Solstice will occur this coming Wednesday morning, not long after midnight. The Summer Solstice will be on June 21. 2017, at 12:24 AM (EDT). I have more on the dates of seasons and sub-seasons here.
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In other astronomical news, and a change of seasons is astronomical news, we talked about what you can see in the night sky these days.
If you're up and about during the time when this radio program airs live you might see something very bright in the east, sort of low down, not far from the horizon. That's the planet Venus, which was really brilliant in darker skies earlier this month. Yeah, we would have made something of that if we hadn't been preempted for fund raising programs that mostly didn't raise much in the way of funds. Venus is still quite a sight in the pre-dawn these days.
The other sight is the planet Saturn. It reached opposition, which means that, from the point of view of a person on the planet Earth, Saturn was exactly opposite from the Sun, on June 14th. Saturn is still visible just about all night, from sunset to dawn. It's pretty conspicuous in the night sky, even under street lamps and amid the other light pollution we have in our urban skyscape.
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Yeah, it's the Middle Third, and it's late Spring, nearly Summer, so I'm taking photographs of flowers again. Well, they are nice to look at.
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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 open list is the 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. The bleepin' blue board had to add a step for folks to get onto it because it was 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
UPDATE: In of June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I'm the moderator on it now.
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 used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his current blog here. Yeah, he gets bounced around from one blog to another sometimes.
Sidney is also posting occasional podcasts these days at the Web site he's established.
One formerly popular mailing 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 February 2017, it had 696 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.
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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2017, R. Paul Martin.
