After being preempted two weeks in a row the program got back on the air. We just had to talk about the eclipse, even though it's pretty old news by now. We also talked a bit about Donnie Bonespur
Trump going on trial for some of his less serious felonies. I really do intend to update this Web page soon, so check back for those updates.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday May 8, 2024, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. At the April 10, 2024, LSB meeting we experienced a lot of obstruction. There are people on the LSB who are intent on making everything take much longer than it needs to, they will then run for reelection with claims that the meetings are awful and don't get much done.
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, so we have the following schedule:
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. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: 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 only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Yeah, it looks like they'll have some alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.
Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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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?
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Program Note: We're back! The big, emergency 'thon for the Tower Rent came a week after our scheduled preemption scheduled by WBAI Management's 52 week schedule,
so we have not been on the air since March 30th. It had looked like we'd be preempted again in a couple of more weeks for phase two of the Tower Fund emergency 'thon, but now we're being told that we're on. So we should be on the air a good number of weeks in a row. We'll keep everyone posted. We posted a minimal pre-program blurb this week because the front page of WBAI.ORG is totally dedicated to that 'thon and you can't see what we posted anyway. Did a fast Twitter thing.
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We watched the eclipse on April 8, it was just short of 90% of a total eclipse in New York City. We hope that everyone who watched it was careful.
We watched it from Coney Island again. Pickles of the North tried out a cracker with tiny holes in it that projected very small images of the eclipse while we indulged ourselves with some Nathan's fries. We then went to Seaside Park on the Boardwalk to use our new eclipse glasses that Pickles got from the Brooklyn Public Library to watch the rest of the whole thing. There were a lot more people watching it at Coney Island than had been around for the previous eclipse in 2017. We really noticed how the temperature dropped as the Sun was eclipsed. There were more clouds then, too. I suspect that the suddenly lowered temperature promoted the formation of the clouds. The eclipse was hiding itself! And, yeah, we said on the program that it had occurred in October of that year, but it actually occurred in August of 2017. There was also a partial eclipse visible from Brooklyn in 2021, but it peaked before dawn, and it wasn't nearly as spectacular as the one on April 8.
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The CDC Web site says that as of their last reading, the death toll in America from COVID-19 was 1,188,991 which is quite a drop in the number of COVID-19 deaths since our last program on March 30th.
The pandemic is not over. Pickles of the North and I are mostly still keeping our masks on. We're going to get our Spring booster shots soon, we don't want to get this disease.
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Donnie Bonespur
Trump is currently on trial for 34 felonies alleging he repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to cover up his hush-money payment of $130,000 to a porn star with whom he had a brief fling. He also paid off a former Playboy model and a former Trump Tower doorman who'd been a witness.
He can't stay awake! He has to be there and he does not like that. The full jury had been selected by Friday afternoon. One of them actually is a follower of Trump on his phony baloney Truth Social site. I suspect that that will result in a hung jury. The actual trial is scheduled to start on Monday. Will Trump be able to mess that timetable up?
Trump keeps committing contempt of court but prosecutors are only asking the judge to fine him $1,000 for each post he makes that violates the gag order. That's no punishment for him. No wonder he keeps doing it. He'll probably get someone else to pay the fines anyway. Lock Him Up!
Some deranged person from St, Augustine, Florida set himself on fire outside the courthouse. He had posted a manifesto before he lit himself on fire, predictably it was full of conspiracy hoax nonsense. He did it outside the courthouse to get attention for his ramblings. He's in critical condition in the hospital.
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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 that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to 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 blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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