Summer's Almost Gone
It's Saturday evening, September 21, 2024, 19:40 and this Web page is finished. I've added Pickles of the North's narrative about the Bloc Québécois winning the seat in parliament for where her parents live. And this Web page is getting finished while it's still Summer! The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Here's some of the stuff we covered on this program. Pickles of the North will be adding some mored to this Web page later on. Meanwhile R. Paul is bracing for the impact of the Autumnal Equinox. There will be updates to this Web page.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday October 9, 2024, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
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. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager 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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Program Note:According to FCC regulations §399. Support of political candidates is prohibited on WBAI, No noncommercial educational broadcasting station may support or oppose any candidate for political office.
Yeah, this is a problem, and that's why we are not able to mention things like the political conventions that have gotten a ton of attention all over the world. We can't even suggest that certain politicians should go to jail. If we're still around on November 9, 2024, we'll be able to mention all of this political stuff again.
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This was our last program of the Summer of '24. Summer ends, and Fall begins, with the Autumnal Equinox which will occur tomorrow, Sunday September 22, 2024, at 8:44 PM (ET). I'm sad to see it go.
I prefer the long daylight hours to the gloom of Winter. I feel better when the Sun sets some time after 7:00 PM in the evening. That's already stopped happening. Now we march off into the Fall season when you have to be careful to stay adequately warm. But, as WBAI's own late, great Doctor Science used to say, Every day above ground is a good day.
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Radio's Pickles of the North told us about the latest wastewater figures. The COVID-19 virus levels are about at the level you'd expect at this time of year. They're high but not very high. As things cool down through the Autumn months we'll see if the disease starts spreading more, and we'll see how bad the latest variants are.
Pickles of the North has already gotten her new COVID-19 booster vaccination and her flu shot, and we're not wearing our masks as much at this point. I'm going to get the new booster vaccinations and a flu shot as soon as I can get them at the V.A. Hospital. This COVID-19 virus is still around.
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President Biden had the first-ever interview by a sitting president with a gay newspaper. In the Oval Office he reportedly told White House correspondent Christopher Kane of the Washington Blade that he believes LGBTQ people are more courageous than others because they have overcome homophobic bigotry and other obstacles. Most of the openly gay people that have worked with me, that I've worked with, the one advantage they have is they tend to have more courage than most people have,
The president said he was proud to have appointed a record number of LGBTQ people to posts in his administration, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as the first openly gay cabinet secretary to win congressional confirmation.
All the LGBTQ+ people (who) have worked for me or with me have reinforced my view that it's not what your sexual preference is, it's what your intellectual capacity is and what your courage is.
Well, I'm glad that this has finally happened.
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Pickles here! R.Paul and I talked a bit about an election that was just held in the riding where my parents live in Canada on the island of Montreal in Quebec. A riding is an electoral district where you get to vote in a by-election for a candidate who is running for an empty seat in parliament (side note: Canada's parliament system is largely based on the one in the UK, so it is headed by, you guessed it, the King!) If someone dies or resigns their seat a by-election is held for their seat in the House of Commons.
Well, after almost 100 years of the Liberal party holding this particular seat, a member of the Bloc Québécois was voted in.
The Liberal party is akin to the Democratic party in the States. The Bloc Québécois was founded by disgruntled members of the Parti Québécois, which failed in its promise to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada (after the party lost two provincial referendums in 1980 and 1995, Quebec is still a province of Canada, NOT a nation). Separation, or sovereignty, is the up-front main mission of today's weaker Parti Québécois and supposedly further down on the to-do list for the Bloc.
Bloc Quebec represents itself as a sort of sovereignty light. But not really. The new guy, as quoted in an article on the CBC's Web site, promises to represent all the people in his riding, even the ones who didn't vote for him. Among his priorities, he lists dealing with homelessness, senior citizen pensions, the integration of the French language, and the good old sovereignty issue. Quebec has very restrictive Gallic laws, for example, declaring the only official language of the province to be French, instead of Canada's two official languages, or restricting religious garb from being worn by provincial government workers, city workers and people who work in the school systems while they're on the job. Yeah, if you're a bus driver or a kindergarten teacher, no yarmulka, turban or hijab for you to wear on the job — but a crucifix is okay, because that's part of the cultural history
of Quebec. French integration means everything from the provincial to local governments is set up in French, so whether you're a Canadian moving from another province or an immigrant from another country you have to learn French. Because all things French must be protected at all costs, from signs on stores to, as of this year, not requiring doctors to be able to speak to their Anglophone patients in English. Yet most people in the populous parts of Quebec speak more than one language, no matter their background, even the separatists. Go figure!
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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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