Back of the Book links for the October 5, 2024, program

This program covered book topics quite a bit. Pickles of the North did most of the program. She talked about banned books and gave a list of banned books and why they have been banned in the United States. R. Paul recommended a free E-book that's available on Project Gutenberg. There's just a little bit left to be done to finish this Web page, so check back for that update.

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:

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.

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.

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.

A couple of weeks ago, many libraries and bookstores across the US held events for Banned Books Week. The Brooklyn Public Library held a lot of fun events for kids of all ages. They are holding one more event, on Saturday, October 19, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM at the Central Branch. As they write on their Web site: Join Us on Saturday, October 19, for a Rally to Protect the Freedom to Read!

The freedom to read is an American value that must be protected. Book bans and challenges in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2023, and continue to happen at an alarming rate. It's more important than ever to show support for local libraries and the freedom to read.

Banned Books Week is a brainchild of the good folks at the American Library Association. Here's an excerpt from their Web site explaining their mission:

The American Library Association (ALA) is the foremost national organization providing resources to inspire library and information professionals to transform their communities through essential programs and services. For more than 140 years, the ALA has been the trusted voice for academic, public, school, government, and special libraries, advocating for the profession and the library's role in enhancing learning and ensuring access to information for all.

They have been keeping track of books that people and organizations have been targeting to ban for several decades. Their most recent findings:

Between January 1, and August 31, 2024, ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 414 attempts to censor library materials and services. In those cases, 1,128 unique titles were challenged. In the same reporting period last year, ALA tracked 695 attempts with 1,915 unique titles challenged. Though the number of reports to date has declined in 2024, the number of documented attempts to censor books continues to far exceed the numbers prior to 2020. Additionally, instances of soft censorship, where books are purchased but placed in restricted areas, not used in library displays, or otherwise hidden or kept off limits due to fear of challenges illustrate the impact of organized censorship campaigns on students' and readers' freedom to read. In some circumstances, books have been preemptively excluded from library collections, taken off the shelves before they are banned, or not purchased for library collections in the first place.

So some organized groups and individuals are trying to control which books kids can be exposed to from preschool age through elementary and high school to college and university. Often they are succeeding. How can kids develop critical thinking if, as the ALA points out, this modern take on book burning is used to assault the freedom to think and to choose what you read. The books vanish whether its in a bund fire or as a result of bad laws or intimidation of school board members, librarians and bookstore owners.

If you think that these kind of threats are an exaggeration, here's another quote from their Web site:

In Arkansas, state legislators passed a law that opened librarians and bookstore owners to criminal prosecution unless they removed materials deemed unsuitable for the youngest of minors from shelves intended to serve older minors and adults. The law also mandated that public libraries adopt procedures allowing books to be challenged based on their appropriateness, a statutorily undefined term not based on constitutional standards. This provision would have allowed one person's opinion to limit the reading choices of everyone else in the community and would have encouraged review boards to engage in content-based discrimination. The Freedom to Read Foundation, a nonprofit legal affiliate with ALA, joined a consortium of Arkansas libraries, library workers, and library advocates to challenge the law under the First Amendment. Together they secured a preliminary injunction from the federal district court that halted enforcement of Arkansas Act 372 from taking effect as the court considered their arguments. They continue to fight the legal battle to permanently stop the law from being enforced.

Makes you wonder which century those people are living in, or wish they were living in.

For some more perspective, here is a grab bag of literature taken directly from the American Library Association's Banned Books Lists including the reasons given for the banning. This list includes everything from Young Adult novels and non fiction books to works written for elementary and pre school kids. Censorship comes from mostly right wing individuals or groups. There are far more conservative attempts to ban books, but liberals have made the same attempts to censor sighting different reasons. Here is a sampling of books and the reasons given to bar children and young adults from accessing them. Many of these books have been successfully banned or removed from easy access in schools and on library shelves:

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Banned and challenged for depiction of sexual abuse, EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) content, and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit

This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, providing sexual education, and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references and use of a derogatory term

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Banned and challenged for profanity, violence, and because it was thought to promote an anti- police message and indoctrination of a social agenda

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Banned and challenged for racial slurs and their negative effect on students, featuring a white savior character, and its perception of the Black experience

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Banned and challenged for racial slurs and racist stereotypes, and their negative effect on students

George by Alex Gino
Challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden to avoid controversy; for LGBTQIA+ content and a transgender character; because schools and libraries should not put books in a child's hand that require discussion; for sexual references; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint and "traditional family structure Written for elementary-age children, this Lambda Literary Award winner was challenged and banned because it includes a transgender child.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Banned and challenged for profanity and for vulgarity and sexual overtones

Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
Banned and forbidden from discussion for referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use nefarious means to attain goals

Captain Underpants series written and illustrated by Dav Pilkey
Series was challenged because it was perceived as encouraging disruptive behavior, while Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot was challenged for including a same-sex couple

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller
Banned and challenged for including LGBTQIA+ content, and for political and religious viewpoints

The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini
This critically acclaimed, multigenerational novel was challenged and banned because it includes sexual violence and was thought to lead to terrorism and promote Islam. Homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit

Thirteen Reasons Why written by Jay Asher
Originally published in 2007, this New York Times bestseller has resurfaced as a controversial book after Netflix aired a TV series by the same name. This YA novel was challenged and banned in multiple school districts because it discusses suicide.

Looking for Alaska written by John Green
Reasons: challenged for a sexually explicit scene that may lead a student to sexual experimentation

Little Bill (series) written by Bill Cosby and illustrated by Vernata P. Honeywood
Reason: challenged because of criminal sexual allegations against the author

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Reasons: offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (profanity and atheism)

Nasreen's Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
Reasons: religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence

Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
Reasons: homosexuality and other ("condones public displays of affection")

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, anti-ethnic, anti-family, insensitivity, offensive language, occult/satanic, violence

My Mom's Having A Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
Reasons: nudity, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity, nudity, racism, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
Reasons: anti-family, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, by Michael A. Bellesiles
Reasons: inaccurate, political viewpoint

In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
Reasons: nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit

Nazis Destroying Magnus Hirschfeld's Library - May 6, 1933

Speaking of books, on this program R. Paul recommended Aircraft: Its Development in War and Peace and its Commercial Future by Evan John David [© 1919]. This is a Project Gutenberg book, so it's in the public domain and it's free for you to read, or download. The book has lots of details about the NC-4 flying-boat that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1919, and it covers a lot of the other feats in the first decade of heavier-than-air flight. The book covers the start of Air Mail, which is no longer a separate thing. I well remember having to buy Air Mail stamps in my youth to get letters to go places sooner than the usual mail got it there. These days all of the mail that travels any distance is supposed to be going by air. Here's some of what this book has to say about the start of Air Mail in America, In the United States the first attempt to carry mail was made by Earl Ovington from the Nassau Boulevard aerodrome near Mineola, N. Y., September, 1911. Postmaster-General Hitchcock delivered a package to Mr. Ovington to be carried to Brooklyn, N. Y. The machine was a Bleriot. The distance of five and one-half miles was made in six minutes. Two trips a day were made by Mr. Ovington - one to and one from Mineola. On Sunday, September 23, 6,165 post-cards, 781 letters, 55 pieces of printed matter were carried. Captain Beck using a Curtiss biplane also carried 20 pounds of mail, and T. O. M. Sopwith, using a Wright machine, also carried some mail.

So Brooklyn was a part of the first Air Mail run in the United States of America. That was not the first Air Mail, however. The book also tells about the earlier Air Mail services in other countries. Also, the American attempt to cross the Atlantic by air started out from Far Rockaway in Queens. There had been an earlier crossing of the Atlantic by air but that flight crossed a lot less of the Atlantic Ocean than the flight that took off from Greater New York on June 14, 1919, to end up landing in a bog near Clifden, County Galway, Ireland 16 hours and 12 minutes later. The crew had not realized they were landing in a bog until they'd hit the thing.

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.

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.

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

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Back of the Book — October 5, 2024