Washinjgton's Retreat From Brooklyn 1776
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The graphic for this program depicted something else we'd talked about. I'm hoping to get a bunch of other toipics from this program shown on this Web psge. Right nbow I had better rush and get this posted before the program begins! More to come.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday September 9, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. We had an LSB meeting this past Wednesday night. It was a total mess. The people who chronically disrupt the meetings really went at it this time. They'd had the order of things done differently by having half of the Public Comment put at the start of the meeting, and then they complained about the roll call not being done first. The people running the meeting could have handled the disruption better but everything took forever. As a result the disruptors ate up enough time that I did not get to give the Treasurer's Report and the LSB did not get to discuss any of the station's financial issues at all.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night 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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This coming week will mark the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn, that ran from August 27th, to August 29th, 1776. This was the first major battle of the American Revolutionary War. The British under General Sir William Howe wanted to take over New York City. New York was already an important, fairly long established city by 1776. It was a major port city on the North American continent.
George Washington was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. He knew that the British were going to try to seize New York City. He'd set up defensive positions on the glacial moraine in what is now Prospect Park in Brooklyn. With his men behind redoubts that they'd built out of logs and dirt and which conformed to the natural contours of the land they had a formidable defensive barrier from which to keep the British from getting past them.
Admiral Lord Richard Howe, the brother of General Howe, was in charge of the naval forces arrayed against the Continental Army. Part of his job had been to get the 73 ships of the fleet, including the troop ships that carried something more than 30,000 men, across the Atlantic Ocean and landed in Staten Island. He then got at least 15,000 British Troops ferried across the East River to a landing place at Gravesend Bay by August 22, 1776.
Once General Howe calculated that he had put ashore in Brooklyn enough of the well trained, professional European troops, including many Hessian Mercenaries, he moved on the Continental Army's redoubts. His goal was to smash the Continental Army. The bulk of the organized fighting force of the Americans was before his larger force and he had planned to destroy the American revolutionary forces and put a quick end to the war.
General Howe had offered General Washington amnesty if he would tell his troops to give up the fight. Washington refused that offer.
The British troops fought their way up through Brooklyn and were stopped by the redoubts. But they were informed of a way around them. They marched east to Jamaica, the same Jamaica that's out in Queens today, and then they marched west. The patriots' left flank was not well defended and the British began to roll up the Patriots. George Washington and his generals saw what was happening and were able to retreat in a mostly orderly way. They retreated down what is today 1st Street in Brooklyn. The British outnumbered them and they also had artillery.
The British pushed the Continental Army out to what is now Red Hook. The British now had the advantage of height. The Americans knew that they were in a bad situation. The Howe brothers considered that the entire battle, and most of the war, was now won. They had driven the Continental Army into a position where their back was to the East River. But it was getting dark. The British had captured two of the American generals and made them prisoners. The British drew up their forces and settled in for a possible final fight in the morning. They had expected the Americans to surrender when the Sun came up and, licking their wounds, they saw what was arrayed against them. The British waited for the new day.
George Washington was not resting, nor did he intend to give up. He had his men set up camp fires so that the British could see them apparently settling in on the low plain for the night. And then Washington had his men start leaving via small boats that ferried them across the East River to lower Manhattan. Dark of night and bad weather helped the Aermican retrat. This went on all night.
At dawn the British were surprised to see hardly any Continental Army troops on the plain. They had escaped. All that was left was a small contingent of men, who were captured or killed. It was a victory for the British, but it was a survivable loss for the Americans, who still had their army intact. The British considered Washington's tactic to be not gentlemanly. I don't think Washington cared what they thought.
The Revolutionary War continued, and the Americans eventually won. Had the Continental Army been captured or destroyed in the Battle of Long Island that would have been the effective end of the American Revolution.
The tactic of winning by having your troops escape and not get killed was a tactic that saved the British Army at the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940.
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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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