I've put up some other links related to what I'm actually allowed to say during the program, as well. Have you signed the petition against the Pacifica gag rule?

Things are blowing up in the Pacifica Foundation, the entity that owns WBAI. First, the Pacifica National Board completely insulated itself from community input. They did this with the connivance of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And now there's a big furor over the firing of the General Manager of KPFA, our sister station in Berkeley, California. This has sparked demonstrations, protests and people speaking out on the air about it in violation of the “gag rule” that Pacifica holds over all producers.

Larry Bensky broke the “gag rule” on his nationally broadcast Pacifica program Sunday Salon, contradicting Pacifica Executive Director Lynn Chadwick's announcement about the firing of Nicole Sawaya, former General Manager of KPFA. That segment is about 20 minutes into Part I of his April 4, 1999, program. Or you can simply read a transcript of what he said.

Here's a Web site that can keep you up to date on these rapidly evolving developments.

Larry Bensky and some other Staff from KPFA have started a new Web site and mailing list about the current issues.

The other night shots were fired through the windows of the Pacifica Foundation. Here's the take of a veteran Pacifica watcher on this:

As to the shooting, it has, for me, the same nasty aroma as did the claims by Pacifica and KPFA management (Pat Scott, Marci Lockwood, and Ginny Berson) that they had received death threats after the August 1995 purge, (which turned out not to have been reported to the police, as they said) and the death threats that were received by Chadwick and two other Pacifica staff members prior to the February board meeting. The names of those two staffers were virtually unknown outside of Pacifica itself, which makes them extremely unlikely recipients of hate calls. I did talk with both women and believe that they did receive threats but from whom is open to question. As for Pacifica's office which is next door to KPFA , it has no name on the door to identify it and outside of the station few subscribers know of its location.

That malicious macro named “Melissa” has been in the news. It's not a real virus, but enough people will call it that, abetted by an ignorant media, so that it's just going to be called a “virus” — except by me! The lawyer for the guy who wrote and disseminated this malicious macro says he didn't do it to hurt anyone. Yeah, right!

He was tracked down by the Feds via his telephone usage and because he let them know that he'd been on AOL when the macro was posted.

Of course we always try to avoid mentioning the dirty word “sleep” on Back of the Book because merely mentioning the word makes so many of you realize you need to get some! But I did talk about the survey that found that most Americans are not getting enough sleep. These folks talk about something called “sleep hygiene”, by which they mean regularity of sleeping habits. Well, by their standards I'm one filthy guy!

The National Sleep Foundation also has a toll free number you can call to assess how sleepy you are. Gosh, I hope that after reading this you don't start missing the program because you can doze off more easily!

If you want to read on line cartoons that are really interesting and somewhat wild check out Tristan A. Farnon's “Leisure Town”, which is currently showing Winter Pageant.

So it was Easter, or immediately after Easter, when I was on the air. That's why I was reminded of stories about Catholic grammar school in the '50s, and what went on before the Easter vacation.

The United States Naval Observatory will help you to track Easter through the years.

There are a lot of issues that we can't talk about on the air at WBAI. But there is an Internet list called “Free Pacifica!” which you can subscribe to, and these issues are discussed there. If you subscribe to it you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

If you want to subscribe to the “Free Pacifica!” list just click on this link and fill out the form, and you'll be subscribed. Could open your eyes a little bit.

The above list has occasionally produced a high volume of E-mail because of the attention that the issues have drawn. If you would prefer to subscribe to a low volume list that only provides announcements of events related to these issues then subscribe to the FreePac mailing list.