Plan View of a 1912, Russian Battleship
It's Friday morning, January 2, 2026, 06:13, and I've updated this Web page with a little something from Radio's Pickles of the North and the poem she read on the air. I think there's more to come. The original top of this page follows the arrow. ⇒ Sleep overcame me, so this Web page is going up several minutes after the program has hit the air. So this will be a short blurb. More to come.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday January 14, 2026, 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 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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Trump and his battleships
have been in the news this week. A lot of people have no idea what a battleship is, Trump included. Line-of-battle-ships were wooden sailing ships that fought by lining up and shooting iron cannonballs at each other at a range of about 100 yards. Those ships evolved into the ironclad battleships of the second half of the 19th Century. Probably one of the idiots who has Trump's ear started liking battleships for some non-military reason. They may have noted that the U.S.S. New Jersey played a role in the gulf War in the '90s. But actual battleships are generally considered to not be worth it. They're big targets and, like all ships, they have to float on water. Attacking a ship's buoyancy is one of the hallmarks of naval warfare. If I asked you to draw a very basic outline of a battleship you'd probably mostly get it right. You'd have a big hull and big guns on both ends of the ship. They weren't always like that. In the 19th Century there were all sorts of configurations for battleships. The U.S.S. Maine was not a battleship, until it got sunk. It was an armored cruiser.
Even in World War Ⅰ battleships were often kept out of harm's way because they were so valuable. Battleships were shown to be vulnerable to air attack right after that war when Billy Mitchell sank some in demonstrations. Early in World War II at the Battle of Taranto in 1940, 21 British Fairey Swordfish biplanes attacked the Italiam fleet. Three Italian battleships were disabled and other ships were destroyed or put out of action.
We all know about what happened to the battleships at Pearl Harbor.
As World War Ⅱ wound down the Imperial Japanese Navy sent out the enormously powerful battleship Yamato to try and stop the allied invasion of Okinawa. On April 7, 1945, U.S. Navy aircraft attacked and sank the Yamato.
So putting actual battleships in the water would be a stupid waste. But calling them the Trump Class might be fitting because he's a stupid waste too. But maybe they'll invest in smaller ships and call them battleships to salve Trump's ego.
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Pickles here, and outside the neighborhood is a wonderland of snow, soon to be tomorrow's slush! But right now it is cold and the snow makes everything bright, just the same way Robert Frost's poem Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening
brings a moment of peace to my mind admid our ongoing chaotic landscape. The perfect poem to read on snowy day just past Winter Solstice. I love the cold of Winter as much as R. Paul loves the heat of Summer. We are seasonal opposites!
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost 1923
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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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