Goin' Fishin' in the '50s
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Okay, this was our 40th anniversary program. We're hoping that it all gets on the air. We covered what's here and more. I plan to update this Web page in the near future. Meanwhile enjoy reading what the enthusiastic British boy was reading at the end of the first third of the 20th Century.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
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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NOTE: Last week our program did not air on time. We want to thank Shawn Rhodes for getting some of it on the air when he arrived at the station before his shift. And we're glad that Shawn arrives at the station before his shift actually begins. Unfortunately more than half of that program couldn't get on before time ran out. We are still awaiting a reply from WBAI Management regarding what happened to the program last week. We are also still awaiting a reply from Management about what happened to the July 25th, program. We're sorry that some of you were waiting to hear the program and couldn't. You can hear what did air on the WBAI archives, just go to about 33 minutes in on that archive. I am going to see if we can get the Web Master to just put up what part of our program did air.
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On this program, as a part of our 40th anniversary celebration, we re-aired as piece that's originally from our July 14, 2008, program. It was a Pickles Pick
in January 2023, and with some re-editing we aired it on this program.
It covers my experiences with going fishing when I was a kid in the '50s. We go from the lake in Prospect Park to the Hudson River and then to the actual Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean part is pretty damned close to New York Harbor. Pickles of the North liked it; I'm hoping you will too.
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On this program I mentioned a book, more like a glorified magazine, called Modern Boy's Annual 1933 It was a British publication that compiled an entire year of a boys' magazine named Modern Boy's. It is of its time, and therefore interesting in being a look back at the British world of about 96 years ago, assuming that it was a compilation of the magazines of that title that were published in 1932, as publishers will name things. Its all aimed at boys, from a publishers' point of view, which means that sometimes it talks down to the reader. On the positive side of the publication it has a lot of period photographs and illustrations. The editors of the magazine seem to think that young, British boys of that period were very interested in locomotives. But it has all sort of things in it, including full page color illustrations of dogfights of biplanes which would be shown to be obsolete as front line aircraft in another six years, when many of the boys who read this publication would be marching off to fight in World War Ⅱ. You can read the entire 200+ pages here.
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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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The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2026, R. Paul Martin.
