Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

The Mighty Wurlitzer

A couple of anecdotes that hopefully, at the end, will tie into this piece, which is based on my reading of Frances Stonor Saunders The Cultural Cold War. They may seem detached, and if you are reading this, I have decided they are useful. Or maybe just interesting.

First, we had a man come to our house recently to clean our wood stove. It’s a long and tedious process that requires that he walk up onto our steep-peaked roof and use various tools which only make sense in light of chimney sweeping. While he was working I asked if he would mind my looking on, as there is always much to learn about the machines and devices in a home and how they work. We talked about a wide range of subjects, including music* and the sign business. While he set the ladder for the roof ascent, I mentioned that my Dad had been in the sign business, and my Mom insisted that he take me with him on summer trips to various Montana outposts. My job was to hold the ladder. I could have been filling shopping bags with Styrofoam for all the help I gave him.

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About those contrails

A while back the subject of contrails (versus chemtrails) came up here, and I knew I had linked to an article on the subject and written a post. But I could not find it anywhere, nor could I find the piece I had linked to. c’est la vie. I know now that the reason I could not find the post was because the word “chemtrail” is not used in it. I searched for “contrail” a couple of days ago, and it popped up, top of the list. Clifford E. Carnicom is the man brought to us by Oregon Matt, and he does not use the term “chemtrail.” He does not want to be lumped with the chemtrail conspiracy crowd, and so goes with “aerosols” and “aerosol crimes”. Contrails, clouds and aerosols are three quite different phenomena. (Note how “conspiracy” is an effective thought control device, its intended purpose, to prevent thinking on any given subject.)

In the comments below from the original post, Oregon Matt links us to an hour-forty-minute video by Carnicom, which I had started watching in 2021 and then lost it along with the post. I will finish watching this weekend. Yippee! It looks riveting. I will reproduce that video at the end of this piece.

Here’s another link, a paper by J. Marvin Herndon, Raymond D. Hoisington and Mark Whiteside called Chemtrails are not Contrails: Radiometric Evidence, published in the Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International, and brought to us by commenter Riccardowa. It is right on target with Carnicom.

https://journaljgeesi.com/index.php/JGEESI/article/view/476/952

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The original:

This post comes to us courtesy of our friend Oregon Matt. It is about contrails. There is math involved, some intimidating formulas presented, but the kind of formulas where all of us who took high school math could solve by inserting values. It’s not terribly difficult, but I don’t expect anyone to go running to the link by Clifford E. Carnicom just to see the formulas.

A little background about me. I have long operated on the assumption that contrails depend on the amount of moisture in the sky. If there’s a lot, then we see long tails behind jets flying over, and if the air is dry the contrails dissipate right away. Also, I assume that in addition to water vapor, the stuff coming out of the end of jet planes also contains nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and other invisible stuff. But according to Carnicom, what we see is virtually 100% water vapor.

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Mathisian? That’s a word?

I have been debating whether or not to link to a critique of the work of Miles Mathis, and have decided to go ahead with it. For one, the tone is respectful, and for another, I don’t have to, nor do I want to participate. I am not going to print the piece here, but rather just link to it with the warning that it is over 7,000 words long. I don’t think too many people want to take on a large reading project without warning. Right, Petra? TimR? (I bring up those two names not to belittle them, but rather because they strike me as two people who would indeed dive in)

As to my own participation, I once allowed a piece to be run here that was not only critical, but disrespectful in the extreme, even hurtful of the man’s feelings. I deeply regret that. When the author left here I took the piece down and I contacted MM, told him what I had done, and also that I could not undo what I had done. I didn’t apologize, as that seemed a bit obsequious, and what good would it do? Done was done. I only decided for myself that I would lay off criticism of MM, permanently. I had not earned the right.

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The Pauline conversion

I was reading this morning the book mentioned in an earlier post, The Cultural Cold War, by Frances Stoner Saunders. I came upon two revelations, one from within the book, the other from without.

First, I stumbled upon the phrase  in CCW, “Pauline Conversion”, and am embarrassed to admit that having been raised Catholic to the nth degree, I did not know what it meant. Who is this “Pauline” I wondered? Is she some goddess of history who has a statue somewhere, like Joan of Arc?

No, stupid. It is who we Catholics called “St. Paul”, aka Paul of Tarsus, a contemporary of the apostles of Jesus and tormentor of Christians, who one day riding a horse was struck by a bolt of light, and thereafter converted to being a follower of Jesus.

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On re-reading the Cultural Cold War

I first read The Cultural Cold War  in 2019. Written by Frances Stonor Saunders, it was highly recommended to his readers by Miles Mathis. I gave my copy away. It is one of those books that should be kept on hand for reference. Saunders is surprisingly (to me) young to have published such a book. She would have been 33 when it was first published in 1999. I am rereading the 2013 edition. (Saunders is currently 58.)

I am only 30 pages into the book. I ordered it while we were in Europe, as the only reading I did over there was of the beach variety, Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin, and The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware. I started reading another book by Ware, The Lying Game, but opted not to finish it as I felt it was going to be very dark and depressing. After exposure to those three books, I longed for substance, not looking down my nose by any means, but rather preferring nonfiction over popular fiction.

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Waiting to catch a plane … like watching election returns?

We are sitting in our hotel room in Venice, and head for the airport at checkout time, 11AM, which is 3AM in Denver. Tonight when we arrive in Denver, it will be 10:30 there, but in our heads 2:30 in the morning. I have always had a harder time traveling west than east,  so getting back on Colorado time will take some effort. 

Sitting in our hotel room waiting to go to the airport, not wanting to get there too early, is tedious. It’s like watching election returns, which I have not done in years. They don’t have the final numbers, but need to keep you glued so you watch the commercials. So you just sit and watch. 

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The Steppes of Dubrovnik

Well, here we are again, in the last two days of our trip. We haven’t traveled in some time now, first with Covid forcing us to cancel a trip to the Dolomites in 2020, and then again after with health issues, same result.

We came back to the Dolomites this time, but scaled back from the older times. Our longest trek this trip was seven miles with 1,500 feet of climbing, staying in the same hotel every night. In times past we went hut-to-hut with miles between them (refugios they are called), and challenging ascents of three or more thousand feet, one time four. I like to think we’ll get back to it, but in the back of my mind I think not, not with arthritic knees. I don’t take any kind of pain relief medicine, not even Advil, as I am pretty sure they are not good for us and are habit-forming. And, as I hear, they quit working after time.
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An open letter to Mike Williams, Sage of Quay

Mike Williams is also known (musically, I think) as Sage of Quay, and runs a website by that name. He puts out videos, and since I have been traveling, suffering jet lag and that sort of thing, I’ve watched a few of them. They are quite long, and in my opinion, very good. I will link to some of them at the end, but not run them here.

Generally when someone does an “open letter”, get ready for a takedown. That is not my purpose. Mike does a few common themes which cause me to avoid him, such as the idea that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a person known as Billy Shears. He and I have been around the block on that, and I am not going to rehash, as it serves no purpose. The whole of the McCartney business was covered here in my post, Sir Faul. His side, my side, and a group that first performed on Ed Sullivan in 1962, 62 years ago!

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No two alike

We were booked on Delta to fly to Venice out of Atlanta on Monday, but Delta could not find a gate for their plane. We ended up in B107, and left there three hours late. That meant we missed all our connections the following day, and depended on the kindness of strangers. At the train station Bolzano a shuttle driver agreed to give us a ride to the airport, even as he was off duty. We offered him twenty euro, and he only reluctantly took it, hiding it under papers on his passenger seat. Our car rental agency was closed, so we needed to get to our hotel, but no cabs were available. Two police officers, the only other people in Bolzano Airport, called all over and finally ran down a cab for us. They were very kind. Europcar the next day downgraded our reservation to a tiny Fiat since we were late getting there. I have to duck my head to lower the visor.

White guy problems? I suppose. Delta, by way of apology, gave 200 of us a free snack, airline peanuts or tiny bags of chips.

But here is the interesting thing, and I have experienced this once before. Delta announced when we finally boarded that our faces would be our boarding passes. To get in the plane we stood for maybe a second before a camera that looked at our facial plates, recognized us from passport photos, and let us pass.

My facial work is far less sophisticated, but this reinforces my notion that no two of us look alike. Take that, all you Martin Luther King/Don King doubters.

Martin Luther King … hidden in plain sight

It’s not every day this happens, but when it does, my heart soars like a hawk. I am going to reprint some comments from You Can Call Me Ray. Since we are leaving on a trip Monday morning, I don’t have time to flesh this out, study the timelines, do multiple face chops. But I am confident that with the face chop above and all of the circumstantial evidence supplied by Ray, that we can make a strong case that Martin Luther King, Jr., who readers of this blog know did not die April 4, 1968, simply became someone else.  Hopefully Ray will be around to flesh it out in the comments. I could wait until our return later in September, but truth is, I can’t wait to publish this. I am waiting on Ray’s permission to proceed. (By the way, face chops like the one above are hard to come by – you’d be surprised how rare it is to find the subjects looking directly at the camera, which is why I elected to use the one of Don King with a cigar in his mouth.)

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