Painted Sky
Travel Notes: Oakland, CA 7/27/25 to Washington D.C. 9/15/25
While in Los Angeles, discussing the skies with Wetzel, a pilot, he noted that the line clouds were higher than they appear, and that they only occur over populated areas.
They continued up until San Jose, where they thinned out and stopped. In Nevada and Utah, there were none. A record drought, the driest in 135 years, had persisted, with temperatures above normal. Then, overnight, things cooled. With two days left in my stay, Bob and I were walking when I saw line clouds forming in the sky. They then began to swirl over the Wasatch Front, where most of the population of the state lives, and formed into teardrop shapes that elongated towards the sun. Bob had just bought me a cloud identification manual that holds a much wider variety of clouds than we were taught in science class.
I asked him again, a question I have often asked, about the machine in his backyard. The monologue I triggered has come to these ears every year, and I have neglected to record it.
“It’s a cloud seeder, powered by propane and loaded with an element, silicon dioxide1, I think. A man who did it retired, and I was recommended. There are five along the foothills, one at the head of each canyon. I seed the Weber Canyon clouds, which you see gather every afternoon. We only seed after November 1, at 28 degrees or lower, when we get the call, either from Salt Lake City, or the headquarters down in Texas, where they watch the weather. It is done to increase snowpack. It was developed by Kurt Vonnegut’s brother, who was a chemist, an old technology. There is a mobile one further up with its own temperature sensor. The kid who runs it is a real good kid—has had the cancer for a couple years, fighting it. He comes around and makes sure the fuel and the element are charged. I get so many dollars a shot, when I set it off, ten, I think. By state law, we are not to seed beyond 200% of [median] snowpack. But a couple years ago we did. You know how people are about water in the west; Colorado once sued Utah for doing this, and stealing their snowpack for their ski slopes.”
As I traveled east, I observed nothing in Colorado out of the ordinary. Illinois, Pittsburgh, and now Baltimore had the same recent, strange, inky clouds that looked almost cartoonish, like the flamboyance of an artist over-doing nature. The etch-a-sketch cross-hatch clouds, which I had not seen before this year, but are in the Peterson Guidebook, were all over the eastern skies.
All of the train stations are remodeling and stressing new environmental compliance in the near future as the fleet of locomotives is modernized. Two great, unreported fish kills have occurred since I’ve been in Baltimore at the Inner Harbor. The company hired to test the water for waste that might leak from the still unrecovered cargo of the tanker that wrecked the Key Bridge 16 months ago has reported zero toxins.
Everywhere I passed, by train, truck and car, rails, highways, bridges and roads have been in worse repair; have continued to build more traffic. Most fascinating is that train traffic, by trains run and by cars per train, have both increased over 2019. Most of the long-distance passengers have never taken a train, switching from flying over expense and safety mishaps. What is on the increase is control, cameras are increasing, access was narrowing. Additionally, people with new cars are increasingly unwilling to test their range and reliability, being prone to technical glitches. AMTRAK has begun posting bilingual cartoon videos in its stations, giving directions on how to survive natural and man-made disasters. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and power outages are described, along with directions on how to become a prepper, and store up supplies for a shelter-in-place-scenario. These are added to the perennial terrorist attack threat.
Seeing these messages recalled in my mind the many podcasts I watched with Bob. There are, it seems ten social media channels which have more viewers than CNN and other traditional broadcasters. All but one of the podcasters is, and proclaims himself to be, a college graduate. All of the guests are experts who went to college. Most make the rounds of the shows. Bob is conservative, and so are these channels. Yet, the most common topic is UFOs; that they are real, and are not black budget military weapons—that aliens or angels are real and threatening! Many of these experts are USG “whistle blowers” who still work for USG and cannot tell all, just assure us that heaven is hostile. While there is no concern about the increasingly dangerous terrestrial traffic conditions, we seem to be being distracted skyward, or lured there to see a threat that is going to be sent our way. I bet that one, many or all, of the bond villains dancing about the puppet on the kingly stage: Eloi Mush, Brill Yates, Peanutbutter Squeal, Hefe Brazos, Shekelberg, etc., has already invested in cattle keeping orbital platforms that will be unleashed on us within ten years in order to give old, tawdry Gaia her overdo makeover…
AMTRAK is concerned with one very old form of traffic, continuing to take the lead on the thing that so few care about, the abduction and sale of some 2 million young women a year into slavery. On the inside of the restroom doors on the train is now, additionally, this message:
Are you?
-Abused
-Tricked
-Coerced
-Forced
It is interesting that being tricked is once again regarded as a bound condition, when for the past 200 years the idea of a slave having been inveigled into bondage has been denied. Somehow, the social media usurpation of mind control away from all legacy forms of media seems to have taken us back to reality.
The most common chemicals used for cloud seeding include silver iodide, potassium iodide, and dry ice (solid carbon dioxide).