carnegie's airship

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was probably laying on the floor of a dark living room. My brother, and maybe other members of my family, were also in the living room. A television was on in the room. I couldn't see the TV, but it provided the only source of light in the room.

The TV was playing a documentary about Andrew Carnegie. The documentary's narrator explained that Carnegie had, by modern rules, cheated his way into making a lot of money. Now that Carnegie had made a lot of money, he wanted to build a gigantic airship, which he felt would be of great benefit to humanity.

I saw, somehow, a few views of Carnegie on his airship. The shots were taken with a very old film camera, and they were really grainy and shadowy. The airship, I could tell, was gigantic. It floated slowly through the air like a zeppelin, although I hadn't thought of it as being like a zeppelin at the time.

The narrator now explained that Carnegie had been accused of cheating and theft by his peers. They worked long and hard and managed to get the U.S. courts to convict Carnegie. Carnegie had to give a lot of his money back.

By his own standards, he may now have been broke, even though he was probably still a millionaire. But, the narrator, explained, Carnegie no longer had the money to operate his gigantic airship. This was a bit of a tragedy, because it set air travel back by decades.

I had stood up to go take care of something. Now I had a clear view of the TV screen. The documentary was showing film of the final flight of the airship (the film's view from far above the ship???).

The airship was like a gigantic, flat slab of stone -- like an entire stratum of rock taken out of a mountain! -- atop which was a long, well-manicured park. The airship was like an enormous aircraft carrier, except with park instead of an airstrip. At the stern end may have been some kind of control center, or even a mansion or other kind of estate.

I was so inspired by this airship that I shouted out, "Yes! Look at that thing!" Suddenly it seemed to me that everything Carnegie had done had been right, if it could have led to an achievement like this. It also did seem tragic to me that people took away Carnegie's ability to continue running this monument to humanity.