Dust Devil Dreams and Visions

  By Andrew W. Griffin Mushroom clouds. Nuclear war. Fallout shelters. These thoughts and things have been popping up quite a bit this day, which is when the Marshall Islands (March 1 st there) observes Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day. And in light of heightened tensions between Russia and the West, I have not felt this close to some sort of thermonuclear conflict since 1983, a year that sync-meister Christopher Knowles has been talking about lately. My dreams have been intense. And foreign. And ... well ... just bizarre. Like my Ernest Borgnine dream last week - before I watched Convoy , the 1978 film with Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw. And then I am covering a "convoy." Truth is stranger than ... fiction?

  March 1 is Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day in the Marshall Islands, which is a national holiday there. Also known as ‘Bikini Day’ the most destructive nuclear testing was held on Bikini Atolls. Early in the morning on March 1, 1954, the hydrogen bomb, code named Bravo, was detonated on the surface of the reef in the northwestern corner of Bikini Atoll. The area was illuminated by a huge and expanding flash of blinding light.A raging fireball of intense heat that measured into the millions of degrees shot skyward at a rate of 300 miles an hour. Within minutes the monstrous cloud, filled with nuclear debris, shot up more than 20 miles and generated winds hundreds of miles per hour. These fiery gusts blasted the surrounding islands and stripped the branches and coconuts from the trees. It is reported that Bravo was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima during the end of World War II. Its “success” was beyond the wildest...

  By Andrew W. Griffin Feb. 25, 2022 Perhaps it was because I started reading Denis Johnson’s novelette Train Dreams . In fact, yes, that seems like the most likely reason that I had my own “train dream.” This dream – which takes place in a seemingly rural/industrial environment – involves train cars that are shaped like elongated arrowheads; sleek and smooth and sharp. And most importantly, aerodynamic. Somehow, I cause one of the pointy train cars to derail, hit a parked vehicle and smash into a warehouse-like building. What is strange is that as I write this, snippets of this dream and a few others this week seem to be swirling around in my mind. Foreign voices. Well-worn environs. Shabby and bohemian, I would say. In contrast to the sleek, pointy and aerodynamic train car. Why are train cars boxy? Why aren’t they more aerodynamic, I asked no one in particular. Of course I am in the midst of writing a book involving a railroad line. I was nearly killed by a train at a ...

  A few months back I was made a confession to my wife: I told her I really was not a big fan of Neil Young anymore. In fact, I found a lot of his music to be mediocre and his cranky-old-man personality to be increasingly off-putting and tiresome. Neil Young, in his old age, had become the epitome of the “OK, Boomer,” meme. And deservedly so, after his public demands that popular podcaster Joe Rogan be kicked off Spotify, due to Rogan daring to ask questions about the COVID-19 vaccine, among others. I confessed my Neil Young hesitancy to her, because in 2018 I had written a book titled Rock Catapult: 1966 – The Launch of Modern Rock & Roll .   The book is about the rock and pop and soul music released and/or recorded in the incredible year of 1966, from The Monkees to Donovan to The Kinks and many more. Among the acts I highlighted was Buffalo Springfield, the Los Angeles-based band that had a major hit in early 1967 titled “For What It’s Worth.” Considered the go-to...

  Today is Thursday, February 24, 2022. It is 33 years to the day since FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper arrived in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington to announce the federal government’s interest in solving the death of teen prom queen Laura Palmer. Yes. Twin Peaks . The series that literally changed my life. The series was a powerful, esoteric “analysis” of the last half of the 20 th century and into the 21 st century, in my observation. I am sure I am in the minority in claiming this, but when I think upon and rewatch the series – the 1990-91 original series that aired on ABC and the sequel, 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return .   Thirty-three. An important number in Masonic circles. The line of latitude that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on in Dallas, Texas. The line of latitude where the Trinity Test involved the first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945, an event that proves key in the Twin Peaks oeuvre. Geographical ...