Poseidon Redux
Poseidon brought back. Hurricane Irma, a gargantuan storm is about to engulf Florida.
The news prompted memory of eleven days spent on a freighter traveling from San Francisco to Yokohama, Japan. Several days outside of Japan our ship, loaded with supplies for the Vietnam war passed through the tail end of a hurricane. The prow of the big ship would rise to meet the 20 ft swells. A giant wave would break over the prow, a cascade of water crashing down on the foredeck as the ship trembled from the impact. That was an exciting day. I still remember forty years later.
Tomorrow the category 3 hurricane will ravage Florida. And two more potentially are in the wings, Jose and Katia.
I think the ancient Greeks had a more realistic, reasonable perspective of Nature than do we. They were a seafaring people, managing commercial enterprises throughout the Mediterranean. Poseidon was protector of seafarers. One of the twelve Olympians he was god of the Sea and other waters. Poseidon was second only to Athena as protector, patron deity of Athens. The Greeks understood the vagarities of nature as gods and goddesses that could not be ignored or disrespected. The Greeks of antiquity lived in awe of irrational and capricious Nature, and of Human Nature.
Poseidon supported the Greek expedition against the Trojans during the Trojan war. According to Homer upon his return to Ithaca the hero Odysseus angered Poseidon. Storms resulted in the loss of his ship and his companions. Odysseus suffered a ten year delay due to his blinding of Poseidon’s son Polyphemus.
The ancient Greeks would have regarded our climate-change-denying president, as a Cretan, a fabulator, a dangerous individual. Did climate change cause hurricane Irma? No. Does the increasing heat load of the sea and the atmosphere drive the size and violence of this storm? There is no doubt.
Poseidon says hello. Pray.
