As photo opportunities go, the bridge was hard to resist.
A couple of days after going under the bridge, I found myself inside the ruins of an unfinished Bermuda church:
Work began on the church in 1874, but ended when the church was beset by financial difficulties and a schism in the Anglican congregation.
Anglican schisms? I thought that was a new idea...
From the looks of the photo, I'm behaving like a Rasputin ne'er-do-well -- while the church splits into pieces:
But looks can be deceptive. Obviously, that church need not worry about today's schism, as the fact that it was never completed moots the issue of same sex marriages being performed there.
I took the next couple of pictures in a very old, very spooky cemetery which overlooks the Atlantic ocean.
Signs of voodoo, maybe Santeria (or perhaps some form of animism?) were present. A dead chicken appeared to have been killed ritually, in apparent alignment with a bizarre statue of a headless chicken placed atop one wall of the cemetery, and a pair of shoes on the opposite wall. I don't understand the significance (if any) of these items, but there I was.
Later I took this picture of a passion flower blooming at night:
I was told they open only once. According to Wikipedia the passion flower not only has psychoactive properties, but an interesting symbology:
"Passion" does not refer to love, but to the Passion of Christ on the cross. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries discovered this flower and adopted its unique physical structures as symbols of Crucifixion. For example: the 72 radial filaments (or corona) represent the Crown of Thorns. The ten petals and sepals represent the ten faithful apostles. The top 3 stigma represent the 3 nails and the lower 5 anthers represent the 5 wounds. The flower has been given names related to this symbolism throughout Europe since that time. In Spain, it is known as Espina de Cristo (Christ's Thorn). In Germany it was once known as Muttergottes-Schuzchen (Mother-of-God's Star).
The Apostles? The Crown of Thorns? Sheesh! I didn't see any of those things in the flower, and it didn't occur to me to count the radial filaments, the petals, the sepals, the stigma, or the anthers.
Anthers? I have only questhions!
But speaking of wildlife and passion, here's a picture of wild, passionate life aboard the ship!
Just looking at that makes my anther feel stigmatized! (But isn't it better to be stigmatized than politicized?)
Anyway, I made it back in one piece. Considering that the trip was accomplished entirely by ship, I'm glad that while in Bermuda I paid homage to Poseidon, known Homerically as the savior of ships.
Obviously, I can't claim that this accounts for the calm seas which accompanied the ship, but can anyone say that it hurt?
Poseidon, one of the most powerful gods, did not behave in what would today be considered a godly manner:
He had many love affairs and fathered numerous children. Poseidon once married a Nereid, Amphitrite, and produced Triton who was half-human and half-fish. He also impregnated the Gorgon Medusa to conceive Chrysaor and Pegasus, the flying horse. The rape of Aethra by Poseidon resulted in the birth of Theseus; and he turned Caeneus into a man, at her request, after raping her. Another rape involved Amymone when she tried to escape from a satyr and Poseidon saved her. Other offspring of Poseidon include: Eumolpus, the Giant Sinis, Polyphemus, Orion, King Amycus, Proteus, Agenor and Belus from Europa, Pelias, and the King of Egypt, Busiris.
Impregnating Medusa? Reading stuff like that makes me wonder whether there's a connection between the ancients and the fact that even today, ships are referred to in the feminine gender:
....when we refer to a ship as a she, we are assigning to it a gender, and, incidentally, the same gender the Romans assigned, feminine.
But not the Russians, the Germans, or the French.
Nor the very influential Lloyds of London, which has neutered ship gender in an obvious bow to political correctness.
Does every last goddamned thing in this world have to become political?
While none of this is new, it's probably worth pointing out that various offended people have decried "sexist" ship gender at Wikipedia, but there's a more interesting debate here.
However, here's a feminist classical scholar who disagrees with the stultifying grammatical view of conventional feminism:
A feminist note on the gender of ships: Because of the living qualities of ships, I like to refer to a ship as "she" rather than "it." While some may compare a vessel to a woman because of the supposedly capricious nature of both (although there seems nothing wrong with an occasional playful moment), I think that this view overlooks other qualities. Ships, like women, are beautiful, swift, intelligent, and powerful. I am glad to acclaim them as my sisters!
I don't think Poseidon would mind.
posted by Eric on 08.23.06 at 08:32 AM
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Comments
On the gender of ships:
The gender of nouns in Indo-European languages (like Greek and Latin) is a non-issue in most cases because things generally weren't conceived of as male or female, but rather as masculine or feminine by analogy. This was a purely grammatical consideration, usually determined not by the 'sex' of the thing but by the stem, except when sex trumped grammatical gender, as in the few Latin masculine words of the 1st declension which refer to male occupations (all other 1st declension nouns are feminine in Latin).
The common word for ship in Greek (naus) and Latin (navis) is common also to Sanskrit (nau), and it is a very ancient Indo-European word (root *neH2u-) whose historical development is unclear. It seems, though, that the stem of the word classified it as feminine, not ideas about the 'femaleness' of ships.
Before ancient Indians, Greeks, or Romans ever thought about the role of women in society, the word for ship was gramamtically feminine, and it stayed that way. Grammatical gender, as I've said, usually had nothing to do with sex. It was an unavoidable part of language without any ulterior motives, and it's unrealistic to suppose that native speakers would have reacted to it the same way that we do.
Also it should be noted that each of these languages had several other words for ship of all genders.
When Admiral Nimitz was asked by reporters why ships were referred by in the feminine gender, he was said to have replied:
"Because they use so much powder and paint."
Natrium · August 23, 2006 12:31 PM
I think the practice of referring to ships as feminine in English probably arose thanks to speakers who learned Latin as the foundation of good speech, and navis (fem.) was the good, classical word that they learned for ship.
In fact, ships were masculine for centuries in English before the 19th century, but in the mediaeval period up to the 16th or 17th century ships were feminine, probably owing to the influence of French nef, derived from Latin navis. The influence of French in the early period, like that of Latin later, was part and parcel to the snobbish appeal of a literary language.
A lot of phantom grammatical 'rules' in English, like split infinitives and ending a clause with a preposition, are the result of appeals to Latin grammar in comparatively recent times.
I think it likely that the romantic idea of the ship as a lady came later. People continue to argue that it has to do with the ship as a mother, or a lover, etc., but then how does that compete with the traditional superstition about women on ships? Fear of a cat fight?
I suspect that similar usages, like the soul or one's country as feminine, are likewise influenced by gender. The soul is anima (fem.), and fatherland is patria, which is feminine (concealing terra, land) even though it uses the root for father.
A great coincidence in one language led to a charming usage in another, but I don't see any sexism here.
The matter of characterizing what Neptune did with some of the ladies he rescued as rape, is pretty much a matter of some Victorian Era types expressing disapproval of what was likely a common practice when back when. Namely, you rescued a lady she thanked you by jumping your bones.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
On the gender of ships:
The gender of nouns in Indo-European languages (like Greek and Latin) is a non-issue in most cases because things generally weren't conceived of as male or female, but rather as masculine or feminine by analogy. This was a purely grammatical consideration, usually determined not by the 'sex' of the thing but by the stem, except when sex trumped grammatical gender, as in the few Latin masculine words of the 1st declension which refer to male occupations (all other 1st declension nouns are feminine in Latin).
The common word for ship in Greek (naus) and Latin (navis) is common also to Sanskrit (nau), and it is a very ancient Indo-European word (root *neH2u-) whose historical development is unclear. It seems, though, that the stem of the word classified it as feminine, not ideas about the 'femaleness' of ships.
Before ancient Indians, Greeks, or Romans ever thought about the role of women in society, the word for ship was gramamtically feminine, and it stayed that way. Grammatical gender, as I've said, usually had nothing to do with sex. It was an unavoidable part of language without any ulterior motives, and it's unrealistic to suppose that native speakers would have reacted to it the same way that we do.
Also it should be noted that each of these languages had several other words for ship of all genders.