The third Saharan anticyclone of the summer

We are having the hottest summer of the last fifty years in Italy (rivalled only by the summer of 2003). June brought the first Saharan anticyclone, called Scipione, after the Roman General Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal in the Second Punic War. That heatwave had barely ended when anticylone Numero 2 - Caronte - came along. Caronte, or Charon in Greek mythology, was the ferryman of Hades who transported souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Acheron and Styx that divide the world of the living from that of the dead. In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Charon is the first named mythological character that Dante meets in the Underworld, in the third Canto of Inferno. Now, hot on the heels of Caronte, comes Minosse, the third suptropical Saharan anticyclone of the summer (Minos, son of Zeus and Europa, judge of the dead of the underworld). Temperatures will reach the mid-forties in Sicily. Too hot to be outside. Too hot to stay inside.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being pregnant in Sicily

Here I am back in Milazzo, after a four month absence. I went back home to have our baby because the Sicilian hospitals – and staff – were not at all convincing. I stayed until the end of August, doing my duty through the high season, carrying my seven month bump through the humid terrace where curious diners congratulated me, and sat under the air-conditioning near the till when not dealing with customers. The best thing was that no one smoked any longer inside the bar. I just had to move my bump nearer to the would-be smokers and they would lover the cigarette and go scuttling outside, usually with a shamefaced smile, most unlike the typical defensive attitude I met with before. The other, most interesting phenomenon was how attitudes towards me changed. No longer the north-European foreigner, to be regarded with suspicion and kept at a distance, I was embraced by one and all. Neighbours who had never exchanged a word with me, nor looked directly at me (while staring and observing my...
Read more

Black Madonna of Tindari

Image
My favourite Madonna of all the multitude of Virgin Marys venerated by the Sicilians, is the Black Madonna of Tindari.  Her feast day takes place on 8 September, but the festivities go on all weekend: these include the annual pilgrimage to her Basilica at the top of Mount Tindari, fireworks and local processions. Part of the draw is the place of her shrine: Tindari, off the beaten tourist track, sits high on a rocky promontory with spectacular views. Founded by the Greeks in 396BC (by Dionysius the Elder, a nasty despot from Syracuse), the ruins of the city include an amphitheatre, the gates to the city, stone arches and tombs.  You can enjoy a picnic there without a Japanese tourist snapping a photo of you while you munch your sandwich (likely to happen in nearby Taormina). But the interesting thing about the Madonna of Tindari are the stories surrounding her origins. Legend has it that the cedarwood statue was hidden on a cargo ship returning from the ...
Read more

Sicilian structures

Image
My son has just done his terza media (Junior Cert) exams and his theme was WATER. He spoke about Ungaretti’s I Fiumi, where rivers are a metaphor for human experience, and John Donne’s No Man is an Island on the interconnectivity of our lives as humans. His teachers gave him a theme so close to my heart: my songs and books often feature some form of water – rivers, seas and oceans appear as metaphor and meaning. Then, having done my work (apparently it is the mother's job to write the tesina for their child's presentation) I left for the islands to complete some fact-checking (days earned thanks to separation laws which accord parenting time to fathers). Gratitude. A woman travelling alone garners so much attention here. The lusty squat hydrofoil attendant breathing down my neck as I tried to sleep on the trip over, the Senegalese waiter in the port cafè asking too many questions, the Peruvian caretaker of the place I stayed curious about my age. The group of six lads on a part...
Read more