Quake sisterhood

I was reading the online papers this morning. First baby to be christened after the earthquake today in one of the camps around L'Aquila. One to come to light any moment. All good news, because children and new life can give a perspective of future even in the darkest moments.

Insurance companies are sending inspectors and detectives to collect cement samples and information on the collapsed building. Their motto: be prepared.

One of the dams in the lake of Campotosto has been build in the 70ies just above a fault line. Nothing wrong with the dam at the moment, by they are working at simulation models at the moment, just to know what could happen, should weird things occur.

The mayor of l'Aquila is all the time on all net with perfectly crisp shirts and freshly ironed clothes. His fellow citizens, taking a shower once a week from the tnt camp, cannot quite follow what he is actually talking about on future plans for their city, but say they would appreciate if he would pop by and talk to them too, every now and then. At least to ask him the adress of his laundrette.

And last, but not least, I read of an earthquake in East Afghanistan, 5.1 Richter. And I callen my friend Mariam to ask if she had any news of her family there. She didn't know, just like we didn't know a couple of Mondays ago, when friends start calling to ask how things were going.

"We are sisters in quake" I told her. Because Afghanistan might be a little farther away from my backyard than Abruzzo, but a quake is a quake, and the misery it causes is the same under the stars. She hung quickly up to turn on TV.

PS: another of the L'Aquila Pictures of Antonio Di Maggio. Hier the facade of the church of San Bernardino (now damaged by the earthquake. My grandma used to go and play in the big stairs oing down, when she was finishing her elementary school in L'Aquila with her sisters. In Ofena they had only the firts three clsses, so first Amelia and Filomena were send to live in with their uncle Antonio Silveri. The young girls were already able to run a household and cook, so the idea was that they could help their uncle in that sort of chores, and he would chaperon them in the big city, as he was also working in education (he ended up his career as a school inspector and a writer).

Later the other Silvestroni girls followed. My gradmother Peppina regretted her entire life that she did not make most of her education chances, but when TBC broke up in her boarding school, her mom took her home and she never completed schooling.