The disaster isn't over yet

[fpb]

The centre of the still-smouldering Italian earthquake is just in the area of my ancestral roots. It covers Ferrara, where my grandfather was born; Cento, the native town of Giovanni Francesco "Guercino" Barbieri, the painter; San Giovanni in Persiceto, where St.Clelia Barbieri lived and died; Modena, where Giovanni Maria Barbieri, the founder of Romance philology, was born, worked, and died. They are a distinguished clan, and I am proud of them and of their country; and it breaks my heart to watch it being shaken to pieces.