I haven’t heard back, but I’ve just sent a note to Fr. Benedict by email to ask how we can help them set up their base camp up the hill. Two friends are coming up from Rome this morning with a rented SUV so we can move things and do Big Shopping. Fortunately, the weather is holding up very well, with no sign of the rain and sudden bursts of chillyness that we often get in late August.

After three days of waking up to the house shaking and the ground rumbling and wondering if the ceiling is going to kill me, the aftershocks seem to have finished. Fingers crossed. The mood of the whole town seems to be lightening. I buzzed around on the bike again this evening, and there’s a lot more people around, and a lot more smiles, a lot more laughter, a lot more kids running around and even some playing football in the piazzas.

Monks camping out at their “Fuori la Mura” property, outside town. World’s smallest choir. Fr. Cassian interviewed on ETWN’s World Over Live. (6:06) I think we’re going to find out today how bad the damage was. But it looks likely the crypt church is OK. Underground stuff seems to have done pretty well. Whether it can be used regularly is another question. It’s tiny and has room only for a handful of congregants.

Was just in the piazza, and saw the engineer who’s inspecting the Basilica for damage. He had the Coolest. Robot. Ever. Basically, one of these with a camera attached. About nine-thirty this morning. Rai is the state broadcaster. Not much more news. Life returning mostly to normal in town. Most shops are open, people milling about. Still got a big RAI van in the Piazza. The main strip from the piazza down toward the Porta Romana.

Day 2 in Norcia has brought new challenges and a better sense of the damage, both physical and spiritual. The community departed Wednesday afternoon, 12 hours after the earthquake hit, for a temporary stay (Deo Volente, just 3 or 4 days) at St. Anselmo. While we hope they aren’t away for long and that it is safe enough for them to return soon, they are in fact in solidarity with most of the town of Norcia.

Singing the Office in the crypt church under the Basilica. Originally built in the 2nd century BC, it was the family home of Sts. Benedict and Scolastica. That press release was not… well… let’s say it’s not the way I would have worded it. I’ve had a dozen messages from people asking what I’m going to do now that the monks have abandoned Norcia and, as the Most Poorly Worded Press Release in History put it, “transferred the community to Rome.

This is Valletta, the capital of Malta, after the German bombing. Every stone of it was rebuilt, and you would never know. It is possible to rebuild. This is true of cities, as it is of the Faith. ~

Well, that was a new experience It was the noise. I’ve never in my life heard such a horrifying noise. It was so loud, I thought for a moment that my worst child-of-the-Cold War nightmares had come true, but then I realized there had been no flash. It took me another second – while this appalling roar was still getting louder – to realize it was an earthquake, and probably a really big one.

Because it’s all random chance… Yeah… just keep telling yourselves that… There’s more going on in the universe than you think. “…If it could be demonstrated that any complex organism existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” The trouble with the evidence… Meet my other friend, John, the kinesin motorprotein.

This pleaseth me. From Wiki: _“Both their first two albums of their recorded chants and hymns reached number 1 on the classical traditional Billboard charts in 2013, displacing ‘Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album,’ a musical tie-in to the erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey. “As of 9 August 2013, the group’s second album Angels and Saints at Ephesus reached the number 1 position on the Billboard traditional classical albums chart for 13 weeks,[7] a record duration on that chart since 2006.