News from Kiev

This has been a fairly painless fall.  Usually I am praying for heat by the end of September…But of course the heat doesn’t come on until October 15th. Several years ago when the weather was in the lower 40’s my heat didn’t come on entirely for 6 days after the promised date. What a relief when all my radiators were working. This year we didn’t have extremely cold weather until yesterday.  We all wondered if today would really bring heat as promised. What a joy to our hearts to feel hot radiator pipes!!!!!!! Of course now I will probably be warmer than you all in the US…our heat is set at around 74 degrees.

What a world of difference between the present election and the orange revolution.  Yanakovich learned from Yushenko and at the beginning of trouble he immediately set up his stage and tents on the main street like Yushenko had done.  Only he doesn’t have enough people to block traffic as in the orange revolution.  The spirit of the Orange revolution was peace, joy, hope.  The center of the city was a quiet, peaceful place to be even in the midst of 100’s of 100,000’s of people.  I don’t feel so safe with Yanakovich’s followers.  I heard that Yushenko’s followers or maybe Julie’s were going to parade down the street and the communist threatened to block it.  I haven’t even been in the center of the city to see what is going on.

People are so discouraged after not seeing the changes that they had hoped for after the revolution that they are very apathetic at least here in Kiev. Of course out west they are more politically active. I was in western Ukraine the week before the election. They filled their town square with people and flags.  It was like a miniture orange revolution.