A few steps forward, several back

Mere teases of sunshine, and then we get winter again; had to dig out the winter gloves and socks. Yes we'll have no tomatoes to speak of, I guess. When I went up to see my mother, the skies blackened, thunder sounded, and hail and snow fell. The poor little ladies looked out the windows and shook their heads. They won't be taking the air any time soon, they detect drafts instantly. There was quite a distraction, as the woman who's been the activities director for several years was being feted at a retirement party. She's separated from her husband, and is moving back to the Midwest to spend some time with her children and grandchildren before they go back to the Ukraine as missionaries. When I asked her why they were going so far away, she informed me that "When God calls, you have to answer. You may try to fight it, but it's too strong!" She was the person who railed against Halloween, saying it was the Devil's night, and wouldn't let her kids go out. Fundamentalist religious types sure as hell know how to spoil any kind of fun. She is a good-hearted person, but utterly brainwashed, and keen on doing it to others. Odd connection with my current reading, Colin Thubron's The Lost Heart of Asia, in which he encountered Korean fundie missionaries in Tajikistan. And several Russian people he met were heading back to the Ukraine, getting out of the 'stan countries after perestroika. I've started his next volume, Shadow of the Silk Road, although the cumulative effect of his experiences and observations of them is almost overwhelming tragic and horrible. Central Asia has been looted, plundered, raped and polluted for millenia, but the Soviets and Chinese have sped up and enlarged the process horrifically. It's all Thubron can do to find any kind of whisper of an unruined past.