Notes from the recent Lancaster trip, part two: Normally I drive an old, wheezing-but-somehow-still running red truck. It’s got, let’s see, around 275,000 miles? But like an old faithful dog or a worn-but-still-comfy-recliner, we’ve been through a lot together, and it’s just hard to get rid of it. Abe calls it ‘the squeaky truck’ in reference to the telltale noise it makes, by which he…
Just back from Lancaster County. Has been a whirlwind of finishing the final manuscript (submitted), looking ahead to finish the Polish-language Amish book (nearly done), and another top-secret project or two. But in between running around the County a few interesting happenings happened. I dragged my father up this time, for an intense week in Amish Boot Camp. When you are accustomed to the accoutrements…
Back in June I posted on Japanese interest in the Amish and included some comments and photos from Donald Kraybill, fresh from a lecture tour of the island nation. Since that time, Stephen Scott, also of the Young Center, has visited Japan to share knowledge on America’s best-known Plain People. In this article from today’s Lancaster Sunday News (no longer online) Kraybill and Scott share…
Hutterites are Anabaptist cousins of the Amish who share certain traits in common, including plain dress, the practice of social shunning, and adult baptism. They differ in a few key areas, including technology–Hutterites accept a wide array of technologies, including the automobile, but especially those that help increase yield on the wide parcels of land they farm. While Amish live in individual homes next to…
An Amish acquaintance in Lebanon County, PA has kindly passed on a link to a Lancaster Sunday News story I’d missed from a couple of weeks back. Demonstrating that unceasing Amish innovative drive, it seems the folks at Stoltzfus Coach Supply have hitched up a new buggy alternator (no longer online) device to keep running lights juiced. The alternator solves two issues–the danger of a…
Outsiders sometimes express a desire to join the Amish. As an Amish authority explains in Richard Stevick's Growing up Amish: The Teenage Years, seekers often come with misguided notions: "When seekers from the outside come to us wanting to be Amish," explained a bishop, "they are often attracted for the wrong reasons. They could have fallen in love with one of our Youngie. Or they…
Outside of a childhood trip to Lancaster County and a brief day in a southern Michigan Amish community, Arthur, Illinois was the place where I first came to know Amish, while selling books there in 2004. Arthur is in fact the sixth largest Amish settlement, with a population of about 4,000. Arthur is a community about 3 hours south of Chicago in the flat farmland…
People often wonder about the Amish and photography. Documentarian and film & media professor Dirk Eitzen has an interesting chapter on filming the Amish in the exceptional Amish and the Media. Eitzen describes three methods used by those wishing to visually document the Amish: pushiness, poaching, and focusing on children and young adults. I suppose if I had to confess, I would qualify as a…
Here’s a link to the BBC ‘Trouble in Amish Paradise’ documentary, now hosted on an Australian site (since removed). I don’t know how long it will be up, but if you’d like to view it, I’d go ahead and do it in case it is taken down. It’s not quite a full hour long. As to the narrative background, they get some things right, they…
I recently came across a transcript from George Bush senior’s 1989 meeting with Mennonite and Amish leaders in Lancaster County. It’s interesting to read not only for those seeking late 80s era nostalgia but for the interesting dynamic between the President and the typically spotlight-shunning Amish and Mennonites as they take the stage in a very high-profile context. The event is ostensibly about Bush meeting…