A nine-year-old Amish girl was accidentally shot on her family’s Mercer County, Pennsylvania farm on Saturday. Firearms are common in Amish farm households. The father had been using the 12-gauge shotgun to shoot rodents, and set it down to fish on a pond on the property. According to PA State Trooper Joseph Morris, “there were several younger children that we believe caused the firearm to discharge.”…
I’m in Lancaster County this week, catching up on all the pie I’ve missed eating, and doing other important thing like that…but I will be popping in here periodically. And we have some posts lined up for you. Look for another “Five Points” list post on Wednesday (topic hint: this week’s list was inspired by the response to one of last week’s posts). And on…
You’re never too old to throw a snowball, right? I’m 36, and I’ll confess to tossing a few earlier this winter, so I hope not 🙂 . On the lighter side of things, the photos here are from a snowball fight that broke out among Amish youth somewhere in northern Indiana. The photographer writes: “A youth was joining church today in our district and there were…
Indiana Amish church member Merlyn Yoder, who previously wrote on the Ausbund and singing for church ministers, returns today with a little food for thought. Merlyn’s piece gave me something to think about, at least. As you go through your daily grind, you never know when an impressionable someone may be watching. — While going through life we all have role models. We have our various…
With the recent Amish smoke alarm controversy in mind, Tom Geist may very well have found a solution to the problem. Clearly, Tom has a sense of humor. Apparently the Swartzentruber Amish people he shares this with do too: “They all seem to laugh” says Tom. As you can see from these photos, this is very low-tech indeed. With the added bonus of being easy-to-construct…
How do Amish religious beliefs shape their views of nature? What outdoor recreational activities do they favor? What can be learned about their approach to gardening, animal husbandry, and agriculture? David McConnell and Lyn Loveless are exploring many questions like these in a new book project on the Amish and nature. Lyn Loveless is a professor of biology at the College of Wooster, and David is…
How do Amish harvest ice? Arthur Bolduc recently joined a crew for a day of ice-cutting in Knox County, Ohio to give an inside look into the process. Ice is a necessity for those Amish who don’t use mechanical refrigeration, relying instead on ice houses. But the way they get their ice varies. Amish in Geauga County, for instance, purchase ice stored in ice vending stations scattered throughout the…
I’m happy to welcome Janneken Smucker, author of Amish Quilts: Crafting an American Icon, who will be sharing her Amish quilt expertise with us here. Janneken is Assistant Professor of History at West Chester University, consulting curator for the International Quilt Study Center & Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and author of multiple publications on quilts and quilting (read a Q-and-A with Janneken on Amish quilts). Janneken…
Amish researcher and writer Donald Kraybill will be retiring from his position at Elizabethtown College as senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. This semester will be his last one teaching at the college. I wanted to share a few thoughts, including on how I first met Don. I also asked Don a few questions about his plans now, challenges of his work,…
Author Serena Miller believes so. A TIME magazine article titled “Why Amish Kids Are Happier Than Yours” offers five “secrets” English parents can learn from the Amish. They’re taken from Miller’s book More Than Happy: The Wisdom of Amish Parenting. One of these five ideas I hadn’t thought of before. Any guess which one? Here they are, summarized: Extended Family – large family networks boost a child’s well-being. Imperfect Hospitality –…