A while back a reader asked if Amish obituaries are made public. I responded with a post on the topic. I see them appear in news feeds nearly daily. They are published in newspapers and find their way online. With that in mind this recent obituary caught my eye for two reasons. One is that it is from the Somerset County, Pennsylvania community. I typically…
Over 200 calves died following an explosion and fire which ravaged an Amish farmer’s barn yesterday. From WNDU: ELKHART COUNTY, Ind. (WNDU) – An Amish calf barn caught on fire this afternoon, killing the majority of the family’s calves. The call came in around 4:30 p.m. Crews responded to the 59000 block of State Road 13 in Middlebury. Neighboring fire departments assisted. Crews said they…
Amish Cook columnist Gloria Yoder just had a baby boy and is off for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, editor Kevin Williams chose a nice old column of Gloria’s to run while she’s on break – on how she and her husband Daniel began dating. First, Gloria describes the dating norms in her Illinois New Order Amish community: I’ll first give you a…
This video is titled “Amish Singing On Amtrak”. The quality is passable though not great. But I couldn’t pass up sharing it. This video combines two themes seen here in recent months – Amish singing and Amish on trains. The men singing do appear to be Amish. I count at least three of them. The only detail the uploader put in the video description is…
I put “Amish tourism” in quotes in the title because those two words usually mean non-Amish tourists visiting Amish areas. But this is the other, less-common meaning – Amish as tourists themselves. It turns out a good number of Amish people are rather fond of a Colorado hot springs resort town named Glenwood Springs, which happens to lie on an Amtrak train route. It’s not…
On the whole, the Amish are avid hunters. In Nature & The Environment in Amish Life, one Amishman puts plainly how much hunting mattered in his community: “When I was growing up, if you didn’t hunt, it was almost as if you didn’t belong.” (p. 148). Why does hunting appeal to the Amish? For one, hunting is an outdoor activity that can be done with…
York College professor Charles A. Kauffman has a nice article just out in the York Daily Record on the Pennsylvania Dutch language. I pulled five excerpts answering questions on the language – including examples of Pennsylvania Dutch phrases, and what exactly is meant by “Dutchified” English. I’ve also included three videos, giving examples of Pennsylvania Dutch and Dutchified English by native speakers. 1. Why “Dutch”?…
Here’s another Amish musical performance. This one stands out for two reasons – instruments, and a big audience. The scene is the Mt. Hope Kidney Fund Auction in Mt. Hope, Ohio. You can see by the backs of heads that this crowd is filled with Amish people. On stage are three Amish girls. Recently we heard the songs of two Amish sisters, one of whom…
Cool video. Amish in Vernon County, Wisconsin put up a barn over the course of twelve hours – condensed into a one-minute video (note: I believe they’ve edited the vid down further as it was originally about two minutes long). This time-lapse clip from 2016 shows the whole thing go up, interspersed with some still photos. Video at the bottom (credit Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). This…
Last week we heard two Amish sisters singing Amazing Grace, accompanied by one sister’s guitar playing. There were actually several more songs from that same after-dinner session that I wanted to share with you. It sounds like these lucky diners got a nice little concert. These songs are all a bit peppier than the slower Amazing Grace classic. First up is “Bigger Than Any Mountain“:…