This October will mark 5 years since the Nickel Mines shootings. Â The Amish forgiveness story was hugely powerful and quickly spread around the world, in part because it was so unusual. Â People just don’t forgive, so quickly, after a crime of such magnitude. Five years on, one wonders how much the lessons of the Amish at Nickel Mines have stuck with us. The Young Center…
Mention “Ohio Amish”, and most people think of the large settlement at Holmes County, or perhaps Geauga County to its north. But just a short ways down the road from the large Holmes settlement lies an often-overlooked but sizeable Amish community. Â Amish have lived in Ashland and neighboring Medina County for nearly sixty years. Ashland and Medina County Amish About 2,000 Amish live here, in…
“It turns out that beach houses and Amish timber frames are a match made in heaven” explains the narrator in today’s video. Below, a neat clip showing an Amish construction crew rebuilding in Texas, post-Hurricane Ike. In the video, Missouri Amish builder Danny Schwartz demonstrates timber frame construction (the kind used on Amish barns, with wooden pegs driven in by mallets). Â “Our attitude to building…
I resisted Facebook for a good while, but finally got a profile back in 2009. Â Since then, I’ve often thought about the above question. What got me pondering this today, though, was an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (“Amish learn value of networking”). Â Amish are using social networking to market their products, with the help of third parties. Â PA Amish farmer and co-op member…
When I first met the Amish, I spent a warm fuzzy period admiring and even idealizing Amish society. Â This was in the summer of 2004, and I was selling a set of books called the Family Bible Library to Amish families. Â I had spent a fruitful few weeks in the Arthur, Illinois community before traveling to Indiana. I remember one day in the Daviess County,…
Over the past few weeks we’ve tried to show the diverse interiors of Amish homes, from the plainer to the more progressive. I hope you enjoy this shot today from a more conservative Swartzentruber Amish home: What do you spy on that dresser? Hanging around: Special thanks to Karen Johnson-Weiner (author of New York Amish: Life in the Plain Communities of the Empire State)Â for sharing…
I know it’s a bit late for snowy photos, but I wanted to share one more batch of shots from the Big Valley area of Pennsylvania. Â Big Valley is home to three Amish groups: Nebraska, Renno, and Byler Amish. If you missed the first set, here are the original 10 views of Big Valley Amish. And…
The Connection is one of numerous new Amish periodicals Amish readers have enjoyed a variety of new publications over the past few years. Â One of my favorites is called The Connection. Â The Connection is published out of Topeka, Indiana, and features a variety of columns and articles written by Amish from around the country (as well as a few non-Amish). Two things that makes this…
What a neat video today. Â Auctioneers have always fascinated me–their cadence of speech, command of a crowd, how they inject otherwise mundane transactions with excitement and immediacy. And Amish auctioneers doubly so. Â You’ll find no professional actors, musicians, or entertainers among Amish. Â But I’ve often thought that auctioneers are the closest to “show business” the Amish get. Getting up on stage, mic-ed up, all eyes…
You might think that Amish people would ride horseback often. After all, they certainly have much familiarity and experience with horses. Horses pull Amish carriages, and provide brute force on the farm, powering a range of farming equipment. Yet Amish rarely saddle up. Simply put, Amish riding horseback is not common. I see it from time to time, but it’s usually youth, mostly girls. You…