"No one can speak for the Old Order Amish but themselves." "And they have seldom chosen to do so." "They have no interest in self-promotion." "Their life is their testimony." "At New Harlen, Pennsylvania, where weekly auctions thrive on their participation, they enjoy a free and friendly mingling with their neighbours." "Though their costume keeps them distinct, they are ready to do business with people of the world." "They will not willingly face the camera because they take the ten commandments seriously." "Including the one about making a graven image." "At the horse auction, they are involved as jockeys, and buyers, and sellers." "They talk to each other in the tongue of their forefathers." "A dialect deriving from southern Germany and Switzerland." "Wherever they live in America, it's nicknamed Pennsylvania dutch." "Their ancestors were Swiss mountain farmers from the canton of Bern." "Already a stubornly rural and tradition-loving people, they sidestepped the official clergy in the reformation of the 1520s and began to read the Bible in small groups with lay leaders, in simple response to the teachings of Jesus they abandoned warfare, refused to swear any oath," "and made baptism a voluntary commitment to the church." "The state-church establishment viewed their existence as a grave threat." "By 1670, harrassment was driving many of them north and west of the Rhine, particularly into the Alsace region." "Here they found good land and more freedom to live quietly." "In 1693, they experienced a division under a strict leader named Jacob Amon over issues such a the severity of church discipline and uniformity in clothing." "Amon's followers have since been called Amish and a larger, somewhat less conservative group, Mennonites." "The Alsacian villages of today have no more Amish, as a result of 18ths and 19ths century migrations to Pennsylvania and Ohio." "In the new world, religious tolerance and rich farmland have allowed the Amish family to prosper." "By the 21st century, it was approaching 200.000 souls, scattered across two dozen states and Ontario." "Harley Wagler left his Amish community in Kansas for the university at 19." "He tells what it's like to grow up on an Amish farm." "Right from the very start he develops an Amish way of looking at things simply becausehe doesn't have much opportunity to be exposed to other influences." "So that you are extremely conscious of your family, your home-setting." "Even in the toys you play with, many of them are home-made or hand-me-downs from your parents or even grand-parents." "You are very close to nature." "I remember I used to spend hours as a child walking out through the trees, looking at insects, birds, animals." "They fascinated me." "And it was part of my growing up." "A one-room school house is all you need to teach reading, writing and arithmetic, which will fit students to live in their farming community." "When the larger society discarded the 19th century type schools, the Amish setup a system in order to preserve them for themselves." "Here the father can be confident that his teaching at home is not cancelled out in his children's education." "As a lay trustee, he writes and signs the rules for the school he pays for without school funds." "Textbooks printed by an Amish publishing house stress the virtues of humility, duty, truthfulness, kindness, and orderliness." "Teaching about God is often considered too sacred for the school, and left to the church and home." "The teacher is usually a young woman with a great school education, who has shown aptitude in learning." "The Amish teach their children two languages, generation after generation." "It's the parents rather than the state who love their children for time and eternity, and they feel a solemn obligation to nurture their children, through innocence to the point of marriage, and entering the adult community of work and faith." "Between the time when parents yield their control over their childrens minds, and the time the community takes over, the peer-group is of extreme importance." "Simplicity is prized." "The Amish do not expect the world to understand this." "Learning or reading as ends in themselves, are seen as detrimental since they do not prepare a person with the practical skills and tastes needed for life in an Amish community." "The Amish have been given the right to substitute for the required highschool-years, training and work at home." "Carefully recorded in a daily journal which is reviewed by an instructor." "By the time Amish children are 14, most of them prefer to leave school for practical, vocational activities." "Their families need them economically, and that gives them a sense of worth." "At recess, there is plenty of chance for excercise without expensive, worldly sports equipment." "Physical and social enjoyment, rather than competitiveness is the point of the game." "The Amish were deeply moved by the words of Chief Justice Warren Berger in the landmark supreme court decision of 1972 which recognized the legality of the Amish educational way withing the American system." "Justice Berger wrote" ""There can be no assumption that today's majority is right and the Amish and others like them are wrong." "A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no rights or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different."" "An Amish farmer's horses are a prized possesion." "We used to regard them almost as members of the family." "We always fed them very well, took care of them very well during the winter." "Horses have their own personality anyway." "The standard colour for the Amish carriage in Lancaster County is grey." "Made by his own people, it may cost the Amishmen five or six thousand dollars." "He resisted electric lights until modern traffic and state laws made them necessary." "Now his lights flash a constant warning along country roads" ""Pre-20th century vehicle ahead!"" "The widening gap between old patterns and the sped-up modern context mesmerizes tourists." "What kind of spiritual energy can preserve such ways so far into the 21st century?" "And it isn't easy." "While bicycles are allowed in mid-western communities, in Lancaster County they are forbidden." "Slower moving scooters or kickbikes are allowed." "The no-bike rule isn't about sin." "It's about preserving obedience within a spiritual community." "Clothing, like all other aspects of Amish society, is strictly defined by what the Amish call their "Ordnung"." "The Ordnung is the set of rules which the ministers present" "This is the set of rules you live by." "Having stopped the clock of style centries ago, the Amish make their clothing express obedience to the Ordnung of the congregation." "and the suppression of "Hochmut" or pride." "The opposite of pride is "Demut", or humility." "Demut is... it is what you would like to be characterised by because this is Godliness." "They delight in the natural colours of the Earth, but they very carefully control the use of those colours so that they never become a means by which the individual asserts himself or herself over against the community." "Innocent children are not in as much danger of exploiting colour for egotistic purposes, but even their dress must declare their identity." "By her later teens the girl's head is always covered and she always wears an apron, symbol not only of humility but readiness for work." "On weekdays a kerchief may be allowed but when meeting the public or on Sundays she wears her cap neatly starched and a Sunday dress which will later serve for weekday use." "You know it's possible, even within the limitations of Amish dress to demonstrate Hochmut if you stretch the limitations of the Ordnung." "For example at home, we were not to wear pockets on our shirts because you could put nice things in here and these would be visible." "Some of the young people would wear these this was in a sense rebellion but it was also Hochmut." "It was one way of saying "Look at me"" ""Look at what I have that you don't have"." "That is Hochmut." "And... it's very important, especially for a married person not to demonstrate this." "Demut is the thing that you must strive for." "It shows in the simple old-fashioned profile of their houses." "When they buy a farm, they will not destroy what is already built though they may tear out the electric wiring." "When they add buildings themelves, their stress on simplicity is expressed in a severe plainness." "Several generations, and sometimes several families live on the same farm." "When parents turn over the main work of the farm to sons or sons in-law, they will move into a smaller section of the house called the Daati, or grandfather's house." "If there is none, one will be built on." "An amazing composite architecture evolves roofs, and gables and windows and porches form a pattern that means:" ""Love for the trans-generational family"" "New farms continue to be cut out of larger ones as the encroaching city shrinks the available acreage." "Even non-farming families must have room for horse and buggy." "To be humble, an Amish home must be simple." "but it's always substantial and in it's strictness, often beautiful." "Inside, it's just as plain and functional." "There's enough space in the kitchen for it to serve as a combination living and family room." "There may be some modern plumbing, but there is no electricity and the atmosphere of an earlier time persists." "The presurised gas-lamp stays on all evening." "It provides plenty of light to visit or read by." "In recent years, LED lamps have been replacing gas." "Reading material is usually limited to devotional, historical, and practical subjects with some harmless fiction and several regular Amish periodicals like The Diary, or Family Life." "The traditional farmer's almanach, listing Christian holidays and astrological data sometimes contains a directory of Amish settlements." "The Weekly Budget, published at Sugar Creek, Ohio is read by plain people in 36 states and even latin-american countries." "Over 700 writers send in accounts of meetings, visits, or accidents obituaries, and ads for auctions or plain clothing." "The sitting room is for company and a few nice things in it speak for hospitality more than pride." "A fancy calendar is acceptable because it's old-fashioned." "Consciousness of the family extends back through the generations." "Students of genetic diseases have turned to the Amish family records for research data." "Plenty of chairs provide for long Sunday afternoons of visiting." "The strictest of the Amish would have no upholstered furniture." "Folding doors can be opened to make a large area for church services at home." "By Saturday afternoon, preparations for a day of worship and visiting are nearly completed." "The Amish don't go to a church." "Their church meets in their homes." "A special wagon transports benches from house to house." "This home has a carriage shop, so chairs are brought out to it from the house." "They have no altar or holy place and keeping with their understanding of the words of Jesus," ""Where two or three of you have gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of you."" "Here the congregation will sit for a three-hour service of singing, preaching, and praying." "All ages will attend." "Chairs are supplied in the front rows for aged members and ministers." "The preaching will be done by men without special training, who have been selected for the role of minister from the congregation by the casting of lots." "On Sunday morning when the people arrive in church they stop before the church house or the house and turn the wheels to one side so that the ladies can get out of the buggy." "Then they drive on up in front of the barn and unhitch the horse, take the horse back into the barn, and then they usually come back out through the milk parlor." "And there they stand and visit until it's time to go in." "Adult men or the married men will go in together and the young fellows will always stay and go in just at the very last minute." "And... this is always a very exciting experience because it's usually arranged so that when you come in you have to walk in front of all the other people and then circle around behind, and sit on the back bench." "So this is a very exciting experience especially if you know that the girls out in the kitchen will be watching you as you walk in." "And usually there is a problem they sighting where are you going to put your hat." "And then you look around for nails on the wall or sometimes you just put it underneath your bench." "But the ministers when they come in, they always sit down together and only then do they take off their hats." "And then here again it's interesting to see them looking around" ""Where am I going to put my hat?"" "It's really a beatiful homey atmosphere." "For their singing, the Amish use the Ausband, or selection dating back to 1564." "It's the oldest Protestant hymn book in continuous use." "It consists mainly of martyr ballads and spiritual songs written by European anabaptists in the 16th and 17th centuries." "They sing by oral tradition with mordents and (...) and ballashing classic choir tunes almost beyond recognition." "The Lob song, I learned that at a very young age." "I think we had to learn that by heart before we could "rumspringen" at 16." "Menno Fisher's move with wife Katy into a car-driving fellowship left him at first worried about singing the Lob song to a faster tune." "Because I thought "How can you really think about what you're singing, if you sing that fast?"" "You know, if you stop thinking." "You go through this slowly and it has a little more time to sink in." "Though his own Amish church is less strictly disciplined," "Menno can still agree with the original Old Order principle of Shunning or "Meidung"." "The band is to constantly remind that person where he's at." "It's not a hate thing." "It's a, you know, God loves you where you're at and your parents love you." "It's put there to remind them constantly that you are excommunicated." "But then what happens is, yeah, the person repents and decides "I wanna make my things right and come back to the church"." "So they go to the bishop of the ministry and then they go to a council for a few Sundays in a row and if the minister then is convinced that this person has really repented then they take him back in... at the service." "Men are in one room and women in the other." "And usually the minister stands in the doorway between these two rooms so that he can speak to one group and then the other." "And while they are preaching they'll usually develop a rhythm a kind of sing-song method of delivery." "When an Amishman talks Dutch, it helps him to understand who he is." "Ivan Glick, grandson of Old Order Amish, lives among Amish neighbours." "It's a part of identity" "I think at least as much, perhaps more than the plain clothes." "There is a feel and things than you can express with an Amishman in dialect so that there is an instantaneous sense of intimacy that otherwise does not happen." "The Amishmen will accept a new invention or implement, but only after it is clear that this will not change his way of life, or threaten his community and the rules that bind it together." "or make him a slave to what people call "Progress"." "Even if he puts a motor on his scythe delivery rig, he will outfit it with his own kind of Ordnung-compatible wheels minus rubber tires." "Too much mobility would make the pace of life hectic." "It would be too modern." "Some Old Order Mennonites, who also resist modernity, have decided that they can accept tractors but only with steel wheels." "Tourists may not distinguish between some Mennonites and the Amish, since their costume is closely related." "But differences in hats, dress colours and bonnets keep those identities clear among the plain people themselves." "The Old Order Amishman is not yet ready for self-propelled equipment." "This, he fears, would set off a chain reaction whereby everybody would follow the principles of efficiency and convenience to the neglect of humility and communal discipline." "Still, he doesn't object to the internal combustion engine and places it on horse-drawn equipment without any concern for his neighbour's inability to figure out what seem to be an inconsistency." "It makes sense to the Amishmen." "It simply means that he will not let modern technology run away with his community or his family at its own pace." "He'll accept some progress." "But he won't sacrifice to progress all contact with the past and its virtues." "On a modern farm, a self-propelled combine would require only one person for the whole grain-harvesting operation." "What the Amish lose in speed, they gain in fellowship." "Work, under the right circumstances, is as enjoyable as play." "Shared work is, in many cases, the Amishmen's recreation." "A tractor is allowed for belt-power, but not to pull equipment in the field." "That would be crossing an invisible technological line that the Amish define for the sake of their community." "By resisting technological change, or at least slowing it down to controllable speed, the Amish also keep their old people from becoming obsolete as fast as the machinery of their youth is outmoded." "Maintaining simple ways of farming lessens the distance between the generations." "Shared within the family, hard work becomes a seasonal ritual." "You've done it before with your parents, and you'll do it again in the same way with your children." "Greater speed and size in their implements might eliminate some labour, but the Amish find their happiness and meaning in labour, rather than in escape from it." "John A. Hostetler, author of the book Amish Society, grew up on a Pennsylvania Amish farm." "What we see in the Amish community is children closely identified sitting on the lap of their father, hovering in the fields, or riding the horse." "First of course he helps to do things with his mother and father." "Whether perhaps in the garden or perhaps in the chicken house and imitate the adults in those ways." "I remember when I was a kid," "I was so fascinated by the thrashing we did on our farm and I made myself a little thrashing machine that was pure imitation of what my older brothers and father were doing." "And I could identify with that." "He begins to work as soon as he is physically capable." "You ask him to gather the eggs as soon as he is able to carry a bucket out into the chicken house." "He is taught to have responsibility." "Then as you grow older, you get more and more responsibilities." "And then eventually you get to the place where you can do the chores so that if dad is gone, he doesn't have to worry about being at home on time." "And it's very serious to accept your responsibilities and fulfill them." "It's expected that a skill like backing-up a four-wheeled implement with horses will be learned young by immitation." "The experienced father takes the more advanced role of driving the corn picker while the son drives the wagon receiving the ears." "When the son's horses shy from the intrusive camera, the father takes over calmly." "His example lets the son learn not only skills, but attitude." "That includes even a friendly gesture towards the uninvited cameraman." "You like play very much too." "But in order to enjoy play it's good to have some work done so that you feel you deserve play." "At farm auctions," "Amish and Old Order Mennonite boys sometimes play cornerball, a form of dodgeball with a home-made, leather-covered ball thrown from four corners." "Here the Mennonites are throwing, and the Amish are in the ring." "When he's hit, he is asked to leave the ring." "If the thrower misses, he is out." "The game will go on most of the day." "Sometimes there are two games." "One for the smaller boys." "The years just before baptism can be a time of running around, called "Rumspringen" in Pennsylvania Dutch." "There is an unwritten law in Amish society whereby young people are given more liberties than old people." "They wink at these among younger people." "This varies from group to group but at home this meant dressing up the horse's harness or turning up the rims of your hat." "A girl would start attending the singings where they get that gotta for hymn sings on Sunday night." "at perhaps 15 or 16." "The boy, generally, 16 or 17." "And they would learn to associate with their peers." "First of all, in this rather large assembly of young people." "And they would belong to a peer group which they sometimes call a "gang"." "It's that group that sort of controls what you do and where you go." "In fact, you may go to this for a whole year before you even have a date." "A young boy would be embarrassed to ask for his first date so he'd never... he'd just wait." "He would ask his sister for a... to ask a certain girl for a date whether he can take her home that night in a buggy, see." "You want to have a good harness and you'd like to have 8 or 10 ivory rings on the lines that stretch back from the horse to the driver." "We had open buggies and we were not allowed to drive in a closed buggy on a Sunday you know with the young (...), oh no." "That was a no-no, til you get married." "I think the Amish child working as he would, doing a full-day's job from the age of 16 to 21, has a lot of time to think as he is working in the fields with horses and deep sleep at night." "I think the meaning of life becomes focused so that the person may perhaps reject it for a year or it may become somewhat marginal but eventually comes back and makes a decision." "Now, if he decides to join and later leaves obviously he will be excommunicated and shunned because he would have broken a vow." "Included in the baptismal lists published in The Diary are the names of parents." "Nothing is more important to the Amish than their childrens continuing in their family of faith." "They respect the family and the church tremendously." "I have a good friend in the Old Order church happily married." "He was working in a trailer factory for a number of years and didn't like this." "But I remember when we were young people going together there were many, many discussions that we had since the option was open" ""Do we want to join a church where we can drive cars and have radios and telephones and things like this?" Or" ""Are we going to stay in the Amish church and be faithful to our heritage?"" "He stayed in the church." "He's very happy." "He has a nice Amish wife and two children." "And they live just as simply as his parents did." "And I also think he is satisfied with himself because he feels that he has not betrayed his parents." "He said it's much better to be back on the farm because you are closer to God." "Every year, nearly two hundred Amish couples begin housekeeping in Lancaster County and many will buy a new carriage." "Making these, and replacements for worn-out or wrecked carriages provides work for men who are crowded off the farm." "Here, crafts that have been largely forgotten elsewhere thrive and are handed on." "The trend toward collecting and restoring antiques brings to this shop more restauration work than the crew can handle." "Power equipment is run by compressed air, supplied by a Diesel engine rather than electricity from the public utility which is forbidden by the Ordnung." "The Amishman feels it's his responsibility to be neighbourly to his neighbour, to be a good neighbour, to help him if he needs help, and also to ask him for help if he needs help." "They will not hesitate to ask a good neighbour for automobile transportation, though once they join the church they may not own cars themselves." "While they do use some folk remedies and would not study medicine in a university, they appreciate and gladly pay for good medical and hospital service." "In the late 80s, a Harvard trained physician brought to Lancaster's countryside a non-profit clinic, aimed at the special needs of Amish and Mennonite children." "People should understand how important this community, this very community has been to the science of genetics." "Doctor Holmes Morton and wife Caroline, working on a former field of an Amish farm, have brought sympathetic interests to bear on special needs among the plain people." "This building itself really was built with money that came from contributions from an article that ran in the Wall Street Journal." "And from that, we got our initial donations of both, lab equipment and money to start the clinic from about 1000 people from around the United States." "Now, this building was built by the community and is in a real sense owned by the community." "It was amazing." "We did the timber frame raising because we wanted the community involved in this right from the start." "We wanted them to have a sense that this was their building, you know, their clinic." "And I think that worked." "The framing went up in one day." "And actually the addition, the roof was actually on within that one day." "There's an overriding interest in these cultures throughout the United States, really throughout the world." "They are very well known." "Particularly to physicians and scientists who are interested in genetics." "We knew that these small populations of people had examples of genetic conditions which other places were rare but here were common." "And, from the point of view of a biologist, what you learn about the Amish" "Glutaric aciduria is relevant to every other case of Glutaric aciduria in the world." "Accessible family records had enabled Victor A. McKusick to publish ground-breaking research on the Amish in 1978." "Out of that grew the human catalog of genetic diseases which now is the online-catalog of human diseases in the... it's part of the human genome database." "The Mortons respect their Amish clients." "I think they are very accepting, and I think this is something that's unique about this population." "They call these "God's special children"." "And I think they, as a community, value them and feel a responsibility for them." "On the day of the raising of the original building they passed out little squares with all the names of those children or patients who come here." "Telephones, used by almost all Amish, are not allowed in homes." "That would allow convenience to dictate the family atmosphere, rather than simplicity and loyalty to the congregation of Christ, which they call the "Gemei"." "And keeping the little telephone booth on the other side of the road, or halfway in the lane, or at least no closer than the porch, holds the proud world at a controllable distance from the minds of the precious children." "At home with the daily chores is the safe place for Amish children to grow up." "Because the milking machine makes it possible for the family dairy to stay in business, it has been accepted." "Economic pressures have forced them to reconsider an earlier ban on bulk milk tanks." "They are constantly struggling with questions." ""What should we permit, and what should we not permit?"" "They did not permit bulk tanks for many years, but they have permitted them in order to keep more of the Amish farmers working on the farm, rather than having to go to the trailer factories or somewhere else." "It isn't as cut and dry as we think perhaps." "The Amish like to do business in one-to-one relationships where they can sell what they raise, or make, or bake at home." "In turn, many customers enjoy buying from an Amish person." "There is a simplicity and directness about the farmers market that make it one of the main places where they can meet the public without any threat to their way of life." "Millions of tourists visit Lancaster every year understandably fascinated by the profile of the Amish and the proverbial quality of their workmanship." "Talking to an Amishman is like stepping back in time." "Whether the Amish are responsible for this or not, they are going to be affected by it." "And it's shameful in some ways to see this happening to them." "Many persons or organisations stand ready to explain the Amish phenomenon for a fee." "Most offer tourists a favourable interpretation if not sometimes almost unrealistically sentimental." "After all the Amish people can have their own quota of problems as they work at keeping their own deliberate pace in the shadow of an ever faster moving America." "The Amish are literally, they believe, in the hands of God." "There are increasingly accidents on the road and it's a problem for the Amish people to cross the major highways." "Accidents will happen and I think the Amish have somewhat resigned to them." "When Amish communities change, they often take on eventualistic interests." "They would probably did think that they want to be getting away from traditions that are obsolete." "That's the way they'd look at it." "And they would want to have more of the personal experience and articulation of how they feel whether they have been saved whether they have the assurance of salvation." "And now all those terms are come from the fundamentalist tradition I believe and they are foreign to the Old Order Amish who regard them as the individualism ruling over the community." "So that's why it's threatening to the traditional community." "With their rural neighbours," "Amish farmers are unable to match the prices developers are willing to pay for open land." "Yeah, this land situation is the problem." "I mean the, the young man that wants to start up farming and his dad can't buy a farm for him just leaves." "And he can't buy a farm to stop it." "Those Amish who want their children to stay on their soil really have to move out of Lancaster county." "There are no more farms for them." "So they have started new small communities elsewhere." "As opportunity to farm diminishes in the oldest settlements, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, vigourous Amish communities have been expanding in New York," "Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin." "Those who have decided to stay are going into craft production and making things that can be sold at the end of the farmland or in tourist shops and so on." "Retailing home-grown foods or plants has frequently been a family's first commercial venture." "But now, a variety of shops are putting growing pressure on local zoning ordnances." "The burgeoning manufacturing culture adds a novel dimension to the Amish landscape." "In many communities, where less than half of the population can still make their living on the land, it has become common to see, added to the traditional domestic profile, the family factory." "Amish ingenuity is more than adequate to devise Diesel-driven equipment, sufficient to power the machine shops that stay within the boundaries of the Ordnung." "There's..." "I don't know how many Amish building sheds" "I mean there's hundreds of sheds leave this county a day." "It's unbelievable." "And there is big businesses." "We have welding shops." "They are building plows and cultivators and if they can't buy it, they'll make it." "That's the bottom line." "Amish-run businesses are even moving into industrial parks." "Observers may well ponder how this new scale of operation with it's new contacts, Internet websites, and even foreign trade will affect the Amish dream of a simple, non-conforming life." "In the 1970s," "Amish quilts stunned the art world from New York to Los Angeles." "Since then, they have been called an "American treasure"." "The Amish signature of simplicity is what often catches the eye." "In this form borrowed from English neighbours." "The stitching itself can be exquisite, but it's the bold designs, like the often combined square and lozenge contrasting light and darker fabrics, that have an uncanny power." "I just love these rich colours and the purples and blues which I use so often in my work." "Artist Freiman Stoltzfus can look through the eyes of his plain Lancaster county neighbours." "Because I know those people, I mean I grew up with them." "They are my cousins, and my aunts and uncles." "And so they are human beings." "They are not really that special but they are just lovely people." "Basically I realise now their quilt colours and I love them because of their depth." "I really love the idea of breaking down an image and reconstructing it and I thought "Why not do it with quilt patterns?"." "So that's what I've been doing quite a lot with this as well." "The Amish are indeed a people of pattern." "It's just six or seven hats I think that just have kind of their own rhythm or life." "And a sense of playfulness which I think a lot of people miss about this culture which is after all folk culture and... and... has a great sense of fun." "Years of vacationing in the region of Sarasota, Florida, have led to a growing permanent Amish community there." "All winter there are weekly arrivals and departures." "Everyone see the bus comes in on Thursday and leaves." "And... oh boy... that's quite the thing I mean right behind a tourist church and everything." "Everybody was there to see who's coming and so on and so forth." "The Amish atmosphere of interest, aid, fellowship and kinship, has been brought south." "From Arthur, Illinois, or Middlebury, Indiana, or Berlin, Ohio, or Honey Brook, Pennsylvania." "The "Freundschaft"-circle back home is only a posted stamp away." "In the heavily Amish Pinecraft community there are many, so called "Church Amish"." "Houses in the neighbourhood, though of generic architecture, must be simple enough to pass muster with the Ordnung." "If rented by Amish, they may have electricity, but not a phone." "Who but the Amish would produce a townscape playfully blending southern palms, with northern windmills?" "While the mild southern weather is the natural attraction, socialising, even across various Amish divisions is the main enjoyment." "The shape of a woman's cap immediately identifies her as not from Pennsylvania, but the Midwest, where some Amish young people still yodel." "The strength of the Amish community is dramatically visualised after a barn or house burns." "The Amishman is never alone in his struggles and he is bailed out by people he knows rather than by a commercial insurance policy." "When an un-Amish farm family along Peckway Creek loses their 200-year old barn to arson, the Amish come to help as much as if it was one of their own." "Arriving early at their Mennonite neighbour's farm, they bring long experience with disaster recovery." "No publicity is wanted." "In recent years, skid loaders have been increasingly used, a practice watched with some concern by conservative bishops." "There is no waste motion in Amish workmanship." "They want to get the job done, done right, and done soon." "After the clean-up and preliminary work, a skilled foreman oversees the cutting and notching of the heavy timbers." "Everything will quickly and precisely fit together, like a giant Lego." "And then when they are ready to put the beams together that's when everybody comes with a hammer and a saw whatever it is you can do best with you bring your own tool." "And you simply gang up with somebody else and work together." "Before the morning mist has cleared the mortised framework has taken shape." "The man overseeing the teamwork is hardly distinguishable from the voluntary crew, as he orchestrates the immemorial ritual." "It's sometimes called a frolic." "And it serves as an unconscious sacrament of community." "I think they experience a sense of community as the rest of us aren't aware of." "And... there are many little ways in which these people support each other." "The men do it, particularly in their work." "For many viewers, the impressive image of the Amish barn-raising represents mainly a fascinating survival of pre-modern patterns." "But it's also been seen as a symbol of something fundamental to civilisation, and so in 1977, a photograph of the phenomenon was chosen to be placed among the images, music, and voices in 55 languages" "on the Voyager spacecraft, inscribed on Gold-plated Copper discs." "The old-fashioned barn-raising scene was rocketed out toward the Milky Way to offer to unknown alien viewers this timeless tabloid of human cooperation." "When the Amishman's body is returned to the earth he has tilt, he is surrounded in death as he was in life, by his community." "Dear man, discover what you are." "Learn here what your existence is." "How swiftly flees your span of life." "From time into eternity." "They are a people who believe that the Earth is the Lord's." "And we are to be stewards." "A people who have reached conclusions different from most moderns." "Who fear pride and who don't argue with nature." "Who know how to accept limits." "Who believe that order brings unity and contentment." "Who will not sacrifice community for convenience." "Who have not surrendered their identity to technological progress." "Whose past is alive in their present." "A people who live what they believe." "Who are in the world but only partly of it." "A people of preservation." "A people of God."