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Bed & Breakfasts - Amish style?
I'm not a huge fan of bed and breakfasts. Call me anti-social (sometimes) but when I am traveling I just kind of like to come and go as I please and not really have to talk to a ton of people. A chain hotel - bed bugs aside - offers the kind of anonymity and impersonality that I often prefer when I am traveling. Rachel and I stayed at a bed and breakfast in Sandusky, Ohio earlier this year and I felt like I was a teenager living with Mom and Dad. We had to tip-toe in late at night, stifle all snoring lest the guests right across the hall hear, and make all sorts of pleasant small talk with the hosts at breakfast. Ususually in the morning I don't say much, other than a grunt or two, until the caffeine is coursing through me. But this hostess was as chipper as a cardinal with her breakfast chatter while I wanted to just silently eat my waffles. There are some exceptions, though, and most of them happen to be tucked away in Amish country. I LOVE the Murphin Ridge Inn in Adams County, Ohio's Amish community. And I'm also a big fan of the Sunflower Inn in Yoder, Kansas. The latter is in a converted Amish buggy shop and is run by non-Amish. It appears, though, that a bed & breakfast in Minnesota is taking the Amish experience to a whole new level. I think the bed & breakfast sounds kind of cool, it's tucked away in the hilly Amish settlement near Harmony, Minnesota. But check out the writer, I think they went a bit overboard in selling the Amish part: "you get to stay in an Amish home, be served an Amish breakfast, by an Amish person." Just brought a chuckle to my lips for some reason. Click here to read the article.
Mailbox Trip Turns Deadly....
Sad, sad story out of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. An 8-year-old Amish boy on his scooter was killed on Saturday as he crossed a busy road to get to his family's mailbox. He was crossing the road on his scooter. I have been on Old Philadelphia Pike east of Lancaster, near Bird-in-Hand. I am sure many of our site visitors have because that is sort of in the center of the bustling "Amish tourist zone". This is a very, very busy thoroughfare connecting Lancaster wth Bird-in-Hand and nearby snicker-inducing Intercourse. Not too long ago a 77-year-old Amish woman was killed performing the same routine task of crossing the street to get her mail. Motorists need to slow down in this area. This particular road has become what I call a "paradoxcal paradise." It's generally peaceful and pastoral in this slice of Lancaster County, which attracts harried city-dwellers, which then bring with them the very same problems - gridlock, frazzled nerves - they came to escape. Too bad the mailboxes couldn't be placed at the resident's homes. But in the meantime, if you are driving down this neat stretch of road: SLOW down. Click here to read more about the accident.
Fire Roars Through Der Dutchman....
Der Dutchman is part of a small chain of "Amish-style" restaurants. There is a location in Waynesville, Ohio, one up around Mansfield,and another in Pinecraft, Florida. I never quite understood why there was one in Waynesville since there really aren't any Amish around here and there certainly weren't any when the restaurant opened some two decades ago. But I remember when I was a young 18-year-old reporter with the Middletown Journal working on a story about the German Baptists. One of my first stops - naively - was Der Dutchman. I thought somehow I could make some connections there. Instead I all got was a pretty young waitress dressed in a bonnet and plain dress serving me pot roast. I don't think the servers wear costumes anymore. But the young waitress knew about as much about the "plain people" as I did (which was nothing). So I enjoyed the pot roast and left, notebook empty I think the last time I was there was for my grandmother's 81st birthday, about 3 years ago. The food isn't bad, but like any large, large restaurant I just don't think it can replicate true "homemade type" cooking. Still, the fire is obviously a tragedy and the restaurant is a decent place to go for an OK meal. Click here to read about the fire.
UPDATED: Old Order German Baptist Accident
SherryK posted about this earier and Diann emailed me about this over the weekend. A horse-drawn buggy driven by a 16-year-old boy was rear-ended outside of Covington, Ohio on Saturday. The boy was in critical condition but he has been upgraded to "fair" and is expected to survive. The horse was not so lucky and had to be put down. Aside from the tragedy factor, this story is interesting in other ways. There are very few Old Order German Baptist Congregations. The Old German Baptists are plentiful in number and I post about them often. The Old Order GBs differ from the mainstream Old German Baptists in that they still use horse-and-buggies as their main mode of transportation. There are a couple of Old Order GB churches near Covington, Ohio where this accident happened and in Flora County, Indiana and in the oddly named town of "Hot Coffee, Mississippi." I'd love to spend sometime with the Old Order German Baptists just to compare how they differ from Old Order Amish. Hopefully I'll get to do that sometime soon. Meanwhile, for the latest on the accident, click here.
SIGH, here is the update....just sloppy journalism here, someone made an error somewhere and now the wire services are perpetuating it. The injured teen was NOT Amish, he is Old Order German Baptist. Big difference, actually. See the error here. Tsk, tsk, sloppy, sloppy!
Amish Sameness?
How many of our site visitors have been to Reading Terminal in Philadelphia? I have not been there, but I'm getting the "Pike Place Market" vibe like the famous vendor smorgasbord in Seattle. Reading seems to have a bit of everything under one chaotic roof. The food writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer sniffs that the Amish vendors at the market are beginning to sort of morph into a mall-type sameness. I think that is the challenge Amish entrepreneurs face: as their products get popular and more and more people want them then they have to mass produce. And mass production of anything whether it be couches or cream puffs degrades the quality a bit. I think that is what the columnist is responding to. In tourist or factory heavy areas traditionally agrarian Amish lives have transformed into more entrepreneurial lives and I think the columnist is also lamenting that change. Click here to read.
German Baptist Kansas Article
There was an article in the tiny Pratt, Kansas newspaper this morning about an Old German Baptist couple who recently opened what sounds a combination taxidermy shop and butchering store in nearby Sawyer. Like a lot of small-town newspaper articles - and Pratt is a REALLY tiny place - there is a lot of information lacking. Really, the only reason I am linking to this article is because of the great family photo with it. Since I just recently did a post about GBs and their clothing, the photo with the article provides a wonderful illustration. But the reporter should have provided some basic additional info: is the GB community in their area a large one? Why did the family move from Ohio to Kansas to Ohio and back to Kansas? I'm not saying this topic merited the Carl Bernstein or Bob Woodward treatment, but just some basic additional info to fill out the article would have been nice. I guess the focus of the piece was meant to be on the taxidermy shop, not the couple's faith. The Brookville, Ohio connection isn't surprising because that town in western Montgomery County is centered around one of the largest GB communities in the world. The clothing in this photo is very typical German Baptist: bright patterns not typically seen on Old Order Amish or Mennonites, a head-covering for the woman (but not as severe of one as found among the Amish or Mennonites) and a beard for the men. GB children really don't dress all that plainly. The children in the photo are adorable. As a refresher for anyone new here, the GBs do not come from the same faith as the Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites (Anabaptists). The GBs come from a later religious movement known as Pietism, but they do consider themselves "plain" and their philosophies are similar so they are often lumped together. Click here to read the article and see the photo.
Okay, This For Real "Witness" Fans!
I have written recently about this being the silver anniversary of the Harrison Ford Amish-oriented classic, Witness. Well, it seems as if there is an opportunity for true Witness fans (like me who has seen it two dozen times) to really experience the movie by taking a "limited edition" tour of the original Witness farmstead. I would LOVE to do this, but, SIGH, I always complain that Lancaster County is just too far for me to make a quick, economical journey. So I doubt I'll be going, but for those of you who are closer or who can trek there, check out this.
Interesting Perspective From Across The Pond....
The Independent, a newspaper in the UK, has a story about the Amish in today's paper. At first I thought it was going to be a really long, meaty article, but then it just sort of fizzles (unless it continues somewhere else and I missed it, but I don't think so). Anyway, the premise of the article is that the Amish have suffered some "PR damage" from some really disturbing stories about them in the media lately from sex abuse cases to puppy mills. I do think the headline of the article is an excellent explanation actually. The Amish population, because of their large families, doubles in the USA pretty much every generation. The more you have of any people, the more you have disturbing incidents. The more you have of anything, the harder it is to control. That goes for anything that gets really big, whether it be a church or a chain. I am sure when the Holiday Inn was a 20-hotel chain all the properties were well-kept and clean and wonderful, but with 2500 some hotels it's virtually impossible to control no matter much the central command may try...some Holiday Inns are awful, some are great, but by and large they are a decent chain (I think, a bit pricey sometimes, but OK) .....Maybe comparing hotels and Amish isn't the best comparison, but I think you get the idea. I'm more pointing out what happens when something grows and the Amish are growing and we are seeing some growing pains in the headlines. The thing is MY personal experience with the Amish has been nothing less than wonderful. Lovina and her family are among some of the nicest, most honorable people I've ever known (and, no, I'm not just saying that because I'm the editor of the column, etc) and whenever I spend time with them I long for a simpler, quieter more peaceful pace .....I still think, by and large, the Amish represent a wonderful slice of a simpler America that has vanished from too many places....Anyway, click here to read the article from the Independent.
Mennonites in Louisiana....
Part of me just snickers about how the mainstream press is so fascinated with the Amish and Mennonites and anyone plain. I mean, think about it, there are hundreds and hundreds of people from all creeds who are helping with the rebuilding in Lousiana, which continues years after Katrina laid waste to the state. But you don't see the Wall Street Journal featuring "Baptists helping rebuild." That said, the article I am linking to is an interesting and fun read and I can see why they did the feature because the conservative Mennonite element in Cajun country IS interesting as a study in cultural contrasts. So click here and enjoy. And, that photo of Mennonite woman Alta Zimmerman and the sledgehammer, looks like she is all business
...Mennonite culture instills a great work ethic and I am sure it is being put to use in Lousiana!
Tornadoes in Holmes County, Ohio? And Amish in the News question?
I'm not hearing of any fatalities or any major, major damage but tornadoes raked Holmes County, Ohio on Thursday. The Columbus Dispatch had a snippet in one of their articles:
Hundreds of people, mostly Amish, took to the fields to pick bits of insulation from fence rows and toss twisted pieces of sheet-metal roofing and splintered wood into horse-pulled wagons.
That sentence is really the only reference to the tornado trouble and its impact on the Amish in Holmes. If anyone hears anything else, please let us know?
Also, I had experimented with a video version of "Amish in the News".....any thoughts on its merit? I'd really like a more professional looking studio, graphics, guests, etc, but all of that is difficult to pull together at the moment!