Plain Secrets 3

In today's blog on Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish by Joe Mackall, I'll discuss some of the highlights of this book, which is about the conservative Swartzentruber Amish of northern Ohio.

Mackall deals at length with buggies, which are of symbolic as well as practical importance to the Amish way of life. He points out that there is no more potent symbol of the Amish to the outside world than the buggy. Also, no Amish group, no matter has liberal, has given up the buggy. They may air-condition them, put in modern upholstery and attach headlights, but all groups are wedded to the buggy.

This is not because of nostalgia for an idealized 19th-century past. Instead, Mackall says, the buggy holds the community together. Buggy travel is slow and this keeps the Amish close to home, he says. It keeps them tied to the community. Mackall describes a trip he takes to a Home Depot with his friend Samuel. It takes about two hours to drive the 10 miles by buggy and after they arrive, they spend a long time in the store, both because frugal Samuel has to calculate building supply prices to the penny, but also because the horses need time to rest. Not only does the buggy tie Samuel to his community, it also causes people to adapt to a slower, more natural life rhythm.

Mackall is also critical of the buggy, at least as the Swartzentruber Amish use it. Unlike other groups, they won't put on lights, so the buggies can be difficult to see in the dark. As I remember, they have compromised and will use some sort of reflective sticker, but that can be difficult to see in a fast moving car until it's too late.

As a neighbor, and as himself a parent, Mackall worries about the safety of the buggies on roads increasingly crowded with cars. (My impression is that the roads near Mackall's and the Amish homes are sparsely traveled by the standards of most of America but have seen an increase in cars. The Amish worry about the increased number of cars, but seem unwilling to change their ways. ) Mackall cites statistics about accidents and fatalities with buggies, which are low, but still occur. Mackall is frustrated, because he believes many of the accidents and fatalities could be prevented.

He also worries about the Amish habit of letting children stand in the back of the fragile buggies. Once, he's sees a young child fall out of the back of buggy that is only secured with an X made by two bungee cords. The child hits its head, but the father insists the youngster is fine. Mackall is concerned and again, frustrated that the Amish won't take more precautions.

He notes that Swartzentruber Amish approach medicine somewhat differently from the rest of us, relying heavily on chiropractors. Of course, they have no medical insurance. They do use hospitals when necessary. They're also likely to pull teeth more quickly than we are, taking the practical approach (to them) that lots of costly dental work isn't worth it.

The story of Jonas, who has left the Amish to join the "English" world, is woven throughout the book. We see how very difficult it is for someone with no documentation, not even a social security number, and no high school diploma or GED (the Amish leave school after grade 8), to make it in the modern world. His family, under pressure from the wider Amish community, shuns Jonas in hopes of getting him to cave in and come back. Jonas is also hampered by his own naive views of the wider world. He initially survives only because English friends take care of him. Part of the discussion of Jonas describes a halfway world of Amish "ex-patriots" who have left the Amish community but never quite give up Amish ways. Jonas is both attracted to this half-way world and yet determined to fully assimilate into "English" life.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Swartzentruber Amish is their courtship rituals. While different Amish groups have different rituals, among the Swartzentrubers, young people between 17 and 21 engage in a dating practice in which they will lie awake all night on a bed together.

Mackall touches on the low status of women in the Swartzentruber hierarchy. He worries about Samuel's daughters and their lack of choices in a patriarchal community and wonders if he would feel compelled to help them, betraying Samuel, if they wanted to leave. Yet he sees Samuel's wife as contented with her lot as homemaker and mother of ten children, though he also applauds her literacy and her enthusiasm for reading Amish fiction. I wish Mackall had spent more time on the topic of women's status in the community.

Mackall tries to paint a balanced portrait of the Amish community. A thread of anxiety runs through the book: He fears that it will be perceived as a betrayal by Samuel and possibly get his friend into trouble with the community, where he is a minister.

It's difficult to see how Samuel won't be wounded by the book. The book does raise concerns about the line between friendship and scholarship. Is it ethical to make our friends subjects we dissect and analyze? How do we walk that line? Clearly, it's valuable for the wider world to gain insights into the Amish culture, but at what cost?

Ed's birthday

I missed my friend Ed's fiftieth birthday! It was on July 25 and I had meant to e-mail him. I did today.

I've known Ed ever since junior high school, which makes him my oldest friend. We lost touch in high school (I moved) and during college. We reconnected when I was working my first "real" job, at Waverly Press in Baltimore. I had car problems that just wouldn't end, and Ed (and our mutual friend, another Diane) went out of their way to give me rides to and from work, something I've never forgotten.

Through the shared rides Ed and I rekindled our friendship. It helped that we were both living in Columbia at the time too. We had some good times sharing Double "R" Bar burgers from Roy Rogers and tending to everyday things. I also remember one particularly happy time -- happy because it was so ordinary or "random," as my kids would say -- when Ed and my high school friend Linda and I walked around a Columbia lake on a summer night, then sat on the wooden pier and talked, and I felt very contented and at peace.

Ed is one of the most caring and loyal people I know. Now he lives in Arizona, so I don't see him very often, but I do want to wish him a Happy Birthday.

The Shack

Yesterday, I ordered The Shack. Has anyone heard of it? Read it? Have any thoughts on it? It's a self-published work of fiction about, as I understand it, a man who feels led to go back to the shack where his young daughter was killed, where he meets up with and confronts God with a lot of hard questions. Apparently, it's become a word-of-mouth phenom and also ignited controversy because some right-wing Christians have questioned its theology. But since my Jesus Creed cyber pal Peggy Brown (I'll at some point put in a link to her "Abbess" blog) said I had to read it, I bought it. I was frugal: I got it from half.dot, but I thought as I was ordering it, you are leaving in two weeks and you ordered another book???? Are you crazy? Well, probably.

Anyway, I'd love to hear people's thoughts if they've read this book or heard of it!

Visiting chickens

Yesterday, I went to Stephanie's house and dropped off two winter dresses that Sophie once wore so that Stephanie's two young daughters can use them. I saw the bees and five chickens Stephanie keeps in her backyard.

Stephanie chose her 1951 brick cape cod house in part because the Catonsville neighborhood where it is allows chickens and bees. She built a coop herself and bought six heirloom chickens. One turned out to be a rooster. She gave it away so as not to disturb her neighbors.

Two of the chickens are red, two black and one white with black speckles. They are all breeds the big commercial poultry farms eschew because they are not the best layers. However, they are hardy, healthy breeds, Stephanie said, and more intelligent that the commercial birds. Each one will lay an egg a day for most of the year. Stephanie will sell her extra eggs.

It was a pleasure to see Stephanie's little girls holding the tame chickens in their arms. I got to stroke the birds and found their feathers surprising soft. The chickens have no fear of humans and are gentle and easy to handle. It was a treat to watch them waddle around the yard together and to know they are being treated in a humane and loving way.

Stephanie outlined how easy it is to keep chickens. They don't even need to go to the vet. After hearing horror stories of chickens debeaked so they don't peck themselves and each other to death in distress at their overcrowded conditions, it felt good to see happy fowl in a natural setting. Maybe as the energy crisis drives up fuel and food prices, more people will want to keep chickens. Getting such pieces of agriculture back to a human scale will be good the birds! It would be good for humans too as I believe something deep inside of us(at least some of us!) longs to treat animals in a balanced and harmonious way.

On renting

I learned a couple of things from renting our house:

1. You can wash your garage door windows! Yes. Indeed. We never once washed those windows in 13 years in the house. It had never occurred to us. At least not to me. Consequently, there was a build-up of fine gritty dirt and grime on the windows that more or less obscured the light shining in. (Luckily, we have a regular window in the garage's side wall bringing in southern light, so the garage wasn't completely dungeonlike). And voila, once we washed that row of windows, a miraculous thing happened. We can see through them! I go into our light-flooded garage, glance up and can actually see the driveway and our cars and the yard, as clear as if I were looking through glass! Which I am! It's a wonderful sight.

2. Bathroom rugs won't make or break a deal. I didn't need to go out and buy those two new bathroom rugs just because we had a dropped a tiny splotch of bleach on the corner of one rug. But I did. I rushed out yesterday to a store having a sale and found a little blue reversible rug for the master bath and while I was at it, one in tan for the downstairs half bath. Because if I hadn't, the house wouldn't have been perfect and that meant maybe nobody would rent it!! But you know what? A family had already decided to rent our house, even with that little pink discolored spot on our rug! However, we do now have two nice, albeit small rugs to put on our bathroom floor in Barnesville.

It is a huge relief that our house has rented and to a family that seems perfect. That was the last big piece in the puzzle of moving to Barnesville. Now, it's a matter of packing, making arrangements with the utilities, phone, banks etc., canceling the health club membership and the newspaper, notifying the post office of our forwarding address and ... moving.

So, I can breathe easier and the house doesn't have to stay perfect from top to bottom all the time! I'm also freed from my worries about what our 1970 tract house doesn't have: no glamorous oversized master bath, no walk-in closets, no two-story entrance foyer, no granite countertops. We have a plain linoleum floor in our kitchen. We are down a long driveway and front to a bike path, which is nice, but we also have neighbors a stone's throw away on either side. While to me the house is large, by the standards of today, our home is merely average sized. We're in a pleasant neighborhood and have had wonderful neighbors, but the house is not the newest nor the poshest! Our kids will miss the house though: they've lived here almost all of their lives and are attached to it.

Now, I can return to the mountain of freelance writing I've been putting off to get the house in shape to rent. While it's been a little nerve-wracking, I've been following that inner guide which told me to concentrate on getting the house ready and that the freelance work could wait! That's pretty counterintuitive in the newspaper biz, so I'm praying that inner voice was right.

Anyway, I can get back to work without the fear of being jettisoned from my home office, aka the living room, at any moment by a prospective renter wanting to tour the house. Hurray!

Our house

Today, the family from Toronto signed a lease to rent our house in Columbia for a year. We are very happy. Now the words "our house" have enlarged to encompass the new family. Our house is a homey house, not a fancy house, so I'm glad we found a family to appreciate it.

Chincoteague photos

A little over a week a ago we spent two nights in Chincoteague. Above is me relaxing on the balcony of our room in Chincoteague. Below is the view of the sunset over the Chincoteague channel from our balcony. As you can see, it was serene and lovely there.