Friday, September 05, 2003

A Trip to Amish Country

I rarely go a-touristing in Amish country: I’m a bit squeamish about spying on a people who so clearly want to be left alone. I have no qualms about visiting exotic cultural sites where the people are far away, foreign or long dead, but, somehow, going to observe the quirks of my living neighbours troubles me. However, my mother in law is a keen needlewoman and so when she visited this Summer, we set off to explore the quilt shops of Shipshewana.

Before I moved to North America, I’d never heard of the Amish, though their traditions originate in Europe with the sixteenth century Anabaptists. After breaking from the Swiss Mennonites, in the late seventeenth century, Jacob Amman founded a new religious group, the Amish. To escape religious persecution in Europe, many Amish immigrated to America, first to Pennsylvania, thence to Ohio and Indiana.

In South Bend’s farmer’s market, I first saw an Amish gentleman. He wore a broad beard and formidable hat and sold smoked ham hocks and unpasteurised cheese. I imagined girls with net caps over their hair, as in a nursery rhyme, sitting at three legged stools to milk the cows to make the cheese to sell on the stall at the weekend. I thought of the Amish as rustic, unreflective hold outs against modern technology.

A visit to Goshen’s Old Bag Factory reinforces that image. From an observation deck, you look down on a workshop where taciturn Amish cabinet makers craft beautiful hardwood furniture by hand. But, according to Professor Steven Nolt of Goshen College, it’s a mistake to think of Amish culture as frozen in time. For example, in Nappanee, only 12% of the men now work in farming - others work in roofing, in factories, even in retail.

And modern technology is not rejected unreflectively. Before introducing some new device into an Amish community, the elders meet to discuss whether it might disrupt relationships, disturb the calm and piety of the community? If so, they ask: Is it worth having? Compromises are reached: A phone in the home might separate the family, but a phone in the barn might be useful in an emergency. Mainstream America embraces every new technology without pausing to weigh its effects. Consider cell phones: Is it worth a million interrupted movies, a million near misses with distracted drivers, just so we can call home and say, “Hello, yes, I’m in the toothbrush aisle right now, what colour handle do you want”? A shopping list never calls in the middle of a movie.

So my mother-in-law and I drive through the neatly-tended cornfields of Amish country, slowing down for horse-drawn buggies, and reach the quilt store in Shipshewana. We dive happily into the racks of pieced quilts, and the rooms stacked high with bolts of fabric arranged in rainbow- etical order.

When we leave, we take with us a bag of cotton prints, reassured that our intrusion has barely made a ripple in the lives of our Amish neighbours.

Broadcast by Louise Collins on September 05, 2003
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