[geeks] Goodbye, I guess

[N. Miller]

On Aug 29, 2007, at 10:28 PM, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 09:56:24PM -0700, N. Miller wrote:
>
>> We have those folks in the US & Canada as well, they're called
>> Mennonites.
>
> When I lived in Philly, our next door neighbors called themselves  
> "city
> Mennonites".
>
> They still followed the basic practices of their religion, but they
> were not as Wierd Al put it "technologicaly impaired".
>
> There was a reality show on TV here about that. According to the show,
> Amish teenagers spend a year in the "outisde world" before they  
> marry to
> decide if it's what they want to do. This show put a bunch of Amish
> teenagers in a house with a bunch of "normal" teenagers and had  
> them do
> things and go places together.

Those kinds of rules are sect dependent.  Not all Amish abide by the  
same rules, nor do all Mennonites.

My father's family, for example, generally send their kids to public  
school, and everyone speaks English (though not always well).  There  
are sects in the boondocks in NY state that only have a few people  
that speak English, and their kids only go to Amish school.

Clothing strictures are different as well.  Most notably, you'll see  
different colored bonnets and aprons on women.  With the men, it'll  
be things like colors of shirts, and fasteners.  Unless you see a lot  
of Amish men, you'd not notice the difference.

The last Amish folks I spent any real amount of time with annoyed the  
dickens out of me.  I went to a family reunion with my parents and  
brothers shortly after college, and one of my female relatives (great  
aunt or some such, I don't keep track) was just being a smug and  
elitist as I was already divorced at that point.  Had I been thinking  
better on my feet that day, I'd have quoted her something about pride  
or judgement out of the Bible, but apparently the goat had run off  
with my wits.

But the food was good, I got to talk to the other family outcast, my  
dad's younger sister who's never married, read widely (introduced me  
to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), and continued to work and travel until  
some health problems kept her home.  And, as always, I stirred up the  
menfolk by horning in on their conversations with my dad.

Interestingly, my mom and dad have made good friends with one of his  
cousins that also left the Amish community and became "English".  I  
don't know the story as to why she left, though unlike my father, it  
was later in her life.

=Nadine=