pagesofjulia

While visiting with family on a horse farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania – Amish country – I had so many questions that they lent me this little book. It’s a pamphlet, really, at just 71 pages. And despite the title, a publication date of 1978 means it remains quite dated: for example, “mortgages for several hundred thousand dollars might be eyebrow-raisers among city folk” amused me. That said, I still learned a lot about the Amish way of life – maybe the Amish way of life in 1978, but the idea is that it doesn’t change that much, right? And in conversations with my hosts here, it sounds like quite a lot of what I’ve learned is still true.

Author Gerald S. Lestz is not Amish, but he has a good relationship with the community, who let him spend time in the one-room schoolhouse he profiles here, for example. His five essays can easily stand alone: “An Amish Teacher and Her School,” “Amish Pay High Prices to Keep Their Farms,” “The Diary: An Old Order Newsletter,” “Amish Story in Wood Carvings,” and “Demand Soars for Amish Quilts.” I think I enjoyed the school part the most, perhaps because it’s an area that interests me anyway; I am intrigued by the question of whether the school board allows the Amish to self-educate and take their kids out of school early. But each of these essays had something that piqued my interest.

Lestz is not impartial. He admires his subjects, and thinks we should all learn from them. Check out this description of one of the lovely wood carvings he features, by Aaron Zook:

Home prayer takes place every evening, and this is a touching scene. It is in the large kitchen of an Amish farm home. All members of the family are kneeling. The father is reading the prayer. Studying this, one can understand why the Amish way of life persists, and why there is so much goodness and so little crime among its members.

I do think the Amish offer some interesting solutions to some of our societal problems, but I think it’s a stretch to say that a kneeling family scene equals low crime and goodness. At any rate, you see the bias. And fair enough: it’s right out there where we can see it, which is always nice, if there’s going to be a bias at all.

The purpose of this slim book is education and information, not entertainment or artistic accomplishment. Lestz’s writing style is simple and forthright (notwithstanding his “paraphrase [of] Gertrude Stein in the negative: you can no longer say a quilt is a quilt is a quilt.” Clever, that). But it’s information I wanted, and I’m happy to have it. (I supplemented this read with a few issues of local rag The Fishwrapper, a little more treacly and Jesus-y but not unhelpful.) I’m glad I read it.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: nonfiction, sense of place |