Limitations on Amish life are dictated by the Ordnung, which is what the Amish call the unwritten set of rules and regulations that dictates their day-to-day life. The Ordnung deals with a wide variety of topics, such as clothing, transportation, technology, education, and much more. Passed along through an oral tradition, the Ordnung by necessity [...]
Though few of us would choose to limit our clothing options as severely as the Amish have, there is something to be said for the simplicity of the Amish way of dressing. Think about the amount of time you spend on clothing–shopping for it, coordinating outfits, cleaning it, storing it, finding the right shoes and [...]
Author Mindy Starns Clark shares some wonderful insights regarding our technology choices in today’s post, taken from her helpful little book A Pocket Guide to Amish Life. On a recent vacation to upstate New York, my family and I stayed in a cottage near Lake Champlain. The place was surrounded by all sorts of opportunities [...]
The Amish are allowed to use telephones when necessary, but they may not have one inside their home. Several families will get together to install and maintain a “public” phone inside a small building often built for that purpose. The rule is, you may use a telephone to conduct business or in an emergency, but [...]
Hello, AmishReaders! Every Friday for the month of May, we’re going to be sharing fascinating facts about the Amish and their way of life. Our thanks go out to Mindy Starns Clark and her very helpful book A Pocket Guide to Amish Life. We hope these fun and interesting insights into Amish living will only [...]
The following excerpt is from an article on my website about the Amish school shooting. It was written as supplemental material for my book A Pocket Guide to Amish Life, but given the Lifetime movie of the same topic, I thought I might post some of it here as well. ************** A New Normal Recently, I dined [...]
For those of you interested in a taste of Amish things, here’s a real life problem. It comes for the Amish publishing house (Pathway) which prints three monthly papers. Each month their flagship magazine, Family Life, chooses a life problem to explore, in the form of a question and answer, which readers have sent in. [...]
I was up to Cattaraugus County, Western, upstate New York, for research the other weekend. Left Virginia on Friday morning early, got up there in time to find the library, county offices, still open. The town of Randolph looked like the likely place to start. My experience is that the county people usually have a [...]
