There are some interesting items in today's "Amish in the News." This first one has me scratching my head on several levels.
Amish Makeover transforms girl.
AMISH MAKE-OVER: A young Amish woman has her hair transformed by a celebrity stylist. There is so much information missing. For instance, this has to be Jamesport, Missouri. The Daily Mail says it is Jamesport, Pennsylvania. At first I didn't think this video was real, but I'm not so sure now. I think it probably is. So I'll have an update for you soon on how this all came about because it is rather extraordinary. A 21-year-old Amish school teacher and housekeeper had her hair made-over for the cameras. It would appear that the young woman is not yet baptized into the church because if she were there would be serious reprecussions for doing something like this. But these are the antics of a young, unbaptized woman and will probably just be dismissed as "Oh, that's just Sarah being Sarah." Click here to read the article in the Daily Mail. Click here to watch the full 3-minute Glamour Magazine segment featuring Sarah's makeover. I have had the occasion, by the way, to meet some Amish ladies with their kapps off and often there is a lot of beautiful hair hidden away under those kapps.
CHRISTMAS DINNER: The Amish in upstate New York are a very conservative group. An annual free community Christmas dinner is a welcome refuge for former Amish mom Mattie Miller. Read more here.
SIMPLY AMISH WITH ARLENE: As I've noted before there are many wonderful writers among the ranks of Old Order Amish. Arlene Schmidt is an Amish homemaker - and wonderful writer - who lives with her husband and children near Mooreland, Indiana. Her roots are in the Berne settlement. She writes a twice weekly column for the New Castle, Indiana newspaper. Here is her most recent.
AMISH POETRY FROM SCHOOL ECHOES: School Echoes is a small Amish publication that serves the Amish one-room school community. Ernest Miller and his wife Mary and their family put out School Echoes, a magazine published by Pathway Publishers of LaGrange that serves and supports the Amish and “plain” schools in Indiana and surrounding communities. This 23-page publication, with a circulation of around 1,600, has nine issues from September to May.
“About 200 go to individual mailboxes,” Miller said. “But the majority is sent in packages to the schools.”
Pages are filled with drawings, poetry and short stories submitted by the readers. On an activity page children must find 10 differences between two almost identical drawings. There’s a sudoku puzzle, riddles, notes and short articles from teachers’ meetings, a word find and a variety of drawing, poetry and short story contests.
“We also have a ‘Mystery School’ drawing where the children guess which school is being featured,” Miller said. “What we really want to do is to promote future authors and artists.” This month's issue features a great poem from Amos Yoder, an Amish educator:
The heart can be a lonely place
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