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1/2/15
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This was my oldest draft in this blog, you see the date, the second day of 2015. Perhaps I started it in 2014, but the time stamp indicates the last time that I edited it.
Should I finish it? YES! Resoundingly, I really should... July 8, 2020.
The original entry below highlighted, from late 2014 or early 2015:
Amish get the most ink, right? The Mennonites come in a distant second, and many, including myself (who I consider somewhat well-versed in religions), did not know much about the third place Church of the Brethren of Christ, until I toured some "Amish country" in Pennsylvania a few years ago.
We went to the Amish country of Pennsylvania as a family, (likely in July or so?) spending a better part of the first day, passing the night at a hotel by a field somewhere near Lutz... It was likely 2011, while I had a so-so paying job in Chantilly. I had a little time to take a small vacation. The children ranged in ages from one to ten.
Pennsylvania Dutch country. Very bucolic and pastoral lands, as you would imagine.
We looked around, saw the homes with no electric lines, went to a store or two featuring Amish and Mennonite cuisines and culture, we took a horse and buggy paid tour, with a young lady who was of the third of the three mentioned, the Church of the Brethren of Christ.
She had attended college in Washington D.C., she was very pleasant and informative. Perhaps my wife or one of my children could remember her name, something simple and Biblical like Sarah or Hanna. She had a modern degree and was educated, but she represented her conservative background and people. She took us by her horse driven buggy around and explained how her sect was its own thing, separate from the more known elements of our shared American history, the aforementioned Amish and Mennonites. But the Church of the Brethren are to be accounted for, too.
What else? Consult my family, consult the photos.
We also made it to downtown Lancaster, a somewhat good sized city compared to Loudoun County, Virginia, and we saw historic remains and ruins in the basement of the high rise Marriott Hotel, references to slavery, the underground railroad, a Jacob Smith, which I found ironic.
Then again, the Lancaster visit was probably years later after we spent the night in a Lancaster church parking lot after the 4th of July and baseball game in Harrisburg up the road.
Same areas, different tours...
All the same, the places are all the same... More or less.
And now I am more or less ready to publish my oldest of some 67 drafts...
One less, count it for posterity and the greater good of Americana and these traditional faiths...
Blog it.
Actually, a couple more comments.
When I began this post, maybe the winter of 2014 or so, I might have wanted to wax a bit more poetic, or prosaic, if you will, about memories of the Amish and Mennonites that I had observed in Indiana, or the impressions from James Michener and his book, "The Author" (read in Camp Marmal, Balkh Province), I think, and his tales of Pennsylvania idylls. But, perhaps those thoughts are captured in other places, and may be told before now or later in other venues.
Harrison Ford and the Spanish mis-translation of "Amish", made into "Mormon", and other such memories and things. A trumpetist at IU from the north, the pies of the southern Indiana regions, the house in Sherwood Oaks, and anon... Years prior of bumping into the rustic ones. Or a bit later, returning from Vincennes with Terry in Loogootee, or even later with the family in Tijuana, Mexico.
We will search out those things later.
Now blog on, dear reader.
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