Amish, Mennonites thrive in hard times

Joe,

I live in Cincinnati. I've recently started wandering around in Southern Ohio, a beautiful part of the Appalachian foothills that modern America seems to have forgotten. Amish and Mennonite colonies have been showing up in the area for around thirty years, as I understand it. These people live simply, but the visible contrast in health and general obvious prosperity between them and their more conventional neighbors is stunning. The people there who bet on industrialism for their future are hurting. The New York Times recently ran an article about the loss of jobs and economic malaise in Jackson, Ohio. Early American industrialism was big around Jackson, with its easily exploitable iron and coal. Those industries have moved on and the factory jobs that brought some prosperity more recently are now following.

And yet the Amish prosper in the same area. This tells me something. It's easy to make a living in North America. The writer Louis Bromfield, who put together the Malabar Farm in Northern Ohio in the Thirties, said that he thought of nature as almost friendly once he started working with it instead of at cross purposes.

I once told a young friend who was going back to school to get an MBA to use it to get freedom, not shiny trinkets. I think this is my one pearl of wisdom. The people who get over this current mass of trinkets are gonna survive. The others won't, a tragedy, but seemingly unavoidable. Soon it will be Spring and the wildflowers will be out in the mountains.

Mike
Cincinnati, Ohio

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Mike,

Yup!

It's really that simple isn't it? Don't work at cross purposes with nature.

Unfortunately, even people who live smack in the middle of nature are now insulated from it. We just hurtle through it sealed in our vehicles, as we travel to and from our hermetically sealed homes and workhouses. In all three places, the vehicle, the work house and the sealed boxes of consumer goods we call home, the media hallucination called the American lifestyle is beamed straight into our consciousness by media 24/7.

I talked to a guy the other day who has a job picking up dead deer and other animals along the roads. He used to be a mall store manager until he was let go. He says he loves his new job. Being outside of a vehicle amid the trees and fields, even alongside a road, has given him a whole new perspective about how people really live in America.

"I'd recommend a career in roadkill to anyone," he laughs.

In art and labor,

Joe