The Amish of southeastern Pennsylvania have joined the rest of the world in celebrating Earth Hour:
"This is actually a big coincidence," admitted Elder Jakob Orlung. "Since we have no Interweb, we did not know of this global movement to extinguish the electrical incandescence. It just happens that about 8:30 is when most of us out our whale oil lamps and go to bed."Fun fact (and this is true): Amish meet up with "the English" to do business in a placed called the Village of Intercourse. Could this be why the Amish, with an average of 6.8 children per family, are among the fastest growing ethnic groups in America?
"Around here," his wife Naomi added, "every hour is Earth Hour."
[above: Typical night scene in Paradise, Pennsylvania]
Stop making fun of Pennsylvania. What did it ever do to you?
ReplyDeleteI've never seen any Amish, but when I went to school in rural PA there were a lot of Mennonites. Interesting folks, but I always wondered about their belief system: they eschewed certain trappings of modern society, yet did all their shopping at Wal-Mart.
Stop making fun of Pennsylvania. What did it ever do to you?
ReplyDeleteIt never did anything. In fact, it can't do anything, which is why I choose to attack it.
The truth of the matter is that all this Earth Hour talk got me thinking of people who might live with electricity... and that leaves only North Korea, Mongolians out in the yurts, some folks in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Amish.
Next year I'll make fun of the North Koreans, I promise.
There are in fact several positive things I can say about Pennsylvania. It's home to the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin. It's home to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, which gave Orange County's first theme park (the world's first theme park, in fact) a cool idea for its own Independence Hall and Liberty Bell. It inspired the song "Allentown" which is the best Billy Joel song ever. It's the home state of Jeff Goldblum, Tina Fey, and B.F. Skinner, the man who taught us how to make children fear their bearded grandfathers.
I've never seen any Amish, but when I went to school in rural PA there were a lot of Mennonites. Interesting folks, but I always wondered about their belief system: they eschewed certain trappings of modern society, yet did all their shopping at Wal-Mart.
That is odd.
I myself have never seen any Amish in person, but I've seen them depicted in both television and film, so I'm sure I know what I'm talking about. I also read about them on Wikipedia.
I was trying to be tongue-in-cheek; sorry for coming across rudely.
ReplyDeleteOh, not at all. I took it as tongue-in-cheek. But in the interest of being fair and balanced, I did attempt a similar angle with North Korea, but I'm not so sure it worked. I might have used a bit too much actual text from real KCNA reports, which sounds more creepy than parodic.
ReplyDelete