| Notes | In this award winning PBS documentary, Mennonite historian John Ruth takes us sympathetically into the Amish mindset. The Amish includes a look at origins, farm life, childhood, school, worship, recreation, courtship, barn-raising, horse-transportation, tourism, land pressures, and new cottage industries. Dr. John A. Hostetler, author of Amish Society, comments on the survival of an alternative to the kind of world we have made. As the Amish increase in numbers, some of them migrate from homesteads in Pennsylvania toward more open farmland. Those staying where the land is too crowded to farm have developed an amazing varietey of cottage industries. But changes are made carefully, in order to not sacrifice spiritual covenant and community for the sake of convenience. |