Uncategorized

We had just passed all the food and were getting our first tastes when my uncles sauntered into the room. “Are you still eating?” they teased as they stood over my aunts’ shoulders with their full bellies. I wondered how my aunts could just blush and try so meekly to defend themselves, when I had…

As usual, on this Thanksgiving Day, Momme’s living room was as spotless as her kitchen. A clock ticked pleasantly on the shelf above the bureau. The three hickory-bent rocking chairs sat on the hand woven rugs on the hardwood floors. There was a white sewing rooster sitting on her treadle-run sewing machine by the window.…

Getting together with Mem’s relatives for the holidays was a pleasant break in the routine of our lives. We had long since outgrown the buggy, so when we went to Momme and Dodde’s (Grandma and Granpa’s), eight miles away, we hired our neighbor to take us there. She was one of the “taxi drivers” in…

On November 6, Dr. Donald Kraybill wrote an article about Amish and spanking for The Huffington Post, and Erik Wesner posted a follow-up on Amish America. Below is my response to these articles. “They also note that the book of Hebrews suggests that God disciplines Christians as a father disciplines a son and that such…

At the end of the book, Saloma is finally home. ~ Monica the Mennobrarian Monica the Mennobrarian has posted a review of my memoir Why I Left the Amish on her blog. Have you ever had someone say so many touching things about you that you cried? That is how I felt when I read…

This is an incredibly busy week, so I haven’t had any time to update my blog. David and I are painting basement walls and trim boards for the soffit boards, fascia boards, and trim boards being cut and installed on the outside of the house.  Between each of us having a job, coordinating the progress…

Much as I dread the oncoming winter, that the month of November signifies, November has been a month of many transitions in my adult life. Many, though not all, of those have been good transitions. In 1977, I left the Amish for the first time on November 7. Then it was three years later, to…

In my recent post “Kindred Connections” I wrote about my long-ago and lately rekindled connection to John and Pat Anderson. A friend of Pat Anderson’s named Lynn Kimmerle, recently called me about reviewing my book. She let me know she received a galley copy from my publisher a few days ago, so I thought it…