Sunday, February 10, 2008

The Amish People of Pennsylvania








Gettysburg was the town that Abraham Lincoln gave his famous 'government of the people, for the people, by the people' speech. Here I am walking down the main street in Gettysburg. The picture above shows a plaque outside a hotel that says Abraham Lincoln slept there.

Gettysburg is also about 120 miles from Lancaster town, in Lancaster County, the home of the Amish people. Amish people are Christians in their own strict way, which tries to preserve what they believe to be the purity of the past in being close to the land, and growing one's own food. Amish people have no cars and use the horse buggy. They have their own dress code, and they prefer to keep apart from non-Amish people whom they call "the English". [their language is called Pennsylvania-Dutch]. Their farms with the neat rows of corn and vegetables and the grain silos can be found right in the middle of the town, because they did not sell out to devlopers of shopping malls. The Amish 'villages' have strange names like Bird-In-Hand, Paradise, and Intercourse. The Amish do not like having their picture taken, but here's a picture of an Amish people taken from the Internet.

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