"I made some face masks yesterday," my friend Dawn said to me (over the phone, of course.) "And right now, I'm sewing a dress out of the same fabric, so I'll have a matching dress and face mask!" Yes, the cloth face mask trend has swept Lancaster County along with the rest of the world. Quilters and dressmakers are rising up with scissors in hand and sitting down at their sewing machines with a new purpose— the humble homemade face mask, fighting COVID-19, the new invisible enemy of … [Read more...] about Packing Mike and Ike Candy While Wearing a Cloth Face Mask
Why We Had Potato Soup For Supper
Grocery stores are rationing milk; farmers are dumping milk into their manure pits. Welcome, April 2020. Since I last wrote a blog post, Lancaster County and the whole state of Pennsylvania was put under a stay-at-home order. Since I haven't been going anywhere besides work, this hasn't changed much for me, except it feels more serious now. Especially since the stay-home order is in place until the end of April. On Sunday afternoon, I went on a long walk and took pictures of local … [Read more...] about Why We Had Potato Soup For Supper
A Springtime Like No Other Springtimes
"Seems strange to see the daffodils and hyacinths blooming," I told my cousin last evening. "Everything is so normal outside. It's just inside where everything is crazy." Lorelle and I were on a walk together, which is still legal in our part of Pennsylvania. We kept a safe distance. (Being a stoic Mennonite makes some things easy.) We commiserated about libraries being shut down. Then Lorelle told me how her plans to volunteer overseas hadn't worked out. "Then the covonavirus … [Read more...] about A Springtime Like No Other Springtimes
Penny Letter From a Lockdown Zone
"A natural disaster would be interesting to see," I once told some family members. "Not people dying or anything like that. I just think it would be fascinating to witness a devastating natural event of some kind. Don't you think so?" "No!" My family members were aghast. "That's crazy! Why would you want to see something like that?" "Oh." Apparently, not everyone daydreams about riding a boat down the street, or standing in a doorway during an earthquake and seeing if that really is … [Read more...] about Penny Letter From a Lockdown Zone
Reprint: A Visit to the Umsiedler People
For my post this week, I decided to share an article I wrote in 2015 about a visit to Germany. I went there to attend the wedding of a friend, and learned about a church group with an interesting history. This article was published in 2015 in a magazine titled the Anabaptist Forum (reprinted with permission). It's written with history lovers in mind. If I was writing it again today, I might change a few things, but I decided simply to republish the original and insert some photos. A … [Read more...] about Reprint: A Visit to the Umsiedler People