Road Trip--Lancaster Pennsylvania!

I had a wonderful visit with my friend Sid who lives in Lancaster Pennsylvania--She is the perfect hostess who drives me around to all the fun places to shop and the best places to fall off my diet! The weather could also not have been better with warm temps and sun!!

I realize many of you already know about the Amish who live around Lancaster, but for those who may not, I'll tell you a little about them and share some of the pictures that I took.

They are a conservative, reclusive, religious group of people who drive horses and buggies rather than cars.

Some 200,000 Amish people live in more than 20 US states and in the Canadian province of Ontario. The oldest group of Old Order Amish, about 16,000-18,000 people, live in Lancaster County, which is a rural, farming area where Amish first settled in the 1720s - many fleeing religious persecution in Europe.Amish women wear modest dresses with long sleeves and a full skirt, a cape and an apron. They never cut their hair, and wear it in a braid or bun on the back of the head concealed with a small white cap or black bonnet. Clothing is fastened with straight pins or snaps, stockings are black cotton and shoes are also black.

Men and boys wear dark-colored pants that never have creases or cuffs and are worn with suspenders. Belts are forbidden, as are sweaters, neckties and gloves. Men's shirts fasten with traditional buttons in most orders, while suit coats and vests fasten with hooks and eyes. Young men are clean shaven prior to marriage, while married men are required to let their beards grow. (The picture below is not one that I took). Homes do not have electricity, but do have running water and use gas stoves.

There are also no telephones inside their homes.

But many farms do have outside phone boxes like this one.

The Amish send their children to private, one-room schoolhouses until the age of 13. Most are trilingual and speak a dialect of German called Pennsylvania Dutch at home, use High German at their worship services, and they learn English at school.

My friend Sid said that since a shooting at an Amish school a few years ago, fences have been put up around many of them. While many Amish own firearms, used to hunt, their communities until that time were (and typically are) largely free of violent gun crime.
They eschew technology and preach isolation from the modern world. They do not join the military or accept assistance from the government.
The Amish experience many of the same problems as other communities, but keep them private. They are divided into dozens of separate fellowships, broken down into districts or congregations. Each district is fully independent and lives by its own set of unwritten rules, or Ordnung. They observe strict regulations on dress, behaviour, and the use of technology, which they believe encourages humility and separation from the world.

I really do admire the Amish to be able to be "in the world but not of the world." And I have to admit that there are days when I wouldn't mind trading the chaos and stress of my life for the simplicity of theirs.

THANKS for coming along on this little trip...Tomorrow, what else I saw...

A Few April Fool's!

I wanted to thank you all of your for your comments yesterday about Kenzie! I appreciate your honesty and your candid thoughts about our adding another addition to our already bursting house hold. It is a lot to think about.

I have taken a week of vacation from work, and originally was going to go to Kentucky to visit my brothers. But I've changed my plans and will be going this afternoon to visit a good friend of ours in Lancaster Pennsylvania for a couple of days. It should be a lot of fun, and I think the distance will provide some much needed perspective.

Since today is April Fool's Day, I will end this post by leaving you with a few of the "April Fool's" that are here at Golden Pines:

Is this an April Fool's joke, and this is actually a bird?

Is this an April Fool's prank and this is a squirrel or a bird incognito?
Is this a bovine April Fool's gag and I really do have real cows

grazing in our yard?

Is this the real Easter Bunny paying an early visit to our house? Or is it Charlie's attempt at an April Fool's joke? Terriers do have a sense of humor...

Whatever it is, enjoy your Thursday!! See you in a couple of days!

Another Dog Dilemma

When you're involved in rescue, especially in a leadership role, you meet a lot of people. One person I got to know is a very well educated and dog savvy person who is retired from the military. Shirley has been helping many rescues out in the area by working to rehab their dogs recovering from orthopedic surgery. Also because she has many years of training dogs, she has also been taking on their behavior challenged dogs as well. Shirley was living on a very large estate with a kennel where she housed about 20 such dogs and was assisted in this task by 2 people. She took on one of my severely abused foster dogs. Shirley worked with him, and truly made a huge difference for Leon! He is a pretty well adjusted dog because of the year that he lived with her. I visited her at the estate often and got to know some of the other dogs that Shirley had in her care.

A year ago this past December, Shirley took in 2 female puppies (some kind of beagle and terrier mixes) from someone who was giving them away on a busy street corner. One of the puppies I was totally taken by. Each time I came to visit, I'd spend some time with the puppy. When Carl would come with me, he'd visit with the puppy too. The puppy named "Kenzie" is a very laid back little girl and was really getting picked on by the other dogs. At one time I was supposed to take Kenzie but with the unexpected and unplanned arrival of Hamlet from the rescue, we decided we couldn't take her. My last contact with Shirley was last fall. During this time I've never forgotten this puppy and neither has Carl. By a series of events Shirley has once again crossed my path, and she still has Kenzie, who is now about a year and-a-half old. However Shirley has moved far south from us, and is now living in a place with 21 dogs, has no fenced yard, and no kennel runs. Each dog has an area of the home and barn that they stay in--They don't have much outdoor freedom and are leashed walked and then put back in their crates. Shirley is caring for all the dogs alone. Needless to say, I think Shirley is in over her head, but I won't pass judgment, and would never suggest that. With the passing of Cowboy and no plans on taking any more fosters from the rescue, I feel like we now have a place for Kenzie. However I'm torn. Our crew is in a good place right now. There's a real peace among them. I know that a new young dog (that's never been inside a house) may very well change that. But Carl and I continue to feel sorry for Kenzie and can't stop thinking about her; especially knowing how she is being kept. I know all too well the time it takes to care for our pack, so I am quite sure that Kenzie is not getting the care or the attention she needs and deserves...

So, my question I'm putting into the cosmos of cyber-space is, is feeling sorry for Kenzie, wanting to make a difference for her, and not being able to stop thinking about her a good enough reason to take her? I just don't know--My heart says it is, but my head is saying "What are you doing, are you crazy? I'll admit there are a lot of reasons not to take Kenzie, but is not being able to forget about her a sign that I shouldn't?

An Owl By Any Other Name...

Since our move to the country 2 years ago many times we've heard owls calling back and forth to one another in the early morning hours. Knowing they're around I will often open a bedroom window at night in hopes of hearing them. I find the owls amazing, and I just feel like we are privileged to something unique in being able to hear them.

Virginia is home to four types of owls. And, over the last several weeks we have been hearing and catching glimpses of what Carl and I were totally convinced was a "Great Horned Owl." We had one that took up residence around us last year, so why wouldn't it be the same one this year? Even though the calls we have been hearing were a little different, we were still very sure it was a Horned Owl. My attempts to get a picture of it didn't meet with any success until Thursday when I had the dogs out for a late afternoon walk. I caught a glimpse of it on the edge of the woods, and ran back inside to get my camera. I was so excited by what I was able to get pictures of and a little surprised to find that it is not a Great Horned Owl after all, but a Barred Owl instead. But it doesn't matter, "an owl by any other name, is still an owl!" I still love having it around and hope it'll stay.
~~Their sound says: "who cooks for you-who cooks for you?"
~~Here's what they actually sound like: http://pelotes.jea.com/owlbard.wav

And here is what "ours" looks like:



Don't ask me how many pictures I took of him, this is where having a digital camera (and a good zoom lens) paid off!! But I think he (or she) is beautiful, don't you?