It felt medieval, but in a good way. There was a rightness, a humanness, to what I saw, a rightness to the scale, the relationships, the smells, and the laughter. No wonder smiles abounded.
But this wasn’t a party. There was serious business going on. I learned this when I drifted over to the demonstration of the latest manure spreaders. It was a remarkable sight. Maybe a thousand Amish farmers, men and women, stood thoughtfully on either side of a freshly-plowed strip of soil, watching a steady parade of horse-drawn manure spreaders do their thing - literally. Manure flew high and low as each spreader ran a gauntlet of discerning eyes.
As I snapped photos, I noticed overhead the silent, silvery threads of heavy-duty, electrical transmission lines. I also noticed a non-Amish farmer in overalls videotaping the action. At nearly $5-a-gallon diesel, I had little doubt what motivated him.
But it wasn’t all gravitas. One vendor had on display a horse treadmill, which employed a variety of big Belgian horses almost continuously. More amazingly, a drive shaft of some sort connected the revolving treadmill to a generator in a mock Amish home, where, I swear, it powered a washing machine, a small grist mill, iceboxes, and, a short distance away, a small sawmill. Talk about alternate energy!
In mid-afternoon, the sun broke through the remnants of the mist, bathing the fairgrounds in bright, sticky light. It reminded me that I had forgotten to bring a hat. By that time, I was getting pretty good at distinguishing fair-goers by their headgear. Bare heads and ball caps revealed non-Amish, of which there was a decent number by lunchtime. Among the Amish themselves, there
By late afternoon, my eyes, ears, and mind were full.
Calling it quits for the day, I climbed into my rental and drove in the direction of a hotel in Berlin, a touristy town not far away (the B&B was booked for the night). I was as worn out from walking all day as I was from absorbing the cavalcade of sights and sounds. Reflexively, I turned on the car’s radio.
I immediately regretted it.
The chatter of self-appointed pundits suddenly filled the car - and all the talk was of "energy independence" on this Independence Day. Our addiction to foreign oil was shameful, they opined, though not as shameful as the opposition to increased domestic drilling by Democrats in Congress, especially a certain freshman Senator from Illinois. In contrast, the Republican candidate for president, they noted, had recently changed his position on off-shore drilling - he now supported new exploration in ecologically sensitive areas! Public opinion had quickly followed suit. Finally, they prattled, we would get our cherished independence!
Yeah, right, I thought - in a decade, maybe. Here’s an idea: why not leave the oil in the ground for our grandchildren instead? I switched the radio off.
David Kline’s words came back to me as I drove: "It’s alright to live with less." I think I understood what he meant, finally. By the evidence I saw that day, not only was it alright to live with
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