Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Amish Houses and Barns by Stephen Scott Good Books, 1992 (158 pages, paper, $5.95) Home is the center of Amish life, and most – if not all – major life events occur within its walls: birth, mar­riage, visiting, worship, recreation, and death. Amish Houses and Barns is a carefully researched “behind-the­-scenes” look at these events on three farms in particular, as well as...
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor Ecstatic with Esherick Wow! Your magazine is really on the ball. With the growing popularity of the crafts movement, you’re right on target with your feature story on Esherick [see Sharon Hernes Silverman’s “A Passion for Wood: The Life and Legacy of Wharton Esherick” in the Fall 1997 issue]. I’m ecstatic with your timely coverage. Thanks. Mimi Hake-Tripp...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Quilting Time Lancaster County is associated with many things, among them the “Pennsylvania Dutch,” barn raising, the horse and buggy, Amish and Mennonite farmsteads, shoo fly pie, and, of course, quilts. Quilts made in Lancaster County reflect the diversity of cultures and way of life in the region called – because of its verdant beauty and highly productive agricultural...
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Violence and Vigilantes: The KKK in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Violence and Vigilantes: The KKK in Pennsylvania It was a warm, muggy day in early August 1921 in Philadelphia when F. W. Atkins of Jacksonville, Florida, and W. J. Bellamy of Cincinnati, Ohio, rented an office in the Bellevue Court Building to quietly recruit members for “a great and patriotic crusade to save the nation.” Their goal was to organize a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Posing as a prospective KKK initiate, a...
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1876 Centennial Craze Sweeps into Philadelphia!

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on 1876 Centennial Craze Sweeps into Philadelphia! This spring marks the one hundred and thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the International Exhibition of Art, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine, better known as the Centennial International Exhibition, staged to mark the one hundredth anniversary of American independence. Opening Day, Wednesday, May 10, 1876, welcome more than one hundred thousand visitors, and by closing day,...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Harmony in Wood: Furniture of the Harmony Society by Philip D. Zimmerman published by the Friends of Old Economy Village, 2010; 214 pages, cloth, $60.00 Creators of an immensely successful nineteenth-century utopian society, the Harmonists, led by George Rapp (1757–1847), emigrated from Germany and first settled Harmony in Butler County in 1804, moved west to Indiana ten years later where they...
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Arnold N. Nawrocki

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Arnold N. Nawrocki Although Americans consume an average of thirty pounds of cheese each year – up from eight pounds in 1950, a staggering increase of 287 percent – few probably recognize the name Arnold N. Nawrocki. However, at his death at the age of seventy-eight, his obituary was published in more than one hundred newspapers in six countries on three continents. His obituary appeared in a number of...
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