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Showing posts from August, 2012

Guests from the Past

Today I read an interesting article called "Guests from the Past, or Life of the Ukrainian Amish" I spent my summers camping in a Ukrainian scouts reservation, which was located in an Amish town in Ohio. So we would often see Amish when we were allowed to venture into town on the weekends. I hadn't realized there was a Ukrainian equivalent until today. The Ukrainian Amish, or хустинники (people who wear kerchiefs) or кашкетикники (people who wear caps) as they are also called by non-Amish, live without electricity or gas, don't drive, wash their clothes in the river, only read religious literature, and have lots of children. The article says that one difference between them and American Amish that the Ukrainians use shampoo, detergents, and sometimes chemical fertilizers. I really like the phrase from the title of the article "guests from the past." People who continue to live like our ancestors are living examples of "remnants of the past" - t