The Lifetime Movie Network broadcast "Amish Grace" on Sunday. Donald Kraybill - who wrote the book - said that it was all wrong, but writers tend to be very possessive about their words. I TiVOed it, and was looking at it this morning.

I stopped counting all the factual errors before we were five minutes into the film. They couldn't even get the school name right, referring to West Nickel Mines school, instead of East Nickel Mines school. What bothered me most, though, were not the technical details - Amish people dressed like Amish people don't, beards that are perfectly coiffed, faces that are painted with makeup, folks didn't act Plain. No, it was the perversion of the message of Kraybill's book.

Live Among Them

When I was first married to my late first wife, Em, 12 of our 13 closest neighbors were Amish. I dealt with them every day, was welcome in their homes, and they didn't hesitate to ask to use the phone or for a ride when one was necessary. When it's 30 miles to the horse vet, and you have horses that have gotten into the corn crib, there isn't sufficient time to drive a horse and buggy to summon the vet.

Kraybill seems to get it right. He doesn't paint haloes on the Plain, and he doesn't demonize them. The details of this movie are sufficiently incorrect to arouse the ire of both the Plain-lovers and the Plain-haters, but Kraybill pointed out that the Amish faith not only healed their wounds, but also those of Mrs. Roberts's family, Roberts being the gunman at Nickel Mines.

Pulling The Plug

I gave up on the movie after 30 minutes. Blood pressure medicine is relatively cheap, but it's cheaper still to turn off something so ugly as that movie.

I don't know why I ever watch Lifetime Movies Network. So many of their movies are offensive "women in jeopardy" crap, as if women were helpless. I need to go into TiVO and tell it that I don't even receive LMN network.

May 4 Is Coming

I don't suppose I have to say that the Nickel Mines incident tore me up. Living in the city, I don't have any close acquaintances among the Pennsylvania Amish; my Amish friends are in Indiana. Still, kids are kids, and I suspect that as a gimp, I empathize even more with the helpless than most people - and most people around here were profoundly upset that it happened.

Monday, I had to go to the drugstore, and Blondie and I ate lunch at Subway. I have mixed feelings about the one we went to, next to the Waffle House near F&M. They seem to do a good job of putting together sandwiches - who would think that slapping cold cuts and veggies on bread would be an art form? - but they don't have both sweet and unsweet tea. I really prefer unsweet. The store in Leola has both, and if it were closer, I'd go there more often.

Why Lays?

I would also prefer that they carry local brands of potato chips instead of Frito-Lay. It's not that I object to Lay's; it's not a bad chip. But in a market with Utz, Martin, Good's, and other great chips, why settle for Lay's?

The chips bag had a "May 4" expiry printed on it. That'll be the 40th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, the date when we switched from the 1960s to the 1970s.

Terence Mann: Oh, my God.
Ray Kinsella: What?
Terence Mann: You're from the sixties.
Ray Kinsella: [bashfully] Well, yeah, actually...
Terence Mann: [spraying at Ray with a insecticide sprayer] Out! Back to the sixties! Back! There's no place for you here in the future! Get back while you still can!
-- Field of Dreams (1989)

I Was There

I went to Kent State for a week, about six months afterwards, to do a newspaper story about how the campus was healing. It was hard to find students; the place was lousy with journalists doing six month retrospectives. I spent three days there - and on the third day, I got to meet James Michener, shake his hand in his motel room. Nice fellow, frail, quiet. You'd have never thought he was the guy who wrote South Pacific, a rather courageous book at the time. If all you've ever done is seen the movie, you really ought to read the book.

Michener got the Kent State story right, as far as the details, but he missed the emotional content. The deaths of Bill, Sandy, Allison and Jeffrey, strangers to me in life, impacted me nearly as much as the death of Dave, a friend of the family, who died in VietNam. These weren't bad guys, they were, all of them, students merely trying to get to their next class. The next day was the spring primary, and it probably affected the results. John Gilligan, a Democrat, was elected that fall to succeed the most popular Republican governor since WWII. His daughter, Kathleen Sibelius, is our current Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The Loons, Again

The news, last night and today, was full of the arrests of militia in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. Given that I grew up in that tri-state area, I had a lump in my stomach as I looked for names and addresses online. The core of the Hutaree group was from Hillsdale, Michigan, which was close enough that we went to the Hillsdale Fair a couple of years - maybe 80 miles or so. The Buckeyes that were arrested were from Sandusky and Huron, the Cedar Point area, and the Hoosier was arrested in Hammond, almost on Lake Michigan.

If you recall, the Michigan Militia was involved peripherally in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the John Birch Society was headquartered in Indianapolis, and the northern Klan was from southern Indiana. That's close enough that, right before Jack Kennedy was shot, I heard a lot of comments in the barber shop that "somebody oughta shoot that sumbitch." They changed their tune afterwards, of course, when so many people put up pictures of Jack Kennedy in their homes, almost as shrines.

Not Just The Mackerel-Snappers

That was more common in Catholic homes, as Jack was the first (and only) Roman Catholic president we've ever elected, but it wasn't limited to them. At one time, I sold insurance for Maury Toschlog. I think he was Jewish, but when he bought a couple of really dinky life insurance companies, teetering on the brink, and merged them under his ownership, he named the combined company Kennedy National Life.

I've been saying for months that there's an undercurrent of resentment against Obama that I've not seen since Kennedy was in office. The fact that, instead of having old white protestant men running things, we have a woman as Speaker of the House, the mulatto son of a hippie chick as President, a wise Latina being put on the Supreme Court, and a openly gay committee chairman passing a law that Richard Nixon tried, and failed, to pass, is upsetting to people who don't cope well with change.

Who Do I Blame?

People who don't cope well with change are mostly tired old men, set in their ways. Hmmm. Who do I know that fits that description? Hey, you, there! Get off my lawn, you damn whippersnapper!

Ah, but there's a solution to all this. Blame Canada.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Amish Grace - Donald Kraybill - Field of Dreams - Franklin & Marshall - Hutaree - Jack Kennedy - James Michener - Kent State Massacre - Lay's - Leola - Lifetime Movie Network - Martin - Murrah - Nickel Mines - Subway - Utz - VietNam