For them the past was dead: they poured into our hands
a handful of dry dust and ashes.

—Thomas Wolfe
______________

It makes me more than half grumpy, it really does. But still, the thing won’t go away on its own. So I might as well address the buzz, because I’m going to have to, anyway, sooner or later. Because I hear the questions from pretty much everywhere around me. At work, customers ask. And on Facebook. You answer, knowing full well you’ll have to repeat yourself to the next person. And the next. Again. And again. So I figured, write a blog about it, and you can just tell people to go there and read it, instead of talking until you’re blue in the face.

Such is the madness surrounding the latest hit TV show, Amish Mafia.

I’m not going to fuss incessantly about how wrong it all is. That cudgel has been taken up so often, by so many, that it’s becoming a little tiresome. After a while it just gets old, all those strident cries of dismay and outrage. There comes a point when you get saturated, and the emotion plays itself out. I’ve been at that point for a while.

And yeah, I did watch a couple of episodes. The very first night the show came on, I watched those two hours. To see for myself, because I figured that down the road, I’d need to know a little bit about it from actually watching. And the critics are right on, the entire show is just ludicrous. If you don’t know or understand that, you might as well go somewhere else and read some other blog. There’s nothing on this post that’s going to be of much value to you. The whole concept is just silly. Amish Mafia. It’s like saying slavery is freedom. Or some such thing. The two words don’t mix. There’s no connection.

I’m not saying don’t watch it. Do what you want. If you enjoy the “Mafia’s” obviously contrived escapades, go ahead. Just don’t fool yourself that what you’re seeing is anything even remotely approaching reality. And don’t come asking me all sorts of inane questions like, don’t you think there’s something to it? I’m telling you here there’s not. Otherwise, knock yourself out, watching. Someone at the office told me yesterday that the run is almost over. But I’m sure the reruns are just starting.

From here, at this stage, I have a hard time getting too riled up about the whole thing. It’s obviously farce. Way most of the scenes have been “recreated.” Which means they were just flat out made up by some script writer. Every “Mafia” scene is contrived. Every one. It’s surreal, to see tough-guy Amish thugs swaggering about, pretending to protect a people whose only wish is to be left alone in peace. Swaggering about, shooting into the windshield of an old car, slashing tires with a butterfly knife, shaking down a shop owner for “protection” money. If there were a real underground Amish Mafia, you can bet they wouldn’t be showing their stuff on a national TV program. It’s surreal and silly, the whole thing. Almost as surreal and silly as the fact that so many people actually believe this stuff. What can you do, but throw your head back and laugh?

I don’t know who dreamed up the show, but I strongly suspect the idea was born from the mad actions of those “Amish” beard cutters out there in Ohio. For the first time in recent and maybe in all of history, it was conceivable to connect the Amish with violence. Well, as a cultural group, I mean. Wild Amish youth have certainly been violent and destructive to some degree in some communities over the years. But the beard cutters spread the concept over the culture as a whole, for the first time ever. And I can see some producer coming up with the idea and pitching it to Discovery. Look at Sam Mullet and his boys. They forcibly entered the homes of their Amish “foes.” Threw them down, and cut off their beards. All that was so strange, so far beyond anything seen before. But it was real. And I can see it. Pitch a new “reality” show. Amish Mafia. Guys who enforce the unwritten code of justice within the communities. That’s where the whole concept came from, I’d bet a five bucks to a donut.

The thing is, if the show were presented as just straight entertainment, it would actually be pretty funny. I won’t say it would be worth watching, but it would be fairly harmless. And that’s one of a very few real problems I have with Amish Mafia. That some shysters at Discovery Channel dreamed up the theme and decided to present it as reality. That’s pretty low. And from some of the inside scuttlebutt I’ve heard, they were way less than honest about what they were doing to some of the bit characters on the show. I won’t say what I’ve heard. But I believe what was told to me. And the producers of Amish Mafia are just flat out low-lifes. As are the suits higher up. All of them. Nothing matters to them, except the numbers and a hit show. Nothing matters, especially the truth. The Discovery people, at least the ones associated with this show, are a dishonorable bunch.

You can’t trust the mainstream media. Period. You can’t trust what you see and hear. Not in the news. Not on Discovery. Not from any mainstream source. It’s all mind-numbing soma for the masses.

The way I see it, the show’s existence and success boils down to this. The market will always provide what the culture craves. And no, I’m not going off on some bunny trail tirade about cultural depravity. We are where we are. And the English culture is what it is. The market will provide what the culture craves. It’s just a simple rule. I believe it. And the Amish have been hot stuff for a decade or so, now. Almost anything written or produced about them sells. Doesn’t matter whether or not it’s based on truth. Dress the guy in a black hat and plain suit, throw a head covering on the girl, and that’s all you need. Someone will buy it. Someone will believe it. A lot of someones, usually. And money talks. It always has, always will. It was inevitable, I suppose, that the market would come out with something as blatantly fraudulent as the Amish Mafia. It was probably just as inevitable that a hefty percentage of mainstream America would lap it up.

And no, there shouldn’t “oughta be a law” against any person claiming anything they want about pretty much anything or anyone, including the Amish. Sure, Amish Mafia is a travesty when it comes to truth. One of the few things worse than that would be some sort of FCC board of mindless bureaucrats sitting there and deciding what is or isn’t truth. And deciding whether or not Discovery will be allowed to air this show. The state already meddles way too much as it is in just about every conceivable area. That beast should be stripped of the powers it has usurped, not granted more.

And that brings me to Lebanon Levi and his cohorts. I can’t remember their names, and won’t bother to Google them. The right-hand man. The enforcer. The wanna be. And, of course, the girl. All of them are from real Amish blood except the enforcer. He’s some sort of plain “Joe Wenger” Mennonite. All of them speak the real Pennsylvania Dutch. (It was kind of wild, to hear the language spoken so clearly on TV.) And all of them are playing a role they know is a lie.

They all chose to do what they did on the show. But still, I’ve wondered. Who are they, really? They seem so lost. Where did they come from? What did they see, growing up? What did life throw at them? What did they experience? What did they endure? What roads have they seen and traveled? Where were their fathers? How deeply were they wounded? Go back down the trails of their pasts, and I’ll bet you’ll find it littered with emotional trauma.

I don’t know that. I’m just seeing the signs. Somehow, somewhere, they stumbled and lost their way. And my heart goes out to them. If I ever had a chance, I would sit down with any one of them and listen to their stories without judgment.

It’s a strange and maddening thing, the lure of fame. Especially when a little money is mixed into the equation. The combination of fame and money, it’s the low hanging fruit on the tree of temptation. Not many of us have ever had the chance to accept or reject that fruit. We judge like we have. But we’ve never felt or heard that whispering caress. Come on. In this moment. Take it. I can hear the serpent’s tongue of the Discovery people. Smooth. Big city types. Soothing and conniving, all the while despising the people they were manipulating. Simpletons. From the county. Way better yet, from the Amish. They speak the real language. Pennsylvania Dutch. They will be credible. Use them. Harvest what you can from them. That’s the way of the world that many jaded ex-Amish youth will never fully grasp or understand.

And so this “Mafia” cast was assembled. I doubt that they all knew each other before. I’d bet on it. The enforcer, especially, would have had no reason to be in the world of Levi and his friends. He’s such a wild card. Amish and Joe Wenger Mennonites don’t mingle much, I can tell you that. Not beyond basic socializing in passing. Not from what I’ve seen. Yet, here they are, pretending to be close friends in the shadows of an underworld that has never been seen before. Only from an insider perspective can you really grasp how contrived the whole thing is.

And I have to think, too. What price were they paid, to betray their people? It probably wasn’t that much, not when you consider the gold mine this show has turned out to be for Discovery. And it’s really none of my business. But I’m thinking. Whatever money these guys got paid, it wasn’t anywhere near enough. It could never be enough, for what they did.

Somehow, something tells me this group of “Mafia” characters had no idea of what they were doing, of what they were getting into, when they agreed to play their roles. I really don’t think they did. There’s no way they could have known how the show would explode into the mainstream. How wildly it would spin out of control.

And I wonder about the future of Lebanon Levi and his “Mafia.” Will their people be there for them, when they see and understand what they have done? Or will they be scorned and rejected? Ostracized? I don’t know. I hope someone will be there. Because I believe that day is coming for all of them, a day when they will see more clearly. It might already be here for a few of them.

It will be a harsh and bitter thing, whenever the true realization sinks in. How casually and dishonorably they betrayed their history and their people. You just don’t do that. Lie about your people, lie about where you came from and where you are. You just don’t.

The second real problem with the show is, the market has now seen that real ex-Amish youth can be bought. Paid to claim anything. Which probably always was the case, to some degree. I don’t know if there was ever a stage in my life when I would have done such a thing. Maybe I would have. I’d like to think I wouldn’t. But I never had a chance to face that test, because the market demand wasn’t there, back then. It is now, for ex-Amish kids. And when those kids are bought to speak, their voices mix and meld into all the legitimate voices out there. It’s a jumble of noise, to those who don’t know which voices are real and which voices are speaking pure falsehoods.

But that’s just how it is, in any market. You don’t believe every voice you hear. Figure it out for yourself, which ones are speaking truth. And reap the consequences of your choices. We live in the world we’re in. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. No amount of laws will, either.

The third real problem I see in the show is a long-term one. Maybe a century or two down the road. (Yep, as a post-millenialist, I believe there will be many, many more centuries down the road.) Anyhow, way down the road, there will be persistent historical myths that there was an Amish Mafia. And that far out, they won’t know today’s truth. This show will be part of the “proof” there was actually such a thing. Think Templar Knights, Masons, secretive groups like that. And the shows you see now and then on the History Channel. Some of the “facts” on those shows have to be wildly off. They have to be, because no one who is alive today was there. And the historical record is so sparse. There is so much we think we know but don’t know about the past. Of those groups, of any group. Of those times, of any time.

And that’s how it will be with the Amish record, two hundred years from now. History will show there might actually have been such a thing as an Amish Mafia.

The people in that day and time will have to deal with and absorb that misconception then. Sift through the evidence as best they can. Figure out which voices from the past to listen to.

All you can do is speak the truth where you are, as you see it. And that’s about all I have to say about the contrived myth that is the Amish Mafia.

For have you not retrieved from exile the desperate
lives of men who never found their home?

—Thomas Wolfe
_______________

Well, it’s that time again. Seems like not that long ago, when I last posted that last blog of the year. When one looks back and takes stock a bit. I guess that’s what one is expected to do. It’s what I’ve done, mostly, in the past. Look back, recount and reflect. And tab it out, all the stuff that happened. Good, bad, ugly. And I was figuring to do just that. But when I sat down to pound it out, there was one thing that kept surfacing in my head. One new realization, one new thing of wonder, that stood out above all the rest.

But first, sure it was a wild year, 2012. A year of wild, strange roads. It was the best of times, in many ways I could never have imagined. And it was something less than that, in a few ways I could have imagined. A whiplash of a year. So many things came down, so many things plunged this way and that. And it was a little weird, to keep navigating forward through the maze. All while trying to keep my head straight.

The year sure didn’t start out like I figured. In that sense, it seems so long ago, to look back to what I was thinking then. I was pretty confident. I could walk through any door I chose, I figured. Because I had just walked through one that seemed just flat out impossible. Bring it on, I wrote. Show me a new door. Push me through it. I have to be pushed.

A year ago, there were some noises about a sequel. Not from me, from the market. And I kind of eyed it up, the situation. Yeah, I’ll walk forward, see what happens. I did it once. I can do it again. And I wrote up some stuff, went under. I told you about that when it happened.

Amd 2012 was the year I found out I can’t just breeze my way along. Not by arbitrarily willing it so. You can’t force things. It’s a really strange place to be, because it is a place I least expected. And that’s always a thing of half-terror/half-wonder, like feeling your way out of a cave, maybe. Not that I ever did that. Just making a connection there, somehow.

So I told them, the Tyndale people and my agent. I’m pulling back. It’s not coming. I’m going off to live my life and write my blog for a while. I had no idea how long. Still don’t. It was just an instinctive thing. Go back to where it all started, and stay there until you step out again. It was pretty intense, for me to reach that conclusion. But it was the only thing I knew to do.

And right after I recoiled from that little effort, a strange thing came down. The book was listed on Amazon’s 100 discounted eBook list in March. It went haywire from the first day, and all through that month. When the dust had settled, Carol sent me the numbers. 44,000 eBooks sold in March. In thirty-one days. It was surreal, the whole thing. And it freaked me out a lot.

And that was all good, that March run, but it wasn’t the strangest thing I saw this year.

April brought its own beautiful little oddity. The honorary Doctorate from Vincennes University. And I wrote all that as it all came down, too. It was an extraordinary experience, the whole way through, from inception to presentation. Funny thing is, after it was over, I just went back to being who I was before. Sure, I have a real cool hood hanging in my living room. A pacemaker paddle, and a lot of memories and pictures. The honorary Doctorate was an honor, indeed, and I will always treasure it.

And that was all good, what happened in April. But it wasn’t the strangest thing I saw this year.

Through the summer, and right up til now, the book just kind of trundled along, held its own. Never waved into the ether again, after that March spike. But it’s held steady, right along. And right now, on Amazon, Growing Up Amish has an astounding 260 reviews. One star to five stars. (Nope, I’m not linking it. Find it yourself if you don’t believe me.) That’s big stuff, any way you look at it. It is, when you come from where I came from. All it needs is some little trigger, some famous person mentioning it, to make it take off and soar again. All that might yet come. And it might not. I want it to, of course, and will do what I can to shove it along. But I’m cool with whatever happens, either way. Ride the ride until it’s over. Then it’s done. Not before. You can’t make this stuff up, I figure.

And all that is good, all very wild and exciting, how the book’s hanging right in there. I’m astounded and grateful. But it wasn’t the strangest thing I saw this year.

It snuck up on me kind of slow in a dawning realization, the most startling thing I saw this year. I wasn’t looking for it. It wasn’t on my radar screen anywhere. But in the process of figuring out what was going on inside me, why I was making the choices I was making, of analyzing what makes me tick, it came to me. Took a while for it to sink in. But it did, over time. Over the last few months.

It’s a strange road that takes you back to the place you started from. Or a place you never knew you were before. The most startling thing I’ve realized this year was how much I am like my father. In many ways, but particularly when it comes to writing. That whole persona, of how you present your stuff, how you produce. I am him, because I do it like he did. Not in the obvious ways, as in how I live and what I write. We couldn’t be much more different there if we tried. But in the subconscious choices I make and have made, I am my Dad.

He wrote because he wanted to, not because he had to. Not to earn his living. I’m a little more sporadic than he was in his prime. He sat up late most nights, pounding away at his typewriter. I sit up late some nights, working at my computer. So I never produced anything remotely approaching his volume, but in this equation, that’s not that big a factor. He had plenty of things in life that kept him occupied, dozens of little businesses he launched and ran more or less haphazardly. I haven’t done that. His most successful business ever: Wagler Metals, where he sold metal roofing and siding. Today I work at a business that sells exactly the same stuff. He was well known in the Amish world. I have reached a broader audience outside the culture.

Dad didn’t care much what others thought. He just wrote. He wrote, and threw his stuff out there in his world. He never called himself a writer. And he didn’t write, to make his living. He just wrote. And he said it as he saw it. Well, within the confined boundaries of his culture, he did. Which was from a flawed perspective, of course. But whose perspectives aren’t flawed, now and then? Mine are. Because I’m human, as he was.

There are so many similarities that it’s freaky, when I think of it. And for me, it is also a strange and wonderful thing. I don’t care who you are. It’s pretty much a universal longing. You want the essence of the good things your father was to live inside you. Even if you couldn’t see those good things so much, way back.

There are, of course, certain aspects of his personality and his nature that I have chosen not to claim. And there’s nothing wrong with that, either. I can still honor and respect him for what he was and who he was. It takes a lot of time, sometimes, for that clarity to reach your heart and head. Well, that’s how it was for me. I won’t speak for anyone else out there. But it does take time, because when you break away from all you have known, it’s pretty ingrained deep inside. You will never be like that, like the people who held you back. Especially your father. You won’t be like him. You won’t be that distant, that obstinate, that harsh and cold. And it’s OK to feel like that, too. It’s OK to grapple with those negatives.

That’s how it was for me. My guard was up, big time. I won’t be like he was. I won’t write to defend a lifestyle that’s indefensible. I won’t. It was hard, to break loose. It really was. It’s still so raw, sometimes, looking back.

And now I see how much like him I am.

Some of this stuff became clear to me as I was talking about it. Recently, on a radio interview, the host asked how I could write the book so respectfully. “You didn’t rip into those people back there in your life, the Amish,” he said. “How come not?”

And I thought about that. Ten years ago, I said, I probably couldn’t have written it like I did. Ten years ago, you would have read some bitterness, either openly or between the lines. Some claim you can read bitterness there, now. But I wrote it from a heart that wasn’t. And sure, there were places where my head may not have wanted to write sympathetically about the Amish. But overall, my heart did. And overall, the heart won. Because when your heart is calm and you write your heart, you don’t have to worry much about how it will all come out. It will come out right.

And now, I can see why it all came out as it did. I am my father, when it comes to defending what and who the Amish are. Not in apologetics, as he often wrote. And not the polemical stuff he cranked out right along. But in a broader sense, as an accurate portrayal to the world, I think our work is comparable. His view from inside. Mine from outside, having been there. The similarities are startling to me. All the way down to how I produce. All the way down to what I do for a living.

I am my father’s son. And, really, what’s not to celebrate about that?

A few weeks ago, I was telling my friend Shawn Smucker about all this over lunch one day. He listened and seemed a little amazed, as I was talking. But then he asked a simple question. Something I had not even considered. “Will you tell him? Will you tell your Dad these things?” And his question startled me.

I don’t know. Yeah, I guess I will, when I see him, I answered. He’s 91 years old. I don’t know if he’d grasp what I’m trying to say. But I’ll probably write it. He’ll read it. He likes to read my blogs, when he can. But yeah, you’re right. He does need to be told. I will in person, next time I see him.

In the meantime, though, I’m telling him here.

And that was 2012, a year of strange and wonderful roads. Roads I could not have imagined, roads that led through valleys and over mountains to places I could not have remotely conceived in my mind. All of which makes me one of the most optimistic people out there, when it comes to what 2013 might bring.

I don’t have to tell you that the world is in turmoil such as has not been seen in our lifetimes. It seethes and bubbles out there, the blackest evil in the darkest human hearts. We are sliding headlong into perdition, that’s pretty clear to those who are not deliberately blind. The forces close in tighter every day. You can see it, sense it, feel it.

I pay no attention to most of the noise. Like the annual dog and pony show of the “fiscal cliff” charade. The wealthy in this country had better prepare to get devoured. Because it’s coming, the ravenous insatiable beast of public envy, whipped to a mindless frenzy by Obama and his minions.

In areas that really matter, I do pay attention, though. The evil that is the state tightens the noose every day a little bit more. Encroaches, encroaches on our freedoms, all in the name of security. It lashes out in increasingly savage and destructive wars, murdering hundreds of thousands of innocents who have never done a thing to harm anyone. The boondoggle of ObamaCare is coming, soon to be followed by a real scarcity of quality medical care. And always the people cry “something must be done,” as one more unspeakable tragedy unleashes havoc in the land. The craven media march in lockstep, demonizing the common people for insisting on the right to self defense.

In Newtown, CT, those little innocent murdered children have been sacrificed over and over again on altars not made of stone, altars to the false god that is the state. Only in Orwellian doublespeak could a serious pitch be made for parents to disarm themselves to protect their children. The very concept goes against all we have learned in the long brutal slog through all of recorded history. Except we obviously haven’t learned, not as a society. Not these generations. We will, though, if this siren’s song is heard and heeded. One of the most cherished goals of any state is to disarm its citizens.

There are so many examples in history of the moment we’re in. I feel like some guy back in the mid 1930s, anywhere, who saw what was coming and said something to someone around him. And how nothing the guy could say had anything approaching a smidgen of hope to deflect onto a better path the march of history to wherever it will go. But with barely a smidgen of desperate faith that his words would make any difference to even a few persons, he still said it as he saw it, in his world. Because he had to.

I feel like that guy.

Through it all, though, I’m excited about the coming year. And no, I’m not making any resolutions. Most of those are futile, anyway. I might as well resolve for “world peace,” or some similarly vacuous slogan that is always safe to spout in polite company.

If one wish could be granted, though, my prayer would be that the Lord in His mercy would call my Mother home in 2013. She still remains in Aylmer, at my sister Rosemary’s home, still receding ever deeper into the confines of a dark cruel world that will not let her go. She curls up now in repose, they tell me, pulls her knees up to her chin. An instinctive returning to the womb, I think. We so yearn for her to be called home. Maybe this will be the year. I pray it will be.

And other than that, I’m excited about all that 2013 might hold. Eager and excited about all those strange and beautiful roads that will beckon. From just living, and from the book, and maybe from my writing. We’ll see what roads open up. I will walk them with gratitude and with joy. And, yeah, there will be a little grumbling, too, now and then, on those roads. That’s just how it is. But I will always walk with a heart that is free.

And that is my standing, year-round wish for everyone and anyone out there. That all would come to know what it is to be truly free.

Happy New Year to all my readers.