It kind of is true. Around here, no high school diploma, no job. Trade licensing is academic and requires fluency, and the ability to take such tests well. They do not know the information. The GED requires algebra 1, some formal writing, life science that isn't included in the curriculum, and some social science topics they are not exposed to. The students from the local K8 Mennonite school which covers more curriculum than the Amish do are not able to pass the GED forcing parents to homeschool the boys for two years of usually Christian Light high school curriculum, or place them in P.S. Job openings here are not offered to young men just because they have a work ethic and a knowledge of basic tools and home repair. The lack of knowledge of building codes, lack of diploma, lack of licensing, and lack of other life and academic experience plus lack of English reading fluency due to not beginning education in English until age ten, means minimum wage, hoeing corn and such are all that is available to them, and if they want to leave the sect, $9 an hour during the agricultural season does not pay rent, transportation, food, and utilities.

I am so, so sorry! I know this will be emotionally horrible to think he might get and die, and not see that baby. But, the baby must be protected. I hope you can get your sister to see reason and stay away. 💓💓💓

It's a staggering level of denial!

Same for my neck of the woods!

Exactly! I don't get it. Apparently their body their choice but also our body their choice because they don't want anyone to have the choice to get vaccinated or receive medical care??? I mean, I seriously don't get it. This has reached a fever pitch of mass hysteria from these folks. What possible point is there to protesting at the damn hospital where the people who save lives, not just from covid, are working their a$$es into the ground? Don't want medical care, stay at home twits!

I am so sick of the sports obsession. So now they are just brazenly prioritizing the health of football players over all other students. I raise my middle finger to this school district with a resounding Fbomb on their heads! 😠😤😲😠

The problem you have is that the population of Amish in this country came from a small number of families to begin with, and without conversion of other families to the religion, the Amish from Lancaster are many generations of 1st cousin marriage and half brother/sister marriage (very much allowed within Amish society until the 1900's) all intertwined for hundreds of years. Mingling with Amish from Lehman Ohio is just mingling with people whose genetics are pretty darn tight to their own. The communities themselves are very closely, genetically related. This has also happened in the Hutterite communities of Canada. Cohen's disease is one genetic disorder that is profoundly rare in the general population, less than 100 cases per year among non-Amish, but 20-30 cases per year among Amish whose population is roughly less than 300,000 in the states. Though for now, large families may spur growth on paper it is predicted to decline significantly as so many children will not be having children in the future and those that do will have even more unhealthy children.

😥 I think the anti-do anything group is really a death cult. Whatever they worship, I guess children are the human sacrifices this season. I will never understand. Staggering lunacy!

Here, large corporate farms bid higher for land than the Amish can pay, so they are running out of land. But, their bigger issue is related to the fact that they are so inbred after centuries of pretty much no conversions to the sect, that they have a 1:4 rate of significant genetic disease in offspring, most of whom are significantly unhealthy if not very disabled and will not marry and have offspring in the future. Some have been particularly hard hit with multiple children having significant disabilities. No one converts to Amish really, so they do not have "new blood" as the saying goes. They have high fetal/infant and maternal death rate because they severely limit modern prenatal care , god's will and all, high rates of severe injury and death from accidents, and the local group refuses to put any lights on their buggies and wagons, just one single reflector, but won't stay off these country, unlit roads at night so usually two or three times a year, a buggy gets hit and whole families get wiped out. This group is most certainly not growing.

Wonderful! 💃💃💃

Ds really likes his electric tea pot for making cocoa, hot spiced apple cider from packets, and hot water for noodles when the mood strikes him. I also sent a Brita water pitcher so he could filter the city water which he doesn't appreciate after years of well water run through a household reverse osmosis.

Wow! That was quite an accurate prediction, some seriously fast back walking.

Agreed, years ago I was gifted a Fallacy Detective. Not.a.good.gift. The misogynistic "humor" was a real turn off not to mention the fact that there was an awful lot of lifestyle criticism based on ultra conservative Christianity, and not a whole lot of actual instruction identifying logical fallacies. I felt it was a lot of indoctrination into a specific worldview, not general instruction in formal logic, debate, or philosophy.

Our county lost, and has been losing since the early 2000's, and Michigan itself lost enough to lose an electoral vote. Rocket City is rocking, so I suspect that though our 2nd home is in Morgan County, due to proximity to Rocket City it likely gained. I haven't had a chance to check those number though.

I agree that the pandemic has shown with incredibly distressing clarity how broken our healthcare system really is! Unfortunately, I truly believe this is going to get way worse before anything is done about it because such a large voting bloc would rather die to keep the status quo than embrace change. It seems like a pretty sizeable majority of folks will not accept reality, that what we have for healthcare access, funding, distribution of resources, and private insurance is a deadly, inhumane system.

I am so sorry to hear that! I hope recovery is quick.

Oh yes. Zero responsibility for showing up to the meeting unmasked, screaming, and dropping Fbombs on the teachers. They will never admit they caused it!

Gotcha! Tell her I said congrats! Good school.

You are right. He is a troll! And there are a lot of them out there.

My brain kind of went "BOING" over reading that thing right to left! Side note. Apparently at the school board meeting this week, they decided no masks, no distancing, no contact tracing, no quarantining after exposure, nada, zip, squat. 😠 There are 11 days to go until school starts, and according to a former colleague who retired from that district at the end of the 20/21 year, there are threats of mass exodus among faculty and staff. This is NOT going to end well.

Ouch to the homeschool band! I think if you wore a face shield at least that would be another reduction in risk. Maybe mount a surgical mask or a part of a hepa filter vacuum bag at the bottom so air can come in, but your droplets don't get out. Demonstrating embouchure is always problematic in these circumstances though. Ugh!

OP, is she going to be at UAH and if so, is she going to follow or play hockey? Their team is Div 1 hockey with the U.P. schools and they regularly travel to UP for games, so it is pretty darn cold for spectators and team/staff. Might need a parka and such if she is going to be coming this way. I couldn't remember what school she is headed to, and thought of the first game with spectators from Bama who nearly froze!

LOL, snowshoes and cross country skis! But ds is at a university in the U.P. that averages 200 inches of snow per season, so skiing to class is a thing.

Yes, and it seems that Doug Phillips, Doug Wilson, Rushdooney, Botkin, Gothard, and many others who advocated for America to be taken over by a patriarchal style theocracy of an authoritarian government based on their own whackaloon and very dangerous "biblical" interpretations may be winning that war. It is very likely that the downplaying of the influences of Jerry Falwell and the like was a massive strike against our form of democracy. So many people thought "Fringe group, not a threat". They thought wrong. https://www.lansingcitypulse.com/stories/lansing-hr-director-warns-of-biblical-end-times,17078

Bingo!!!!!