Joe Mackall, director of the creative writing program at Ohio's Ashland University, has written a thoughtful and  sometimes humorous book about the Amish.

His primary subject: Swartzentruber Amish, the most conservative of all groups, who happen to be concentrated in Ohio. Mackall's neighbors are Swartzentrubers and the main characters in his book.

Near the end of "Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish," Mackall explains the differences among Swartzentrubers, the slightly less conservative Andy Weaver Amish (also concentrated in Ohio), and the even less conservative Old and New Order Amish of Ohio and Lancaster County.

Swartzentrubers are not allowed to have indoor plumbing, for example, while the other groups are. Andy Weaver Amish may not have window blinds, while Old Order Amish may. And so on.

But all four groups are permitted to have one thing.

Everyone is allowed to have a washing machine, though it may not be electric. It must have a belt running to a small gasoline engine.

And all four groups are not permitted to have one thing.

No carpeting.

Mackall ponders how these specific decisions might have been mad.

"I like to imagine," he writes, "all the women of the four orders somehow putting pressure on their husbands, explaining how difficult it would be to do the wash by hand for the two of them plus eight or ten or twelve kids, insisting on making washing machines cool with the Ordnung, or else."

And he adds, "Maybe they conceded carpeting as a compromise."

Mackall's writing is an honest and refreshing change from the customary saccharin scribbling about the Noble Amish Man.

Despite, or perhaps because of, Mackall's refusal to perch the Amish on a pedestal, he manages to convey a deep respect for the people.

"Plain Secrets" has been published by Beacon Press ($24.95).

Mackall is coming to Lancaster County to speak at the Amish in America conference June 7-9 at Elizabethtown College.

The moon had turned to gold
Here comes an oddity.

May will have a blue moon, according to Ross I. Morrison, of 1735 Eden Road.

The first full moon of May lightened the night sky May 2. The second will shine Thursday night.

The second full moon in one month is known as a blue moon.

"The phrase 'once in a blue moon' has the meaning 'every now and then' or 'rarely,"' comments Morrison, "but it is not certain that the expression is associated with the lunar event."

The Scribbler googled "blue moon" and discovered that each century contains only about 41 months with blue moons.

Rather rare.

"And when I looked," as Mel Torme sang, "the moon had turned to gold."

More than one Noodledoosey
The place name "Noodledoosey," it turns out, may not be so rare after all.

While researching a murder case that originated in Manheim 150 years ago, Jim McMullin found another Noodledoosey.

"The Manheim Tragedy," a book about the trial and execution of the killers of Anna Garber and Elizabeth Ream, includes testimony that mentions an alternative name for the hamlet of Fruitville on the Fruitville Pike.

The alternative is Noodledoosey.

The only local Noodledoosey the Scribbler previously knew about lies just west of Die Rot Kuh (Red Run) in East Cocalico Township.

That Noodledoosey's derivation, according to C. Richard Beam, director of Millersville University's Center for Pennsylvania German Studies, is an off-color story involving two men and a woman.

It's a doozy.

CONTACT US: jbrubaker@LNPnews.com or 291-8781