AmishI Documentary. Title: The AmishDate: 12/23/04Time: 12:30PMLibrary: West Linn Public LibraryII. I have heard very little about the Amish. I always seem to hear jokes about them and conversations about how crazy they are for not using electricity. I decided that I actually wanted to get to know them to test the validity of the comments I hear.III. Other than the fact that the Amish had flat black hats and didn't use electricity, I know nothing about the Amish.IV. In this documentary the filmmakers caught the attention of a very eloquent old Amish man. I loved hearing him talk about what his life was like as a child. He explained many things about his family and how they lived. There were several accounts of some activities they would perform. For example, after church the kids would get together and play this ball game where one guy would try to hit another with a hard ball. I wouldn't expect many other Amish cultures to do this, yet in the video they imply that this is what all Amish are. Many stories were also told that showed how strict these people were and how closely they followed their religion. The documentary stated that in order for the Amish to still make a living, more modernized tools had to be used. One of the recently accepted ones was the machine that mechanically milked cows. Without this, the Amish man explained, the Amish could not have made it. The man also explained that his family and other families in his community would occasionally ask neighbors to drive them somewhere. Additionally, as time went on, the Amish were allowed to use public telephones located outside the village. I think it was great that the filmmakers were able to get a source like this, but I've only heard about religion/lifestyle through one person's stories. I'm sure many of the things his family or community did were not the same as every other Amish family or community. Furthermore, I constantly recognized footage that I had seen before, in that same film. They were obviously just looking at a specific community. If there are thousands of different Amish out there, there must be hundreds of different interpretations of the religion. I would have liked to see a different community and see how they lived to see if the Amish were really the same everywhere or if each community was unique.