Word: amish
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Twentieth century bureaucracy stumbles when it comes to the Amish, who have stubbornly resisted the Social Security program and other government rules and regulations. The latest conflict has cropped up in Mesopotamia (pop. 2,000), Ohio, 40 miles east of Cleveland, where Amish Volunteer Fire Fighters Eli Miller and Noah Mullet go unshaven as a sign of personal simplicity. A new state law forbids fire fighters to wear beards in the line of duty. The reason: facial hair prevents a proper seal from forming between the skin and a breathing mask, which fire fighters are required to use near flames...
Choosing deference to his volunteers above the law, Fire Chief Keith Williams has decided to permit the men to don the breathing devices over their beards. "You can't afford to get rid of good fire fighters," he says. The two Amish make up half the fire company's day shift; Miller, who owns a harness shop across the street from the station, is usually the first fireman to answer a call...
...folks in the Kentucky hollers, the Midwestern river valleys and Amish Pennsylvania probably did not think of quilting as an art but rather as a skill and source of pride. They certainly did not think dealers and collectors would someday gather at auction to pay tens of thousands of dollars for Grandma's handiwork. America's Glorious Quilts, edited by Dennis Duke and Deborah Harding (Macmillan; 320 pages; $75), assembles photographs of some of the finest examples of this varied craft. Country and patriotic themes dominate the 19th century pieces, although their combinations of colors and designs are hardly naive...
Like certain Amish and Mennonite groups, Jehovah's Witnesses practice shunning: believers are required to treat as pariahs those who have been ousted from the sect. Since 1981 those who leave voluntarily have also been ostracized, even by close relatives. Janice Paul of Anchorage, a former Witness who was shunned by her close friends in the sect after she defected, decided to strike back. She sued the Governing Body of the Jehovah's Witnesses for unspecified damages, citing her emotional distress. An appeals court in San Francisco, upholding a previous ruling by a federal district court, has turned away Paul...
...million Americans. The finding, published in Nature by an American and Israeli research team, was based on studies of five families in Jerusalem. It marks the second time in three weeks that a genetic site has been linked to this disorder. The earlier work, based on studies of Amish families, found a manic depression marker on chromosome 11. The discoveries of two separate genetic defects that can lead to the same disease "aren't necessarily contradictory but complement each other," says Dr. Miron Baron, who headed the team. "Together they support the belief that manic depression is a group...