One last Visit!

 Amana Colonies...street view

 Amana Colonies Christmas Festival...above is a German-style Christmas pyramid

 TANNENBAUM FOREST

I went out to Iowa to visit Patrick one last time before he comes home.  He has been serving on Rock Island Arsenal for 6 months doing Contracting for the troops in Afghanistan.  It was a fun weekend of no kids even if Pat had to work most of the time.  We went to  the Amana Colonies in  Iowa and did some Christmas shopping.  The Amana Colonies are a group of settlements of radical Germans in Iowa, comprising seven villages. They lived a communal life until the mid 1930s.A striking feature of the Amana Colonies is that for eighty years they maintained an almost completely self-sufficient local economy, importing very little from the wider, industrializing U.S. economy, and at the same time the level of physical comfort, housing, possessions, education, and social and cultural amenities were comparable to that enjoyed by average middle class American office workers, factory workers, and tradesmen of the time. The Amanians were able to achieve this independence and life style by adhering to the specialized handcrafts and farming occupations which they had brought with them from Germany. Master craftsmen passed on from one generation to the next the knowledge, techniques, and skills of the artisan iron and copper smiths, wood wrights, weavers, shoemakers, cheese makers, etc., in the old fashion. Today, Amana is a major tourist attraction known mainly for its restaurants and craft shops. Included in the shops are woodworking shops, wine shops, etc.