Pulling the Plug on Modernity

For a moment, the scene was an Amish country classic. Against a backdrop of wheat-colored hills, muscular branches laid bare by winter faded into feathery twigs. A standard-bred trotter, pulling an old-fashioned buggy, clopped along the road out of town.

Then, without warning, the horse lurched to the left and halted. “C’mon, Ned,” urged the driver, his plea emerging from above a scraggly beard and below a black, broad-brimmed hat.

Even loud lip-smacking noises failed to budge the horse. He stood riveted by the sight of a gray-striped cat lazing in adjacent pastureland. Ned was terrified.

The situation cried out for an experienced hand. But while often mistaken for one of his Anabaptist neighbors, Scott Savage, 37, was hardly to the buggy born. Ned had become his mode of transport just a few months earlier, another step in an ongoing transformation.

Six years ago, Savage was an ordinary guy, a lapsed Presbyterian who worked as a librarian in the Cleveland suburbs. He took credit for putting the local card catalog online.

Now he functions as a sort of emissary from the century’s beginning to those of us at century’s end. He has all but abandoned the modern technoscape, fleeing pagers, faxes and the Internet. He wrenched himself away from in-flight telephones, talking dashboards and tinny wristwatch alarms. Little by little, he shed TV, cameras, tape recorders. He gave the radio to Goodwill.

“What’s a movie, Daddy?” Tasha, the oldest of his three children, wondered recently. She is 6.

Although Savage took on many Amish customs after moving here, he is eager to explain himself to the rest of the world. And unlike the Unabomb terrorist, who tried to spread his anti-technology message through violence, Savage’s sole weapon is the word. The dispatches in the provocative magazine he edits make thousands ponder whether machines control humans, rather than the other way around.

Other writers, including Kirkpatrick Sale and Clifford Stoll, sounded similar alarms in recent years about the advent of the digital world. But only Savage has so fully divested himself of the trappings of the day. “He sets an example,” Sale said.

Some, heartened, are following; Savage says that in Ohio alone over the last two years, several hundred outsiders have taken up the old ways, Amish in style if seldom in religion. They decided that technology is so pervasive today that it takes drastic change to escape.

Savage is convinced that, unplugged, his family has tapped into a more gratifying existence, retrieving lost values of community and spirit. “Every time we make some sacrifice and do something hard,” he said, “we get a major gift.”

Lose National Public Radio, rediscover singing. Lose electric bulbs, find twilight and dawn.

His magazine, called Plain, extols the virtues of paring down and gives advice on how to do it. Ballantine plans to publish an anthology from its pages this year.

Over the summer, Savage organized a conference for neo-Luddites (the originals were weavers who smashed power looms in 1812 as England industrialized).

In rare instances, he also has entered the enemy’s arena, from the fortress-like compound where the state of Ohio stores computer data to the vegetarian lunchroom at San Francisco’s Wired magazine. There, he engaged the acolytes of high tech in debate that left many of them unnerved.

He argues that each person has a range of choices about machines and each choice has social consequences. Should computer skills be taught to kindergartners? Why, really, is an ATM better than a human teller? There may be valid answers, he says, but the questions should be asked.

Unbridled Engineering

A strain of concern about unbridled engineering entered American consciousness in the late 1960s, according to Alan Marcus, an Iowa State University professor who wrote a history of technology. “Small is Beautiful,” by E.F. Schumacher, was the movement’s seminal text.

These days, “anecdotally, it’s getting stronger,” said Steve Cisler, Apple Computer’s outreach director. In an age of cloned sheep and online pornography, he said, “the pace has picked up so much.”

Savage gets more than 50 letters a week, from California, New York and points in between. Many deride him as a crank: “To blame technology for the difficulty humanity finds itself in today is, in my view, a tragic blunder--a blunder that leads to many self-contradictions.”

More offer heartfelt gratitude. “For most of my life I have felt very alone in my belief that all this technology is not good for us,” one reader wrote.

“You are giving voice to very deep feelings about what is wrong with society and more importantly, offering hope and vision about what can be done,” another wrote.

A handful even pulled up stakes and settled here, where the slow rise to Appalachia begins. Although few have gone as far as Savage, they think carefully about what they jettison and what they keep. They tend to dress in dark colors and modest cuts.

Living simply is not easy. The converts to low-tech life, including Savage, have been known to turn, in a pinch, to technology they’d prefer to reject. Their rationales can be elaborate. “If you’re looking for inconsistencies, you’ll find them,” he said. “The important thing is that we try.”

B.J. Jamieson, for example, arrived in Barnesville last month. Now 30 and under-employed as a sales clerk, she once taught college English in Philadelphia. She returned her television and VCR, both gifts, to her incredulous parents. But she owns a computer. She says she uses it to e-mail distant friends, but refrains from playing games on it.

Jamieson says she likes life in Barnesville. “There are other people to talk to. I don’t get into philosophical discussions with people outside our Plain circle. The world view is so different.”

Dad Programmed Computers

For Savage, the first eight years of childhood passed in a small town outside Cleveland, the rest in a typical bedroom suburb. His father, Savage said, worked as one of the early computer programmers in the punch-card era, but grew disgusted by the corporate takeover of the new machine, leaving both his job and family.

The son is loath to detail his rowdy coming of age. Suffice it to say that he joined a 12-step substance abuse recovery group, and he gave up his last vice, smoking cigarettes, at age 25.

By then, he was more serious, equipped with a master’s degree in library science. He protested on behalf of environmental causes, even getting arrested at the Cleveland Zoo on Earth Day, 1990. Also dragged away by police was one Mary Ann Lieser, who would become his wife.

In Burton, where he worked, old men gathered to sift memories on public benches. Savage asked about the pace of days gone by. Their replies made him think that true civilization had vanished from the American grain. He began to doubt the value of his activism.

A township away, a group of Amish cheese-makers took their shares from a cooperative and built their own business, their way. The new venture prospered. “How do you change things?” Savage marveled, watching. “You walk away and you build your own.” Maybe, he thought, the Amish could teach more than that.

By the time Tasha was 2, the Savage family possessed no telephone, computer or television. But one day, two girls from up the street beckoned: “Come with us! We’re going to play Barbie’s Make-up Machine!”

The parents reacted in unison: “We’re going to have to leave.”

They’d already considered it. “When you leave television and the computer, you find you don’t have any real friends,” Savage said. “TV doesn’t replace community, but it makes it so that you don’t notice its absence. Giving it up doesn’t make you instantly happy. You’re going to see you have a bunch of intimate needs.”

Thus began a four-year odyssey. The Savages moved to more isolated towns, winning the friendship of rural Amish. They learned to can fruit. Lieser conducted home school.

Savage’s mother, for one, grew ill at ease.

Not that she didn’t try to understand. Once, Savage brought his family to visit his sister. His mother warned them that his sister’s boys were watching TV. “But I think it’s OK,” she said. “It’s Winnie the Pooh.”

“No! Not Winnie the Pooh!” The vehement reaction left her flabbergasted.

“Winnie the Pooh is not violent or badly done. But content is not the issue for us,” Savage explained later. “We don’t want them to see that Disneyized version, that cartoon. We don’t want that to be the Winnie the Pooh they see when they sit next to Mom and Dad and listen to the book. We want them to create it themselves.”

Cherubic Tasha embroiders her own fantasies, concocting stories about catching a cloud to fly to the moon and feed the lunar crocodiles. She, 4-year-old Jack and 2-year-old Susannah, like to stage parades and Bible plays.

“My nephews think the things my kids do are stupid. They’re embarrassed by us,” Savage said.

His magazine helps him cope. After leaving Burton, while a grant writer at Ohio University Hospital, he wrote up an application of his own. He received enough money from the Foundation for Deep Ecology--financed by Esprit clothing tycoon Douglas Tompkins--to start Plain two years ago.

The publication took up such matters as the joys of home birth and the fulfillment that comes with threshing with a crew instead of driving a solitary combine. He and Lieser wrote about their new emphasis on companionship and family over electronic media and consumer goods.

Soon, it was clear that other “home-comers”--Savage uses Schumacher’s term--yearned for fellowship. Within a year, the magazine’s 5,000 subscribers were paying the costs (it contains no ads and is not sold at newsstands). Savage became a full-time editor. And the family bought a place here, near a historic Quaker meetinghouse and boarding school, where receptive souls abide.

The stock of local Quakers had dwindled through the ‘80s. They have noticed a distinct increase of late in the number of fresh faces at their meetings.

William Rushby, a onetime sociologist who joined the Quakers from “outside” in 1969, regards the trickle with interest. “I cut my teeth in the Vietnam era” and was attracted by the Friends’ stance against war, he said. “The people coming in now are coming because of technology.”

A guiding Quaker principle is simplicity. Still, at a meeting last month, the score of longtime members looked exceedingly mainstream, if skewed toward cardigans and sensible shoes.

The newcomers stood out like Hasidic Jews in a Westwood synagogue. Savage was one. Seth Hinshaw, a drawling 30-year-old printer, was another, decked out in traditional hat, black vest and pants, and blue banded-collar shirt. Jamieson, who grew up Unitarian, tucked her hair discreetly under her kerchief; she concealed her legs beneath her long floral skirt.

The Quaker faith that the three have found is central to their lives. Many other home-comers worship as Mennonites or nondenominational Christians, Savage said. “The outward journey becomes an inward journey.”

Ned turned down a rutted dirt drive. Down-slope stood the Savage homestead, shaded by Chinese chestnuts, pines and sycamores.

The children gave the tour: The wringer and clothesline in the basement. A windup alarm clock for special occasions (usually Savage wakes on his own before 6). A propane refrigerator--no interior light when the door opens. A rotary telephone in the kitchen.

“I lived without a telephone for years, but we’re having a baby and the midwife has to come,” Savage said. He avoided touch-tone, he said, because “I have a policy of not talking to robots anymore. I thought at least with a rotary phone, I could avoid the Press 1, Press 2 voice mail and get connected to an operator.” But recently, a computer even hung up on his rotary phone.

Guests arrived. Steve Graham, a physicist-turned-home-comer, ushered in his wife, their five children and their friend, a peace activist named Peggy Gish.

The Grahams dressed Plain, but weren’t as devolved as the Savages: They owned no television, but the children watched with relatives. They planned to buy horses for the eight-mile trek to the town nearest their home, but piled into a van for long trips.

“Is there a . . . a bathroom?” Gish asked uncertainly. “Or an outhouse?” For the record, Savage does not object to flush toilets. But he does want to install a human compost system.

Evening’s gray advanced. Savage fetched the matchbox. A hiss and a whiff of gas accompanied the lanterns’ soft glow. “This house could use a little more light,” observed a Graham girl, sweet-faced in her bonnet.

The meal of hamburgers, hand-cut French fries and bread pudding was prepared without microwave or Cuisinart. Dishes for 15 were washed by hand.

Later, Savage climbed through the dark, whistling for Ned. No reply. “I hope he hasn’t run away again,” he muttered. After anxious minutes, leaves crunched under hooves. Head down, Ned entered through the barn’s rolled-up door (it had been converted into a garage and Savage was converting it back). The horse trotted into the stall of oak and pine.

“I like this part of having a horse,” he said, tossing corn and hay inside and toting a bucket of water. “I like taking care of him.”

When Savage got rid of the car, he expected to feel more rooted, tied to his community. His theory proved true. “What I didn’t know is how pleasurable it is to drive a buggy. It’s like being carried by your mother in her womb. It relaxes you,” he said.

Hand-Set Type, Antique Press

Early this year, Savage ventured back to the present to print the 15th issue of Plain.

He’d practiced with hand-set type and an antique press, and he was almost ready to separate entirely from desktop publishing. Still, he needed to lay out six pages the newfangled way if he was to make deadline. This, he expected, would be the final time he compromised.

He walked to the Citgo by Interstate 70 and caught the Greyhound to Wheeling, W.Va., a 30-minute drive to the east. He rented a car and headed north, to a 24-hour copy center in Canton.

Under the fluorescent lights, in a back-room cubicle, he maneuvered computer mouse and keyboard. He granted himself five minutes’ playtime every hour, designing a parody dog-food label for the fictitious brand Disloyal Steed (perhaps with Ned in mind?). “It’s the last time,” he thought. It was fun.

A blizzard bore down. He took a room at a Motel 6. He supped at Denny’s. He listened to the car radio for the weather report. He draped a blanket over the TV so he wouldn’t be tempted.

He would travel on foot, he determined, between rented bed and copy shop. The lone pedestrian, he felt like “a Precious Moments figurine” in his Plain clothes.

After three days of commuting in this fashion, he thought to peer at the faces behind the steering wheels in the traffic stream. “All these people sitting, just sitting, in these very heavy, big, dirty-on-the-outside metal boxes and they seemed so encased and so trapped,” Savage said.

He felt suddenly greasy and spent. “I grossed myself out,” he said.

So he went home. And there he hopes to stay.