As Pennsylvania Dutchmen and craftsmen may we invite you all to join us in sharing this heritage of ours which is compounded of “fun and fancy” and diligent work. Paint our hex signs and distelfinks on your barns and kitchen cupboards; work the designs into your needle point and rugs; and decorate your furniture with hearts and tulips. Let our folk art inspire you to create useful household objects of clay and wood and adorn them with a gay splash of color and a whimsical motif. We like to feel that the spirit of the Folk Artist did not die out entirely around 1850, as the historians claim, but a tiny spark survives to inspire present day craftsmen. A friend of ours makes beautiful pottery inspired by our early sgraffito dishes and utensils; another cross stitches the “birds and deers” from old samplers onto present day placemats; we paint fruit and flowers on chairs and chests; and all of us are greatly influenced by this marvelous source of design. There’s a Hex Sign Painter around these parts who will do a “rain sign” for you. He did one last summer for a Texan’s barn. Hoping for rain the Texan hung the sign and the next day “the rains came”—so they tell me. So why not let our love of color and a little of our superstition take hold of you, and if you have the patience and diligence of a Pennsylvania Dutchman, get to work and have fun. Frances Lichten’s wonderful book “Folk Art of Rural Pennsylvania” should be read by anyone who is interested in the source, the nature and the form of this art; and, for the more serious student, John Joseph Stoudt’s beautifully written volume, “Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Art,” will help explain the mystical significance of the design motifs. Folk Art as such no longer exists in our land, as a true folk art is only found in a homogeneous culture. But a definite trend towards craftsmanship does exist, and too, a definite stirring of pride in producing beautiful and useful things with one’s own hands. Goot Gluck. Old Testament Place Names In Lancaster County By SAMSON A. SHAIN, D.D. _Rabbi, Shaarai Shomayim_ The Founding Fathers of communities in Lancaster County, as the Founding Fathers of our Country at large, cherished the Bible as a guide in their search for equal rights and justice, and especially freedom to worship God as they had learned to worship Him in the privacy of their homes and houses of worship. Giving scriptural names to their home and church communities, accordingly, served to symbolize for them, the attachment they felt for the liberty they were helping to proclaim in all the land.