Ron Olesko, in any good stew you find quite a bit of puree. That's us.

As for my own culture: I was born 'white', of German/Swiss extraction and in the "old country" I no doubt would have been labelled 'peasant'.

None of that is as meaningful to me as my Amish heritage. Although I left it long ago, it formed my thinking, opened my mind and heart to embrace the contradictory facets of differing views and allowing me to be able to value both the good and the counter-productive.

As I once wrote in a song:

"A good man's not always right
Nor the bad one always wrong"

( sheesh. Don't mean to sound so moralistic.