Donald Kraybill, Karen Johnson-Weiner and Steven Nolt have written a new comprehensive book on the Amish, simply entitled The Amish.  You probably recognize the authors’ names from numerous books including The Riddle of Amish Culture, New York Amish, A History of the Amish, and many more. Over 500 pages in length, this new collaboration covers the Amish [...]

Continue Reading 3-book giveaway and Q-and-A with authors of The Amish

This circular hanger comes in handy when you need to dry small items like socks, underwear, towels, caps, gloves and so on. They’re often seen around Amish homes.  This photo was taken in an Amish shop in Adams County, Indiana.

Continue Reading Hanging Clothespin Dryer

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports on the latest controversy surrounding Sam Mullet and imprisoned members of his community: The federal Bureau of Prisons is forcing some imprisoned members of an Ohio Amish community to study for high school equivalency certificates in violation of their First Amendment rights, a lawyer for the sect contends. Lawyer Edward Bryan, [...]

Continue Reading Should Sam Mullet be made to study for a GED?

As promised, today we have the finalists in the cow photo caption contest.  It was too difficult to choose just 5 from the many creative entries you submitted, so I upped it to 7 finalists.  What do you know, cows are inspiring creatures. Vote below, and I’ll announce the winner in the comments section here [...]

Continue Reading Cow Caption Voting & Follow-up Photos

Some time ago I was asked about the famous photo of Amish schoolchildren running away from officials in Iowa.  You can see the photo below, taken during an incident in 1965.  It was a turbulent time for Amish which ended with the 1972 Wisconsin v. Yoder Supreme Court decision enabling Amish schooling as we know it [...]

Continue Reading Wisconsin v. Yoder & The Fleeing Amish Children Photo

Tags: Amish Education and Schooling

The above was taken in northern Indiana. Your captions welcome. The best will get an Amish Woodworkers’ Guide and a back-copy of The Connection magazine.

Continue Reading Caption contest: Cows

A couple of things I wanted to bring to your attention: Gravatar Recently I was asked again about getting an image which will appear next to your name when you leave comments.  You’ll notice some commenters have custom images and some have the grey silhouette figure (the default image). We use the widely-used “Gravatar” system [...]

Continue Reading Two things you might like: Gravatars & JSTOR for Amish articles

Reader Michele purchased an Amish home and converted it to “English”, a process which took about half a year to begin.  She had this to say about “living Amish” in the meantime: I don’t know why they are called “simple”…we lived just like Amish for 6 months before our contractor could start our construction.  There [...]

Continue Reading Is Amish life really so “simple”?

Over the years a number of cases have come to light of Amish who have committed sexual abuse, most recently in an Ohio community.  Last week a central Pennsylvania news station did a report on the issue of sexual abuse among Amish, which you can view here: If you read Saloma Furlong’s autobiography Why I [...]

Continue Reading Sexual Abuse in Amish Communities

Following up today’s tech conference post, as an example of basic-but-creative Amish technology, we have an “improvised Amish canning range”.  The reader who snapped the photo below shares: Many Amish often do their canning in their building entry/wash room or shop building.  In Arthur they usually had an old gas stove/range which they kept in the shop or wash [...]

Continue Reading Amish Canning Range