Accidents between Amish buggies and cars happen. Way too often. This summer during a three-month stay in northern Indiana, three fatal accidents occurred. One happened when a distracted driver hit an Amish man and two sons riding in a pony cart, killing all three. Another was caused by an Amish Rumspringa-age youth, who attempted to pass in a no-passing zone. He and the driver he…
Shunning is controversial, but helps uphold Amish society For the Amish, shunning only happens among baptized members. Youth may bend or break rules during Rumspringa, though Amish parents do not necessarily condone or encourage such behavior.  But in practice, some Amish youth buy cars, wear ‘English’ clothes, and so on. If they cross the line too blatantly, they may get a ‘talking-to’, but they won’t…
The Nickel Mines kids start at their new school tomorrow, and it’s getting quite a bit of coverage in the media. It also happens to be exactly six months to the day since the school shooting. Here’s hoping this is the last we hear on Nickel Mines for awhile as local Amish try to make it back to normal.
A sad story out of Virginia: an Amish-owned puppy breeding facility has burned down, with dozens of adults and pups dying in the early-morning blaze. The owner has claimed that his facility was well-run, humane, and that dogs were shown proper care, though the setup apparently violated a local zoning ordinance. AP photo Some feel that the facilities could have been better run, however. In…
Taxes, puppy mills, cream-cheese muffins–I just looked down the list of posts for the last couple weeks and realized that the Amish have been the subject of a good bit of controversy recently. Most of it fairly tame. But this one made me do a double-take. Apparently tempers got hot at the championship game of the Regency Hockey League in Lancaster County last night. According…
‘The Amish don’t pay taxes. They’re freeloaders.’ Ryan Robinson of the Lancaster New Era writes (no longer available) that myths such as these persist, apparently even among long-time neighbors of the Amish. Why the confusion? Amish are generally exempt from paying Social Security taxes, a privilege negotiated some years ago with the federal government. But at the same time they also refrain from receiving benefits….
You may have heard that the Amish have been accused of treating puppies poorly in what have been termed ‘puppy mills’. There have been some highly-publicized cases of animals kept in deplorable conditions. One occurred just recently in Wisconsin. PA supposedly has the rep of ‘puppy mill capital of the East’, due in large part to some Amish breeders in Lancaster County. An article (no…
AP Photo The Ohio Amish food safety issue goes higher profile, as the Washington Post, CBS News, and other big media outlets pick up the story today. Meanwhile, Time magazine is running a piece on the controversy surrounding raw milk, another popular Amish-sold product. Should these foodstuffs be regulated? Should sellers be compelled to inform consumers of risks? Or should these practices be shut down…
They love the stuff so much it hardly has a chance to sit on the shelves. Maybe that’s why no one seems to get ill from eating it. Mary Slabaugh, an Ohio Amish baker whose story was mentioned last month in Amish America, is in the news again, this time in Ohio’s Coshocton Tribune (no longer online). Officials are trying to deal with the challenge…
An Amish teen is just that–a teen, in many ways like any other. Here is a Toledo Blade report on youthful indiscretion in an Ohio Amish community.