There’s one favorite “book” of mine. It has no plot, characters, or author bio. But it’s one which I can spend hours with. That book is a road atlas. One of my favorite killing-time activities is paging through atlases, looking for interesting geographic features, roads, and especially, place names. It’s fun to wonder why there’s a Mexico in Missouri or what’s so normal about Normal,…
I grew up in a place that got little snow. When winter weather happened in central North Carolina, it was something special. Now I live in a place that gets a lot of it, and it’s not so special. Is this how it works for everyone? You like winter weather if you don’t get much of it, but live in it, and it gets…
News came Friday that an 11-year-old Amish leukemia patient will not be forced to undergo chemotherapy, pending court approval (article no longer online). Maria Schimer filed Friday to resign her limited guardianship over Sarah Hershberger: But the guardian, Maria Schimer, decided to drop the effort because she doesn’t know where Sarah is now and it has become impossible to monitor her health or make any medical…
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has put together a graphic showing the number of buggy crashes in Pennsylvania since 2003. The chart displays year-by-year accident totals as well as crash rates for a number of counties with a significant Amish population. Over the past decade, 2006 saw the most accidents, with 78. The fewest were recorded in 2003, with 56. The chart accounts for 665 crashes though…
Back in January we shared news of a planned Amish-backed bank in Lancaster County. Financial Times reports that the Bank of Bird-in-Hand has gotten FDIC approval to open. The bank has raised $17 million in capital. Here’s what caught my eye: In doing so, the bank will become the first new, or de novo, lender to be created in the US since late 2010, bucking a…
The photos below were taken by a reader over the weekend in the Holmes/Wayne County, OH Amish settlement, in areas populated by Swartzentruber Amish. There are also some photos from the Ashland County Swartzentruber community. I’ve added a few comments here and there. Special thanks to our contributor. Looks like they’ve seen some snow lately. This is the first time I’ve seen a sign like…
We’ve gradually been building this out over the past couple of years, and though it is not yet complete, I think it’s complete enough to launch. Look up and you’ll see the “Amish Business Directory” link which is now a part of the top menu. In it you’ll find listings of both Amish-owned businesses and companies selling Amish products, including: Amish restaurants Construction companies Quilt…
What if, instead of simply getting up, dressing in your Sunday best and driving to church, church came to you? What if your home was flooded with 150 people for a three-hour service followed by a couple of hours of eating and visiting? This would be the picture once a year if you were Amish. Your other church Sundays would be spent as one of…
As we’ve noted before, some Amish are avid hunters. Hunting is not just for the guys, however. In a column titled “Shotgun Season opens on deer”, Lovina Eicher, aka The Amish Cook, describes her girl’s (or is it girls’?) involvement in hunting: Our daughter, Elizabeth, doesn’t have to work today. Her factory is closed so workers can take advantage of the opening day of the shotgun season on…
Amish carriage shops are not all alike. One of the more delightful things I discovered when first visiting these shops was that some work on vehicles from beyond their culture. This means non-Amish carriages and even early versions of cars (from an era when a car was closer to a “horseless carriage” than an “automobile”). One such visit revealed work being done on an early-1900s…