Happy New Year to all. I hope your 2013 was filled with blessings and that 2014 will be happy, healthy and productive for you. Â Do you take stock of the previous year at this time? Â Set goals and make plans for the coming year? It’s really just the changing of dates on a calendar, but can be the right time for a brief pat on…
Have you cleared out that fridge yet? Or still plowing through holiday leftovers? I had to creatively re-arrange mine just to fit all the extra Christmas goodies in. When I moved into my current home, I went without a refrigerator for a few weeks. Fortunately it was the dead of winter, so the windowsill made a makeshift fridge for a while. Â That wouldn’t work anymore….
Belated Christmas wishes to everyone here, I trust you spent the time well. Anyone who has yet to travel I hope you’ll complete it safely. Depending on where you are in the world your holiday observances may be continuing today. I know our readers in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are on Boxing Day today. Others know December 26th as St. Stephen’s Day,…
A few years back we shared a short clip of an Amish fellow skiing behind a buggy in Ohio. Â Skiing and other winter sports can be particularly popular with young Amish males. Today, photos of more winter fun, taken somewhere in Indiana. These youth snowboarders are carving up the “slopes” courtesy of a single-horsepower engine (there actually is something of a slope, or ridge, which…
A conflict over smoke detectors and building permits is unfolding in an Amish community in Eau Claire County, Wisconsin.  From the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram: Four cases involving a conflict between traditional Amish ways — particularly when it comes to smoke and carbon monoxide detectors — and modern society are slated for a scheduling conference at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday before Judge Kristina Bourget. The crux of…
Maine is now home to five Amish settlements, up from three just a few years ago. Thanks to reader Judy for passing along an excellent article on the Amish of the Fort Fairfield area, in Maine’s northernmost county of Aroostook. This piece in Down East Magazine traces the path of the 6-year-old community via interviews with the community’s founder, 45-year-old craftsman Noah Yoder, and a…
There’s one favorite “book” of mine. Â It has no plot, characters, or author bio. Â But it’s one which I can spend hours with. Â 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. Â 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. Â The fewest were recorded in 2003, with 56. Â The chart accounts for 665 crashes though…