When I first started syndicating The Amish Cook column back in 1991, the newspaper industry was still rather robust.  Sure, afternoon newspapers had been dying for years in cities across the USA, but the morning newspapers were still relatively healthy bastions of news, ads, and features.  Enter the internet, throw in a recession, and the newspaper business has now suffered one of it's worst years in memory.   Newspapers are hemorraging readers and advertisers (I always did think the price of a newspaper ad was ridiculously high, even during the robust years).   Newspapers are slashing space, jobs, and anything else in site of their carving knives.   One of the reasons given to me for The Hendricks County Flyer in Indiana chopping The Amish Cook from their paper recently was "space reduction."  They had to shrink the paper to make up for the lost ad revenue.  I had a conversation the other day with an executive who works in the newspaper industry. We were both lamenting the changes sweeping across the business.  I don't know....I'm unsure of what the future holds for newspapers, whether they are dying dinosaurs or whether they'll yet find a way to adapt and reinvent themselves.  So anyone have any thoughts?  Is the Amish Cook's future destined to just be here online?  Do you still read a daily newspaper?  If so, which one - or ones?

Journalists lately love to latch on to the "Amish angle" of high gas prices.  I think they just find the idea of Amish being impacted by high gas prices to be an irresistable story-line.  As we've discussed here, though, even with the Amish sense of self-sufficiency they are not totally "in a bubble."  High gas prices DO ripple through their daily lives .  One story making the rounds on the Associated Press wires caught my eye because it chronicles the impact of high fuel costs in the Adams County, Ohio Amish community.  I've often said that this is probably my favorite Amish area.  Take a look at the story here.

Meanwhile, this is a superb story that appeared in the Shreveport, Louisiana newspaper over the weekend.  The story is good because of it's writing and rich detail, but also as a "public service" piece.  I'm sure many people in the region see the population of "plain people" increasing and probably just assume they are Amish.  Many people here in Southwest Ohio incorrectly refer to our nearby Old German Baptists as "Amish."  So whenever local media can help bridge cultural confusion over various plain populations, I'm please. Click here to read.

On the left side of this page is a little, non-descript link that says "Top Users."  It was really just meant as a fun way to see who is the most active at the site.  It's also a way to see who has "left."  I've noticed some people show up at this site, are really active for awhile, and then disappear as quickly as they came.  That's fine, one of the appeals of the internet is it's transient nature.  Brian, our intrepid site administrator, the guy who runs the "nuts and bolts" tech part of amishcookonline.com has discussed the idea of taking down the "Top Users" feature because it sucks up a lot of bandwidth (or something to that effect).....does anyone check the TopUsers section?  If you do, I hate to remove it no matter how much bandwidth, but if no one ever goes there and no one cares, then we can ditch it. 

An interesting story out of New York state.  Two Amish parents are being accused of child neglect for not taking care of a heart ailment suffered by their toddler.  The news story incorrectly states that: "Amish culture sees medical treatment and hospitals as against religious beliefs."  This just isn't true.  I've known PLENTY of conservative Amish who's kids have had heart and other problems and have taken them in for major medical treatment.   Now I have also known Amish parents who simply didn't have the medical information needed to make important decisions, but that is a different issue altogether.  The Amish view on modern medicine is very "individual."  Some Amish readily embrace modern medicine, while others are suspicious of it.  But to make a blanket statement like this article does is just incorrect.  Click here to read more.