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The Calm Before The Yodel
SIGH, a bad side effect of all the yodeling traffic on this site this week is that so many people visited that the site's server crashed on Wednesday night. We have the site back up and running, so stay tuned for fresh content this weekend. Meanwhile a few random thoughts:
1) As the Midwest prepares to plunge into the deep freeze this weekend, Amish people who have covered (roofed) buggies are going to be a lot warmer than the handful of Swiss Amish communities near Berne, Indiana and Seymour, Missouri. These Amish churches do not allow buggies to be covered so families are resigned to travel with thick, thick blankets, tons of coats, and a lot of moxie. Brrr. I was freezing walking from my car into the Target store earlier....
2) As much website traffic as we had this week, next week will be even worse (or better, depending on your view)...I email the Amish Cook column to its 100-plus papers each Monday, but only a handful run it that same week...most run it the following week.....so our friends in cities like South Bend, Battle Creek, Tacoma, Muncie, Richmond, Indiana; and many others haven't even seen the yodel promo in the paper yet. I am going to make some changes to the text of the online intro to the yodeling to try to head off any additional criticism for the $1.49 fee. Any suggestions on changes to the wording?
3) Also, some might wonder why you couldn't "download" the audio of the yodel to a file that you could keep. Lovina strongly opposed this on religious grounds. She said her church just wouldn't allow a traditional audio recording that would end up in the hands of thousands of people....so the way we have it set up is a compromise, it allows people to "listen".. So when the yodel promo ends in a week or two, it'll be over and that's it. I won't even have a recording. To be completely candid, I don't fully understand the theological objection to a download vs. a "listen", but I try to respect her religion, not question it. This makes this yodel all the more rare, valuable, and authentic opportunity to hear something truly different!
Amish Cook Stuff
Okay, a little news today...
Goodbyes are always difficult.
The Cincinnati Post has run The Amish Cook column each week for the past 13 years. When they first started, they were a bonfide big city paper with over 120,000 readers each day. But The Post has succumbed to the pressures of the internet and the general decline of "afternoon dailies." Many afternoon papers have padlocked their doors over the past decade or so in cities like Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and others. This is really sad for a newspaper junkie like me to witness. The Post gamely held on longer than most. Today it's readership is a shadow of its former self - around 20,000 each day. With all these factors working against it, The Post is printing its final edition on Dec. 31. And I thought that The Amish Cook would be saying goodbye to Cincinnati. But not so fast...
The Cincinnati Enquirer, the storied 250,000 circulation morning paper of the Queen City, has turned me away in the past, not showing so much as a passing interest in The Amish Cook. But Post readers, worried they would be cut off from the column, swung into action and worked the phone lines. As result, The Cincinnati Enquirer will debut The Amish Cook on Jan. 2. For the first time in 17 years we have a major daily running the column to join the 120 mid-sized and small papers that run it. So on Jan. 2 we will be welcoming many, many, many new visitors to this site. It may get kind of crowded here, but let's give them a warm welcome!
Also....The Amish Cook column will be on this website free of charge each week beginning Dec. 31, maybe sooner. Sometimes you try things and they don't work. People just aren't willing to pay to read something online. The New York Times has found that out the hard way, and so have many other print products. So I shall rely on trying to find an advertiser or advertisers to sponsor the column. No need anymore to go to other bootleg sites for the column, you can just come here and I hope you do. Stay tuned. If you were one of the smallish group of people who DID pay to subscribe....thank you....I will be contacting you in the weeks ahead concerning refunds to be issued.
Now, I do have some even more exciting (to me, anyway) Amish Cook-related news potentially percolating, but I need to remain silent on that for a bit longer:)
Some Blog Stuff
It is hard to believe that sometime in 2008 I can say that I have been editor of "The Amish Cook" column for over half my life. I have been doing this since 1991. Unbelievable. There is something unsettling about saying I've been doing anything for half my life.
Okay, that meaningless ramble aside, there are a few good blog posts from out there in cyberland that I'd like to share.
This first one I actually noticed on the newswires days ago, but a) I thought it was too bizarre to be true....b) just didn't make sense......but in Champaign, Illinois the "Simply Amish" home furnishing store was robbed earlier this week. The target: a $2000 plasma TV for sale. Um...huh? I know retailers have expanded the scope of the word "Amish" to apply to lots of stuff. But plasma TVs?? Sheesh....what's next....Amish hybrid cars?
This is a thoughful post from a Pennsylvania quilter. This writer is lamenting the loss of quilting as a craft among the Amish. I hadn't given the topic much thought until now, but I think the writer is right on the mark in her reasonings. Lovina does not quilt, although she hopes to make some for her children some day. Her mother was a quilter and quilting bees are still fairly common among the Amish in Indiana and Michigan. However, I do see the trend moving towards less quilting and more bought stuff, for the very reasons the blogger outlines. The quilts made among the Amish in Adams County, Indiana where Lovina is from tended to be more solid colors, not some of the more ornate designs seen in Pennsylvania. Anyway, the post is definitely worth a read.
Isn't fun to "discover" something new? You find something interesting, learn about it, explore, and come to your own conclusions. It's the beauty of life-long learning. This woman describes her recent fascination with the Amish and some of her observations (one inaccuracy: the Amish DO pay into social security IF they work for an outside employer). Otherwise I'll let the post speak for itself, it's a nice read.
