Amish Beseech Modern World to Steer Clear of Lands

Fear that the modern world may split their old-fashioned world down the middle has put a group of Pennsylvania Amish in the center of the type of political controversy they usually avoid. Traditionally the Amish don’t get involved with the world outside their community, but more than 1,000 showed up at an Intercourse, Pa., high school to oppose a plan for a four-lane highway through their farmland. “I can’t buy an argument that puts traffic ahead of farms,” said Dave King, an Amish farmer from Gap. About 500 others joined the Amish at the hearing on the 20-mile highway to connect Gap and Lancaster. Three of six proposals would cut through a 10-mile-wide patch of Amish land east of Lancaster. “We’re rural now, and we’d like to keep it that way,” said Walter Martin, a Mennonite dairy farmer from the Blue Ball area. “But we need help with our traffic, that’s for sure.” Business and political leaders and many Amish believe a new road is needed to relieve bumper-to-bumper traffic on Pennsylvania 23 and U.S. 30. But many of the farmers fear that a highway straight through their close-knit community would split dozens of farms and pose severe economic and cultural harm. A non-Amish man, Joseph Cook of Nine Points, said: “It’s a shame that they should even be proposing this. This area is like heaven, and they want to turn it into California.”

--It was a case of better late than never when a 133-year-old overdue library book was returned to the Harvey W. Scott Memorial Library at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore. A note sent with the book from Robert Welk of Carmichael, Calif., said Welk found “Infidelity: Its Aspects, Causes and Agencies” among belongings he sorted through this year that he had inherited from a Portland, Ore., friend who died in 1950. The book, by the Rev. Thomas Pearson, was published in 1854 and won the Evangelical Alliance prize essay award on the topic of infidelity. “I imagine it ruffled a few feathers and was very controversial at that time, when women didn’t even show their legs or ankles,” Welk said. Librarian Alex Toth said the book was the 498th item added to the library and is still in good condition.

--A Brussels radio station reported that Bob Hope had died, and it wasn’t just panning his jokes. A spokesman at French-language radio station RTBF said the staff had confused comedian Hope with director-choreographer Bob Fosse, who died Wednesday night, and aired a tribute to Hope, 84 and still very much alive. “It’s a bit embarrassing. We’ve broadcast corrections and there isn’t much else we can do,” the spokesman said.