My time as editor of the Amish Cook

Editor's Note:  Lovina is sick this week. Her column will return next week. This is another installment of an occasional Amish Cook's editor's series about the behind-the-scenes challenges of keeping the column going this year.
    It was over. The Amish Cook column had ended. Through tear-soaked glasses, I reached back to consider what might have gone wrong. But I wasn't sure it mattered anymore. It was time. My efforts to keep The Amish Cook column publishing had failed. After 18 years, the column was ending like this, wilting under the rays of an unforgiving summer sun. I looked at the calendar. Time of death: Thursday, August 7.  I had been so close. But like the classic Lucy and Charlie Brown montage, the football had been moved yet again. A multi-title book publishing deal that was supposed to be signed around August 1, keeping the column on stable ground for many years to come was delayed again….this time until November. I don't have until November, I said to myself.  I'm getting married next month, time to start anew. Still somewhere in the deep blackness of failure, there was a flicker of faith, the warm glow of belief that lights the way when everything else is dark. There's someone who can help. Trying to compose myself, I reached for the phone.
    Faith has always been part of The Amish Cook story and I would later ascribe my phone call to something more than random luck. There were Elizabeth Coblentz's admonitions that God doesn't make mistakes, that it's a "good thing we don't know our future."  I called a reader who had helped this column weather a small scale struggle once before. My story came spilling out to this woman on the other end of the phone: the battle to keep this column going, my mistakes, the broken promises, the postponed book deal.  
    "There are others out there like me, Kevin. I know there are," she said. "But they have to know how to help before they can act."
    The woman on the other end was a person I have come to call the Angel of Greentown. Greentown is a small burg tucked away in the northern no-man's land of Indiana, an unlikely locale for the column's savior.   But this reader, like a rainbow piercing dark clouds of doubt, urged me forward with The Amish Cook and generously funded the column's continuation. You'll be reading The Amish Cook column over the weeks ahead because of this woman's generosity.  And we've made it this far into 2008 because of other readers who've helped.  Giving up now would be a white flag to these readers. Waving off any suggestion that this be a loan and not a gift, she instructed me that the best repayment is to find a way to keep this column going and perhaps repay the kindness to someone else someday.  
    I've always believed that The Amish Cook can be an oasis of simplicity in a world increasingly chaotic and coarse, but now I see it can be a conduit of kindness, too. Perhaps being editor is my little way of giving back. I now have to reach out to readers yet again because I don't want the gift from the Angel of Greentown and others to have simply pushed back this column's end date.  I want to permanently put this column on sound ground, so Lovina's simple, honest words of wisdom can continue to bring happiness to others.  So the Angel of Greentown's gift wasn't just funding the column, it was a reaffirmation of faith that The Amish Cook column's mission isn't complete. To help put The Amish Cook column on sound ground, a new Friend Club level has been added.  Also, the first newsletter is being mailed out the week of August 24.

    ONE-YEAR SILVER $25; name card, signed 8 by 10 color photo of the Eicher's horse and buggy or meal-time scene. Free access to any paid products at amishcookonline.com.
    ONE YEAR GOLD $50; all of the above, plus a quarterly newsletter, "The Amish Cook Extra," with family favorite recipes, color photos of Lovina's home, stories and Amish information.
    EDITOR'S CIRCLE $75; All of the above, plus a happy birthday card from Lovina sent to the home of one loved one per year.    ANGEL'S CLUB:  People can set their own membership amount above $75 and receive all of the above, plus a special thank you from Lovina.  Memberships can be sent to: Oasis Newsfeatures, P.O. Box 2144, Middletown, Ohio 45042. Readers can also join with credit card by calling 1-877-571-4112, 24 hours, 7 days a week.