Kevin Williams was a college sophomore in Ohio when he started driving around Michigan and Indiana, knocking on the doors of Amish women with a pitch: write a weekly newspaper column about your life, tack on a recipe, and he'd get it into print. He heard "no" most of the day. Then, in Adams County, Indiana, one woman said yes.

That column, "The Amish Cook," is still running — these days written by an Illinois woman named Gloria Yoder — and it set Williams on more than three decades of reporting on the Amish and other people dedicated to simple living.

His new memoir is Not So Simple: My Adventures Among the Amish, Mennonites, Shakers, and Other Plain People.

Email, texts and social media may be the most common ways to send a message. But that’s often not the case for the millions of Americans with friends or family in prison. Cards and letters are the least expensive and most accessible way for many behind bars to keep in touch. Still, finding the right words to say is not always easy. One area company is creating cards to meet that need.