Mrs. Miller doesn’t read the entire newspaper. “Some people put in things that don’t interest me, like who is going to host church next time,” she said. She reads letters from former hometowns and from her older sister, 89-year-old Ada Coblentz, who writes for the Budget and recently noted she had a chest cold.

Both papers like variety—and letters about interesting, if benign, events. Included on Die Botschaft’s recent Worth Mentioning list: “Mineral deficiency causes a dead cow” referring readers to a letter from a man in Plains, Montana, who found his only milk cow dead one Saturday morning. One woman wrote about her cousin who stuck something up her nose and didn’t tell anyone. Sometime later, her mother noticed a sprout growing out of her nostril, pulled on it and out came a corn kernel. —WSJ.com.