The story of "stone soup" exists all over the world. In my favorite variation, a hungry traveler appears in a village with nothing but an empty cooking pot, a spoon, and his appetite. When the suspicious villagers will not show him any hospitality, he sets up his cooking pot in the village square and begins to boil water with a simple stone in it. As the curious townsfolk pass by and ask him what he is doing, he stirs the pot and tells them that he is making stone soup. Further, he explains that at the end of the day when the soup is ready, everyone will be welcome to come and share it with him. Eventually, one person ventures that the soup might taste better with a few onions. Soon the villagers are each bringing a couple of carrots, a potato, a little salt, whatever they have on hand to add to the stone soup. At the end of the day, the whole town shares a delicious pot of soup (minus the stone, of course), and they have also learned a valuable lesson about the joys of shari...
The entire team that is responsible for managing the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which supports approximately 6.2 million people across the U.S. in paying their heating and cooling bills, has been fired. It just keeps getting better and better. At Stone Soup Kitchen, we have many friends who have received help from LIHEAP from time to time. One person in particular, I'll call him George, came to us for help with food for his family, and said that he was behind on his utility bills because of his wife's illness. Some of you may know that even if you have health insurance, it doesn't pay for everything, and if you are also an hourly worker... well, you can see how this situation could snowball. No income from your ill spouse, no income from you as you take time off for their medical needs, bills pile up -- rent, electric, gas or oil, medical costs -- and then there is this pesky need for food several times a day. We ...