Neighborhood Plate seeks to carry individuals collectively over shared potluck suppers of basic casseroles.
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Marsden Shetterly/for NPR
Again in 2023, Karl Schatz and Margaret Hathaway, a husband and spouse group, had lately printed two volumes of the Maine Neighborhood Cookbook after they heard that the U.S. surgeon common, Vivek Murthy, had declared an epidemic of loneliness. Murthy wrote, “It’s related to a higher threat of heart problems, dementia, stroke, despair, anxiousness, and untimely demise.” Loneliness is as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or by no means exercising, he elaborated. Hathaway and Schatz’s books had been filled with recipes and tales from all around the state of Maine and folks stored telling them that they liked the books as a lot for the recipes as for the tales, Schatz informed me.
This made Schatz and Hathaway surprise if, maybe, they is perhaps uniquely positioned to supply an antidote to loneliness. Collectively they set about to discovered Neighborhood Plate. The purpose of the group is to create potluck suppers in cities all around the state of Maine the place individuals come collectively who won’t know one another that properly, even when they stay across the nook from one another. Every particular person brings a dish to share and some determine they may inform tales.
So it was, on a current drizzly March day, that Hathaway and Schatz, together with their daughter, Charlotte, had been checking individuals in for a Sunday story sharing supper in Norway, Maine.
All three greeted individuals on the door, talking over one another as the primary friends arrived. Individuals filter in, and loads of casseroles arrive — it is March in Maine, in spite of everything — even an outdated basic, inexperienced bean. Reed Mclean tells me that it is “straight from the can.” I ask, “Did you assist make it?” And he solutions, “I didn’t. Effectively, I turned the oven on.”
The environment within the room is convivial and lightweight. Schatz seems round and says, “You understand, I believe that folks see this as type of a present to the group, this chance for individuals to return collectively.”
He tells me that, to be trustworthy, he and Hathaway did not know at first what precisely they had been offering. After which a girl at one in every of their very first suppers truly outlined it for them: “She had simply moved to Maine, she was a grandmother, she had moved right here to be nearer to her grandkids, and he or she got here and sat down on the desk throughout from me. I requested her what introduced her to the supper and he or she mentioned, ‘I got here as a result of I am lonely.’ It was the primary time I might ever heard somebody say that out loud.”
June Howard’s casserole contribution featured cubed hen, apples, cheese, and cranberries.
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Just some weeks in the past, the 2025 World Happiness Report issued a warning that acknowledged: “Social connections are critically necessary for human well being, happiness, and prosperity.” The answer in line with the report? Individuals want to sit down down and eat collectively. Hathaway agrees we want this now greater than ever. “And simply as our tradition turns into extra divisive, there are such a lot of points you by no means thought had been going to be scorching button points that out of the blue are. Meals is mostly one thing individuals can discuss with out it turning into contentious.”
As I mill round speaking to friends, a girl named June Howard is raring to inform me what she has delivered to share tonight. (Spoiler: It is a casserole.) She says, “It is obtained cubed-up hen. It is obtained carrots, celery, onions, cheese, apples, cranberries …”
Seated subsequent to her, Ruby Bryant, tells me she is glad to be right here tonight as a result of she wanted to get out. Two weeks in the past there was a horrible hearth on the home subsequent door to hers.
Attendees contribute to the meals in no matter method they will, with selfmade dishes or choices straight from the shop.
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Marsden Shetterly/for NPR
“We heard pounding on the door so we went downstairs in our pajamas and it was the policemen, by then they knocked the door down they usually mentioned, get your coats, and get out, your home is melting.”
Although Bryant says she is gluten free and has introduced her personal dinner, she chats amiably with different friends as everybody waits for the buffet to get underneath method.
Quickly, Schatz takes the mic and encourages individuals to enter the buffet line, desk by desk. “We’re gonna begin with this desk over right here, ‘trigger you guys had been right here first so I do know which means you are hungry.”
When everyone seems to be lastly seated and consuming, Schatz stands up once more, and takes the microphone. His mission is to get individuals connecting and speaking. He suggests, “If you would like, in the event you’re sitting with an individual that you’ve dinner with each evening of the week, and also you determine tonight you wish to have dinner with another person, you might have my permission to sit down with another person. We encourage you to do this, to possibly make a brand new connection, as a result of that’s the reason we we’re right here tonight.”
And, in case anybody is frightened they must rise up to inform a narrative he says, “So far as the story sharing goes, individuals usually ask, ‘Do I’ve to share a narrative?’ And the reply is ‘no.’ You do not have to share a narrative. We additionally want listeners. Storytelling is a two-way avenue, you may’t have story-telling with out story listening.”
Brendan Schauffler tells the group about his father.
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Marsden Shetterly/for NPR
The room will get quiet, solely the clinking of silverware and chewing may be heard. Brendan Schauffler stands up and walks to the entrance of the room. He rubs his fingers collectively after which takes the mic. He begins to inform a narrative about his father’s loneliness, which led to his father’s eventual suicide when Schauffler was an adolescent. Trying across the room, forks are down, faces nonetheless, everybody’s listening.
Brendan confesses, “I felt like my face forgot the form of a smile and that I might be caught on this place without end. I turned decided to by no means once more lose the chance to inform somebody I cared about how a lot they imply to me.
After two extra storytellers, the night begins to wind down and individuals are pulling on coats and gathering their ladles and crock pots. Then, a person who requested that NPR not title him to guard his household from additional ache, faucets Schauffler on the shoulder.
“I needed to thanks to your story. I, too, misplaced somebody very near me. I misplaced my 13-year-old son to suicide. And it is very laborious for me, however I actually admire your braveness.”
The 2 males maintain one another. Schauffler says into the person’s ear, “I’m so sorry to your loss.” They begin to half, after which they lean in once more, and maintain on as soon as extra.
Moments of connection like this are unplanned and profound. The recipe is so easy: A Sunday evening, a potluck, some neighbors, and some tales. Neighborhood Plate is providing Maine an antidote to loneliness and disconnection, one supper at a time.
If you happen to or somebody you understand is in disaster, please name, textual content or chat with the Suicide and Disaster Lifeline at 988.
