Community dinners fight solitude in Maine: NPR

Community Plate seeks to bring people together on shared dusts of classic casseroles.
Marsden Sheterly / For NPR
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Marsden Sheterly / For NPR
In 2023, Karl Schatz and Margaret Hathaway, a husband and wife team, had recently published two volumes of the Maine community cooking book when they heard that US general surgeon, Vivek Murthy, said a loneliness epidemic. Murthy wrote: “It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety and premature death.” Loneliness is as risky as smoking 15 cigarettes per day or never doing the exercise, it has developed. The books of Hathaway and Shatz were full of recipes and stories from the whole state of Maine and people kept telling them that they liked the books as much for the recipes as for the stories, told me.
This made SChatz and Hathaway wonder if, perhaps, they could only be positioned to offer an antidote to loneliness. Together, they began to find a community plate. The objective of the organization is to create meal-shaping dinners in the cities of the whole state of Maine where people come together who may not know each other, even if they live around others. Each person brings a dish to share and some decide to tell stories.
It was therefore, during a recent day in March burin, that Hathaway and Shatz, as well as their daughter, Charlotte, consulted people for a Sunday sharing supper in Norway, in Maine.
The three welcomed people at the door, speaking of each other when the first guests arrived. People are filtering, and many pots arrive – it’s Mars in Maine, after all – even an old classic green bean. Reed McLean tells me that it is “directly from the box”. I ask, “Have you helped get there?” And he replies: “I didn’t do it. Well, I turned on the oven.”
The atmosphere in the room is user -friendly and light. SChatz looks around and says, “You know, I think people see it as a kind of gift to the community, this opportunity for people to come together.”
He tells me that, to be honest, he and Hathaway did not know at the beginning what Exactly They provided. And then a woman to one of their very first dinners defined her for them: “She had just moved to Maine, she was a grandmother, she had moved here to be closer to her grandchildren, and she came and seated the table in front of me. I asked her what had brought her to supper and she said:” I came because I was alone. “It was the first time I have heard someone say loud.”

The contribution of the June Howard pan included chicken in cubes, apples, cheese and cranberries.
Marsden Sheterly / For NPR
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Barely a few weeks ago, the World 2025 World Happiness report published a warning which indicated: “Social connections are of crucial importance to human health, happiness and prosperity”. The solution according to the report? People need to sit and eat together. Hathaway agrees that we need more than ever. “And just as our culture becomes more conflictual, there are so many problems that you would never have thought of being hot button problems which are suddenly. Food is generally something that people can talk about without it becoming controversial.”
While I appear by talking to the guests, a woman named June Howard is impatient to tell me what she brought to share this evening. (Spoiler: it is a saucepan.) She says: “He has chicken in cubes. There are carrots, celery, onions, cheese, apples, cranberries …”
Sitting next to her, Ruby Bryant, tells me that she is happy to be here tonight because she needed to go out. Two weeks ago, there was a terrible fire at home next to his own.

Participants contribute to meals in any way possible, with dishes or homemade offers directly from the store.
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“We heard the door be beaten so we went down in pajamas and it was the police, by then, they overthrow the door and they said, get your coats, and go out, your house melts.”
Although Bryant says that she is gluten -free and has brought her own dinner, she chats with amiditality with other guests while everyone is waiting for the buffet to start.
Soon, Schatz takes the microphone and encourages people to enter the buffet line, table by table. “We are going to start with this table here, because you were here first, so I know that it means you are hungry.”
When everyone is seated and eats, Shatz gets up again and takes the microphone. Its mission is to bring people to connect and speak. He suggests: “If you want, if you are sitting with a person with whom you dine every night of the week, and you decide tonight that you want to dine with someone else, you have my permission to sit with someone else. We encourage you to do this, to be able to establish a new link, because that is why we are here this evening.”
And, in case someone worries to have To get up to tell a story, he says: “Regarding history sharing, people often ask:” Should I share a story? “And the answer is” no “. You don’t have to share a story.
Brendan Schauffler tells the group his father.
Marsden Sheterly / For NPR
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The room calms down, only the print of silverware and chewing can be heard. Brendan Schauffler gets up and heads forward in the room. He rubs his hands and then takes the microphone. He begins to tell a story about his father’s loneliness, which led to his father’s possible suicide when Schauffler was a teenager. Looking around the room, the forks are broken, the faces still, everyone listens.
Brendan admits: “I had the impression that my face had forgotten the shape of a smile and that I would be stuck in this place forever. I have become determined to never lose the opportunity to tell someone that I was care about what they mean for me.
After two other storytellers, the evening begins to end and people pull on the coats and bring together their ladles and slowdowns. Then, a man who asked that NPR does not name him to protect his family from other pains, hits the shoulder on the shoulder.
“I wanted to thank you for your story. I too lost someone very close to me. I lost my 13 year old son to commit suicide. And it’s very difficult for me, but I really admire your courage.”
The two men stand. Schauffler says in man’s ear: “I’m really sorry for your loss.” They start to separate, then they look again and stand again.
Moments of connection like this are unforeseen and deep. The recipe is so simple: a Sunday evening, a potluck, a few neighbors and some stories. Community Plate offers Maine an antidote to loneliness and disconnection, a supper at the same time.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call, send SMS or chat with suicide and crisis Lifeline at 988.