The aroma of stone soup1 wafts thru my brain as I ponder our trickle-down2 crisis. If you’re not familiar with the stone soup parable, it goes something like this:
A traveler enters a village in crisis; fire had parched the earth and the villagers had no food. Many were weak and some had died.
“There is nothing to eat here” the traveler was told, “you had better move on”.
“I was not looking for food” he replied, “but merely a place to make some stone soup. I will share it with you if you can lend me a pot and ladle”. A cauldron was produced and a fire was made. The traveler gently removed a stone from his satchel and dropped it into the water. The rumor of food brought other villagers to the street outside.
As the water warmed, the traveler sniffed the broth and licked his lips in anticipation. “Ahhh, I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage — that’s hard to beat.”
Soon a villager approached, sheepishly holding a cabbage he’d retrieved from a hiding place. “Wonderful!” cried the traveler. “You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef and it was fit for a king.”
The butcher managed to find some salt beef and someone else offered a few carrots … and so it went until the village had created a healthy, delicious meal for all.
This is a parable about community. It is also about change management. In the story we see that a minor alteration of the village’s resource management practices quickly yielded a better result.
It makes me wonder what it would be like if our towns could overcome their hoarding instincts that leave one department with carrots and another with salt beef and none with a healthy diet? And what would happen if our state and regional library systems could adapt the existing structure where each expends all their resources to provide virtually identical services, potentially leaving all with pots but no food to put in them?
1 Modified from The Story of Stone Soup
2 Economic theory whereby people at the top squander wealth and the loss trickles down to the rest of us.
