‘Pie Lady’ Drives Across Country To Bring Comfort To Newtown…With Apple Pies

[sheshe2]

Beth Howard’s TheWorldNeedsMorePie… “give a piece a chance.”

As Newtown, Connecticut marks the end of the first week since the horrific shooting of Friday, December 14, the cliché of “new normal” is already making the rounds in conversations about “where do we go from here?” But the pain is still so raw; the families who lost loved ones are conducting funerals and struggling with crushing loss and the need to somehow carry on. The town is besieged by media of every kind and the sorrow and shock that pervades the town has become overwhelming. It’s likely to be that way for a while.

So what do you do if you’re a person who wants to help; who wants to offer comfort and just a little bit of warmth and human connection? If you’re Beth Howard, you pack up your pie truck with 240 apple pies and drive from Eldon, Iowa to Newtown, Connecticut to bring just a little comfort to a grieving town.




And how are the folks of Newtown taking to the “pie lady”? According to CNN’s Eatocracy, Beth’s comfort food did exactly that:


“People smiled today,” she said. “And that alone was worth the drive.”

So just who is this “pie evangelist,” as she is known? According to the bio on her site, Beth Howard is a woman who just happens to love pie. Some 11 years ago she stumbled into a market in Malibu, California looking to buy a slice only to discover they were out and “too busy to make any.” She suggested they hire her and, given her Midwestern roots with its pie-making heritage passed down by her grandmother, her skills were good and her confidence was high…they did hire her.
SNIP:

Given this immersion in the world of pie, it’s not hard to extrapolate that when she saw the misery in Newtown, she was inspired to bring her particular brand of comfort to the people suffering there. She put up a post about her plans on Facebook and quickly raised $2000.00. With those funds in hand, she packed up her 24-foot-long camper emblazoned with her logo, picked up a friend in Chicago, and stopped in Flanders, New Jersey, where a battalion of bakers had been busy: 240 apple pies were ready to go.

Link to video...Pie Lady arriving in Newtown.http://www.wlfi.com/dpps/lifestyles/must_see_video/comfort-pies-brought-to-newtown-nd12-jos_5178351


More about the Pie Lady here.



http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/12/22/pie-lady-drives-across-country-to-bring-comfort-to-newtown-w

[BeyondGeography]

1. A lovely human being

[sheshe2]

2. To the Beth Howard's of the world!

[ProfessionalLeftist]

3. What a sweet thing to do and a cool idea!

She's really good people. Nice to know they are out there.

[Auntie Bush]

4. What a compassionate, empathetic person.

[catbyte]

5. Pie always works for me. Good for her.

[Cha]

6. Give Piece A Chance~

Beth Howard and the President have something important in common.. bless her Pie Making Heart!

That's absolutley awesome that she's taking the pies on the road to Newton, Connecticut..the Opposite of "imposting".




President Obama certainly understands the comfort of Pie..



Shout out to Patrice who has this in her sig line

Thanks She.. Never thought I'd cry reading about the comfort of pie.. So Sweet..

The Vid was heartwarming.. the man interviewed had sage words.. you do what you can .. everyone does a little and it adds up to a whole lot.. so paraphrasing.

[sheshe2]

7. This speaks volumes..." in the American experience—something had been lost, and we knew it"

You are right Cha...I never knew pie would make me cry. However America lost something last week. I am hoping we are on the road to changing that.
I think we are!

In the autumn of 1971 Don McLean's elegiac American Pie entered the collective consciousness, and over thirty years later remains one of the most discussed, dissected and debated songs that popular music has ever produced. A cultural event at the peak of its popularity in 1972, it reached the top of the Billboard 100 charts in a matter of weeks, selling more than 3 million copies; and at eight and a half minutes long, this was no mean feat. But this was no ordinary song, either: boldly original and thematically ambitious, what set American Pie apart had a lot to do with the way we weren't entirely sure what the song was about, provoking endless debates over its epic cast of characters. And these controversies remain with us to this day. But however open to interpretation the lyrics may have been, the song's emotional resonance was unmistakable: McLean was clearly relating a defining moment in the American experience—something had been lost, and we knew it. Opening with the death of singer Buddy Holly and ending near the tragic concert at Altamont Motor Speedway, we are able to frame the span of years the song is covering—1959 to 1970—as the "10 years we've been on our own" of the third verse. It is across this decade that the American cultural landscape changed radically, passing from the relative optimism and conformity of the 1950s and early 1960s to the rejection of these values by the various political and social movements of the mid and late 1960s.

Coming as it did near the end of this turbulent era, American Pie seemed to be speaking to the precarious position we found ourselves in, as the grand social experiments of the 1960s began collapsing under the weight of their own unrealized utopian dreams, while the quieter, hopeful world we grew up in receded into memory. And as 1970 came to a close and the world this generation had envisioned no longer seemed viable, a sense of disillusion and loss fell over us; we weren't the people we once were. But we couldn't go home again either, having challenged the assumptions of that older order. The black and white days were over.

http://understandingamericanpie.com/

[Cha]

8. I like to think we are, too, She.. Thank you for Don McClean's American Pie..

It was a favorite of my kids' back then, too.. about 5 years after he wrote it. They'd go around singing their hearts to that tune.

I got curious what Don was up to these days and found him doing well..



http://www.don-mclean.com/