Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for February 15, 2010

Nepal, home of the world’s highest point: Mt. Everest.

Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, Communist State , May 28 , 2008 - Population 28,676,547 (2005) per-capita income is less than US$470

Nah…I think she’s enjoying the charity work as well as the company she’s keeping…enjoying her life free of responsiblities like she ought to. I don’t think grammas should be raising extended families if they don’t have too. If she’s retired, let her live her life out..

Nepal? I thought they’d go to Haiti next. There’s a lot of work to be done there.

If the strip is currently echoing Jan’s efforts, then this might be what happened next…and while you’re overseas in one country on a tour it’s not so easy to drop that and go elsewhere.

There’s nothing like getting important news from your teenager. They deliver it so well.

Time to re-adjust your thinking, Val!

Macush my thoughts exactly. I wonder though if Haiti is up for rebuilding. Lot of debree has to be removed. That is why 20 years or so ago I had to leave my job. My job didn’t pay enough for day care and my parents didn’t need to raise the grandkids although 3 years age difference. Holly needs to get her mom to sit down and talk with her mom on the computer.

The ONLY reason Gramma is still there is Arnold. He’s the only reason she went, too. The charity work is just what she’s using as an excuse to justify skipping out on family responsibilities to chase some young stud half way around the world. But when she gets too sick to chase after him, she’ll come back & be a burden on the same family she skipped out on. I hope they dump her in some old age home, like she deserves.

There’s plenty of charity work she could have been doing at home, but didn’t. Habitat for Humanity has projects all over the US. It’s a shame the way extended families are considered passe & uncool, & nobody looks to family until they need help. Then they wonder why the people they turned their backs on don’t have any time for them.

Cue “Cat’s in the Cradle” as background music for this comic strip.

BTW - seems nobody noticed that Gramma’s week long guilt trip had zero effect on Holly, who hasn’t mentioned a word about it to Mom. Good on you, Holly! I don’t usually approve of her selfishness, but this time I do. Who cares what a selfish, hypocritical granny thinks anyway?

Geez! It’s just a comic strip!

I agree, jerzy.

A year ago, the strip introduced a mom and her kids who were living in a broken down RV, and then the story was dropped when Val and Gram showed up with a couple boxes of food and clothes. Nothing about helping them out of poverty or even into a decent trailer park.

Gram didn’t volunteer in the schools, so she had no idea that the schools are involved in charities such as the “Three Cups of Tea” fund-raising to build schools, nor did she herself ever tell Holly while she was home and had the newspaper/computer for visual aid, about how girls were forced to NOT learn to read in certain countries.

I have no idea what Gram did while the girls were in school, but it wasn’t helping out in the local community; she didn’t even bother teaching her granddaughters about nutrition and cooking or the world around them.

I do recall that she guilted her over-worked, widowed daughter every chance she could, so she had plenty of time for that.

Nepal ? I assumed by now they would have time to get Haiti in the storyline

If Evie’s living with Val came along with the understanding/agreement that Evie would help watch the kids and help around the house, then Val’s reaction is completely understandable! Evie HAS volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and helped out locally. She even got Holly to go along with her.

Things are getting a little too serious here. Edie has no obligation to wait on her spoiled grandkids. I believe that’s HER house they’re living in. Once one reaches “retirement” age, they should be allowed to spend their time where they wish - and NOT in a “retirement home” :-( I love my house and never want to leave it. I only travel because I visit my kids and grandkids more often than they visit here.

Evie’s talk had no effect on Holly? If Holly’s staking a claim to Evie’s room then Holly has presumably agreed to Evie’s deal. Just because Holly hasn’t included that information in her opening sentence to Val you assume that it didn’t happen?

By the way, the worst-off people in the U.S. still have far better living standards than the people Evie is helping. Someone complained last week that Evie shouldn’t be “guilt-tripping” Holly with third-world suffering because Holly couldn’t relate to it. How else could Evie GET Holly to relate to their poverty if she didn’t give her examples of it? Holly has been sheltered. She’s old enough to get some perspective on how so much of the rest of the world lives.

But I guess people in other countries aren’t “real” in the way that Americans are, so their hunger and poverty don’t count.

The corollary to “Just because my problems aren’t as serious as someone else’s doesn’t mean they aren’t as real” is “Just because your problems are as real as someone else’s doesn’t mean they’re as serious.” Again, it’s a matter of perspective. It’s “I wept because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”

I’m glad I’m living in the land of the free, Where the rich just get richer, And the poor you don’t ever have to see! It would depress us, Karl, Because we care That the world isn’t fair.

– Randy Newman

By the way, cartoon characters literally aren’t “real.” Evie’s motives and Holly’s attitudes are strictly creations of Jan Eliot, and if there are reasons to question Evie’s sincerity or mitigate Holly’s selfishness it is up to Jan to provide them. Any statements that Evie is “really” staying abroad for reasons other than what have been given in the strip are projections of the commentors’ own attitudes and have no foundation whatsoever.

@jerzy, what a lot of sour grapes!

@fritzoid, I’m glad you pointed out that the characters aren’t real, and that it is unjustified to analyze their motives beyond what we’re given by the author. I was struggling towards this realization but not quite getting there.

Perhaps we should focus our analytical minds on something useful.

OK, let’s see if this is acceptable: in panel 2, all she has to do is draw three little curves, and you get a teenage girl smirking at her mother!

Lovely!

It seems some of you are awfully down on Evie. Does she owe it to Val and the kids to be there for them? Or having raised her own family isn’t she entitled to do what she pleases in her retirement? It’s good of her to help Val and Val does need the help but many single mothers don’t have the luxury of having a mom to help out.

oh, I do hope the comment threads here aren’t going to be as venomous as on FBoFW.

Half the commenters spouting venom at characters they don’t like, the other half sputtering about the first half, the first half then answering back about free speech and whatnot. Somebody even said - be glad we are just venting on a cartoon character and not in real life, well it doesn’t work like that actually. Venom just makes more venom…

Evie’s doing fine as she is.

Yesterday, Holly was shocked that Grandma Eve might not come back. Today, it’s Val’s turn to be taken aback. They really miss her!

Actually, the agreement was that when Holly donated her first $100 to charity, she would get the room in addition to a matching grant from Grandma.