the slow life movement celebrated a birthay

Some of you might be familiar with the "slow food" organization. If not you can read about it here. As the name implies, it came about in response to the fast food. If you ever have a chance to go to a slow food event, GO! I promise you will eat well, meet some interesting poeple doing amazing things with food, slowly.

Yesterday I went to a lunch party with a group of folks who, for the most part are participating in the "slow life" movement. We didn't fill out an application for this movement. We don't have a website or a logo. We don't charge dues or have a mission statement. We've all just found ourselves choosing to live life, well, slowly. Like having 5 hour lunches whenever possible.


Yesterday's party was in celebration of this gal







You might recognize her from das needle club. She's my friend Natalie.

Gathered around her table were these folks







If this group had a founder it would be Natalie. I realized half way through the lunch yesterday that all my friends at the table (and most of the rest that weren't there - Italian, german, english, american, dutch, danish, hungarian) I had met through Natalie directly or indirectly. Natalie knows everyone in the valley. And I'm very pleased to be one of them.

I came to another realization about 3/4th of the way through lunch...I didn't know the last names of anyone at the table except Natalie despite the fact that I have spent THOUSANDS of hours with them sitting around tables talking.