table talk / By Bob Doran

Know Your Convivium — the Slow Food movement hits Humboldt

(Aug. 23, 2007) “We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods… A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.

“May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.

Butter lettuce from G Farms. Photo by Bob Doran.

GALLERY >

“Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food. Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food.”

— from the “Slow Food Manifesto,” written in 1989 and signed by delegates from 15 countries to create Arcigola, forerunner to Slow Food International.

To live life to the fullest you have to learn to take things slow. That premise informs the Slow Movement and Slow Food, grand concepts that are simultaneously reactionary and revolutionary at the core. In many ways Humboldt County is already a Slow living sort of place — particularly Arcata, where the Saturday Farmers” Market is a social center abounding in local and regional foods. You can’t dash into the market, grab a bite and rush off.

There’s even an Arcata ordinance in place to halt the onslaught of fast food franchises, at least in the main part of town, which relates directly to the origins of the Slow Movement.

The seed for the Slow revolution was the planned opening of a McDonald’s franchise in 1986 in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna, home of the famed Spanish Steps. Carlo Petrini organized a demonstration against the notion of Big Macs in the heart of Rome, assembling protesters armed with bowls of penne.

Petrini is a believer in eating together as an essential act of social communion. As an alternative to the lonely diner grabbing a quick bite, he suggests conviviality, and as the Slow Food movement he founded marks its 20th anniversary, the 80,000 plus members worldwide have organized into a collection of regional chapters known as convivia . ( Convivia comes from the Latin convivere , “to live with, hence to feast with.”)

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