60 years and 60 lunches
When Lawrence Jaffe turned 60 this year, he decided to celebrate this milestone by having 60 lunches with family, old friends and some people he barely knew
Lawrence Jaffe’s favorite book is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and the title of that book pretty much describes what Jaffe has been doing since he moved to Sebastopol with his wife Ann Austin in 1993. Jaffe first read it in college and now he re-reads it every year and has done so for the last 20 years.
Jaffe turned 60 earlier this year on Jan. 3, and his family and friends asked him if he wanted to have a big party to celebrate.
“When it was my birthday and I was 60, I’m like—I’m president of the Grange, I’ve been Citizen of the Year—I don’t need to have a big party and have people celebrate me. I’ve been well-celebrated,” he said. “What I wanted was just the chance to spend time with people I like.”
He was inspired by a former Sebastopol resident, Patrick Stewart, who pledged to learn 60 new things when he turned 60. Riffing on this idea, the gregarious Jaffe determined to have 60 lunches with 60 different people—friends, old and new, and people he didn’t really know but wanted to get to know better.
It’s been 10 months since he made that pledge, and he’s getting close to his goal. He’s had 47 lunches with 47 different people so far. Just 13 to go.
Jaffe was born in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles, in 1965. He went to college at UC Santa Cruz. “I graduated as a slug [the school’s mascot is a banana slug] in 1988.” He went to law school in San Francisco at the New College School of Law and Social Change, the most liberal law school he could find, where he said, “I learned two kinds of law, the basic law you had to learn to pass the bar and then the liberal critique of every law.”
He took some time off in the middle of law school—teaching composting for the County of Alameda in Oakland and Fremont. He also spent a year WWOOFing—which stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms—in Australia and New Zealand.
When he got back, he and his wife Ann decided they wanted to work on a farm. “She went through the CCOF [California Certified Organic Farmers] handbook with all the names of all the farms. So she called all the farms, and we found a couple of places to apply to here in Sebastopol, a town we’d never heard of.” They ended up at Laguna Farm, just south of Sebastopol, on Cooper Road. “We thought, ‘Yeah, we’ll go there for six months, and then we’ll figure out where we’re headed.’”
They arrived in Sebastopol on March 1, 1993, and—with the exception of various world travels—they basically never left. Jaffe threw himself into the life of the community—not by going into politics, which one might have expected—but by taking his legal and organizational know-how and joining various boards, committees, and volunteer organizations.
“I served on the county’s Community Development Commission for seven years—two-time chair of that board. I served on the board of the Climate Center, which helped bring you Sonoma Clean Power. I served on the board of the Wednesday Night Market in Santa Rosa. I revitalized the Grange (with the help of many others)—that’s been a 15-year project. I served three terms on the board of the Grange Credit Union, now called the North Bay Credit Union. Now I’m on the board at SW100 [west county’s new giving circle].”
As a part of the Community Development Commission, he helped fund some of Sebastopol’s affordable housing projects, including Petaluma Homes, which he says was the first affordable-housing co-housing development, Hollyhock and others.
“I have found over the years that you can’t pay people to teach you what you learn by volunteering,” he said. ‘You get to see a bigger picture and be in charge of bigger decisions. And so that’s been fun.”
The one thing he did not do is run for the Sebastopol City Council.
“I thought I could just enjoy my civic life more if I did the things I really cared about,” he said, “and didn’t also have to take care of a lot of issues I’m not really an expert on or even super deeply interested in.”
In his spare time, he plays mandolin, watches rugby and makes compost.
“I love to make compost,” he said. “I’ve got regular compost. I’ve got worm compost. I’ve got long-term sheet mulching compost. Compost is great and amazing, and when I get frustrated about the news around climate change, I’m like, ‘Well, I can’t fix the whole world, but I can go make some compost and sequester a little carbon right here on my property.’”
The other thing Jaffe is interested in is people. Ergo, the lunch project.
He bookended this 60-lunch project with family members. The first person he had lunch with this year was his daughter Libby. “We talked about her college year in her dorm, we talked about the 60-lunch project, and we talked about what we would do in our summer travels,” Jaffe said. The last person he is scheduled to have lunch with before the year’s end is his mother. In between, he had lunch with his wife at Wilbur Hot Springs and his daughter Bella at Fandee’s, where they talked about grief and how to make a five-year plan for your life.
He’s had lunch with several of his old college roommates, including Sebastopol musician Doron Amiran, “my college roommate, who I followed from LA to Santa Cruz, from Santa Cruz to Berkeley, and he followed me here. He just had his album release party at Hopmonk.”
He had lunch with his favorite plumber, Jordan.
He had lunch with the son of one of his old mentors, Attorney Bill Ferchland, who he worked with doing worker compensation law. (Bill was too ill to meet, ergo the meeting with his son.) Jaffe said he has a bulletin board with pictures of all the mentors he’s had over the years, including “my high school teacher and the guy who taught me how to manage property,” he said.
He had lunch with Patrick Stewart, whose learn-60-new-things plan inspired Jaffe’s lunch endeavor. They talked about friendship, community, volunteerism and travel.
He had lunch with longtime friend and co-conspirator Craig Litwin, “which was all about how we were going to change the world,” Jaffe said.
He also had lunch with people he knew just glancingly from around town, but didn’t know very well, like philanthropic strategist Karen Demarest, attorney Kent Jenkins, and, well, me.
I was lunch #46. Jaffe and I got together last Wednesday for lunch at Handline. We talked about AI and the Grange civil wars (which I’d never heard of), and our favorite podcasts. (His is “The Great Simplification.” Mine is “The Rest is History.”) We talked about other things too, which I don’t remember, but I know they are written down in his book. I didn’t record or take notes during our conversation—because I wanted it to be a human-to-human conversation, not human-to-reporter. (I did interview him a few days later so I could write this article.)
When I asked Jaffe after that interview to reflect on what he’d learned from these various conversations over the last year, he wrote this:
“I’ve learned that each of my friends really reflects on one area of my interests,” he said. “That there are music and fun friends. And community work friends, and that each friendship is sort of a reflection of what grows in those distinct gardens.”
The thing about Lawrence, it is those who get to be around his influence are the ones who win.
Love this story. Thanks to Jaffre for all the things he has worked to improve within our community!