Postcards

How the power players do it - by Fortune senior editor at large Patricia Sellers

She eats what she kills: A friend for Mark Zuckerberg

July 15, 2011: 9:30 AM ET

The current cover of Fortune shows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blowing a big pink bubble--POP! The story, Don't call it the next tech bubble--yet, delves into Zuckerberg's latest purchase: a $7 million, 5,600-square-foot, five-bedroom home in Palo Alto. Home prices there have gone up 24% in the past six months.

"The $7 million price tag doesn't buy much," writes my colleague David Kaplan, in the cover story. "Zuckerberg's parcel is barely half an acre, and for that kind of money he could have gotten an estate plus a barn in nearby Woodside, to house the pigs, chickens, and goats he now kills for dinner."

Ha! That is a reference to the Facebook founder's diet--his year-long commitment to eat the meat only of animals that he personally kills--which you read about here on Postcards in May. Among the hundreds of reader comments on that peculiar story came one from Madeleine Parry, a young woman in Australia who is doing her own version of the Zuckerberg regimen. In fact, she's made a charming film called Murder Mouth about her eat-what-you-kill ethic. If you're into the ethic (or just curious), watch this preview:

I got a, um, taste of this eat-what-you-kill ethic last weekend when I had dinner at Silicon Valley's Flea Street Cafe--and breakfast the next morning at the home of Jesse Cool, Flea Street's owner. Cool is the woman who introduced Zuckerberg to local farmers and accompanied him as he killed his first chicken, goat and pig.

With us were friends Kathi Lutton, a partner at Fish & Richardson law firm, and photographer Asa Mathat--who shot me mobilizing Jesse's chicken coop. I lost only one chicken--which Cool, thank goodness, recaptured.

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About This Author
Pattie Sellers
Patricia Sellers
Senior Editor at Large, Fortune
Executive Director of MPW/Live Content, Time Inc.

Fortune senior editor at large Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Marissa Mayer: Ready to Rumble at Yahoo," "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), and "Remodeling Martha" (Martha Stewart). She has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" package every year since its launch in 1998. Pattie is Executive Director of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business and beyond. She oversees MPW programs that enable women leaders to extend their influence and empower the next generation—such as Fortune MPW Entrepreneurs and the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Beyond her Fortune duties, she is also developing Live Content across Time Inc. Pattie grew up in Allentown, PA, graduated from the University of Virginia, and started at Fortune in 1984. Her blog, Postcards, is about how power players lead, manage others, and navigate their careers.

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