Lisa Morrison Oral History Interview, March 15, 2017

LISA MORRISON: My name is Lisa Morrison, and today's date is March 15th, 2017, and I was born July 11th, 1963. We're here at Belmont Station in Portland, Oregon, which is a beer bar and bottle shop.

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: On your lovely back patio.

LM: In our lovely back patio, with the rain.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: Making lovely noises.

TEM: So, you grew up in Oklahoma, were you born in Oklahoma too?

LM: I was, I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, yeah.

TEM: What was your family doing there?

LM: You know, both of my parents were born and raised in Tulsa, and I think my grandparents... I know my grandparents on my mother's side had spent a bit of time there. I think my dad's parents moved there, but I mean we are talking like, that's a long time ago.

TEM: What was it like to grow up in Oklahoma?

LM: I like to say it's a great place to be from. [laughs] But you know the people are super genuine. Really some of the nicest, most kind, salt of the earth people you could ever ever want to know. Tulsa is a great little town. It's been a long time since I've been there, but I'd love to go back and check it out sometime. It was a good, you know, it was a good childhood. There was enough to do and lots of, you know, everything from malls to going out and being able to be in some, you know, nice back country, pretty rolling hills, lots of rivers. It was a good balance of everything.

TEM: Was it a comparable sized city when you were growing up? What's a comparable sized city? [laughs] Is it as big as Portland?

LM: No, it's not as big as Portland. I would say, maybe like Corvallis, perhaps? 00:02:00About that size, maybe a little bit bigger. You don't pay attention to that sort of stuff when you're a kid. [laughs]

TEM: I know, that is something that I've learned when I interview people and we talk about childhood. People are like "I wasn't thinking about that!"

LM: "I have no idea!"

BOTH: [laugh]

TEM: So, what did you like to do when you were growing up?

LM: I loved to read, I loved to go canoeing and fishing. My family and I, our family would go fishing like all the time. That was our big thing is we'd go out fishing. My dad had a little motorboat. I actually still have the motor; I can't get rid of it. Her name, the motors name, is Edith Ann [laughs] and we called her that because I don't know if you know in the show Laugh-In, Lily Tomlin used to do a skit about this little girl named Edith Ann and at the very end she's always go "and that's the truth." Although, the motorboat kind of sounded like 00:03:00that because it was such a crappy little motor it just sounded like that, so we called her Edith Ann.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: I still own Edith Ann, [laughs] I can't get rid of her!

TEM: Have you thought about putting her on a boat?

LM: I have, yeah. I'm kind of afraid to actually.

BOTH: [laugh]

TEM: Maybe have like a canoe next to you or a rowboat.

LM: Just in case, maybe a very small lake or something, just to try it out. [laughs]

TEM: I feel like we have enough puddles.

LM: Yeah, right? We could just take it out to one of the potholes out there these days.

TEM: [laughs] Did you have brothers and sisters?

LM: Nope, I was an only child. Only child of only children, which is kind of bazaar. And each of my parents had a parent who was an only child, so we're a very small family. And the weird thing is there's a reason for every single one of them. My grandfather was actually a twin, but his brother died when he was like one or two, so he basically was an only child. My mom, her parents divorces when she was, I think three, so she was raised by her mom as an only child. You 00:04:00know, my dad's parents couldn't have children, and then all of a sudden, he showed up when my grandmother was 40, which back then is just like "wow." Kind of funny. [laughs]

TEM: Did you like it? Did you long for-?

LM: Oh, you know, I always had the 'I want a baby brother thing' of course, but to be honest, I kind of liked it. I feel like especially now as I'm older I feel like it really helped me deal with adults a lot sooner because I was always around them. The one thing I feel like was a detriment to me was I never really learned how to argue well because I never had siblings to fight with. [laughs] So, there was that, but yeah.

TEM: [laughs] I don't know that I've heard that before. "I would have been a better arguer."

LM: [laughs] I would have been I'm pretty sure because I'm terrible.

TEM: So, you love books and have shared that you loved libraries. What did you think that you wanted to do when you were a little kid?

LM: I wanted to be a librarian. I mean for the longest time I volunteered at the library and everything. I don't know where that stopped, where I decided I didn't want to do that anymore. It never became something that came to fruition. But, one day just kind of wound up not doing it, I don't know why. My parents had a family friend who was a school librarian and I adored her, and I wanted to do that too, that's what I was going to be, I was going to be a librarian. I loved being surrounded by books and the written word.

TEM: What were some of your favorite genres or favorite books?

LM: Oh gosh, what was really cool was falling in love with all of the Beverly 00:06:00Cleary books. She was kind of my first author that I made that connection of "Oh wow I really liked that book, there's another one by that same person, I should read that book too!" you know, I read every single one of them. Then, to move here much later in life and realize "Oh my gosh, that actually all happened here" was really cool. I was really a big fan of Where the Red Fern Grows because that actually took place kind of where I grew up, so that was a really good one. Same kind of thing, the S.E. Hinton books, like The Outsiders and all that took place in Tulsa. The other one, my big favorite that I actually still own is A Wrinkle in Time. Kind of a wide genre, but books I read a lot, like over and over.

TEM: Were you a book collector?

LM: Yeah, I had tons of books, and I was the kid that, you know the Scholastic Book Club when you were a kid? I think it was once a month maybe, you'd be able to order books. I would come home with a big sack of books, like all the way up to my chin. I'd walk home with them, I'd plunk them down by my chair where I read, my reading chair. I would pick up the first one and read it, plop, pick up the next one and read it, plop. I mean I was a veracious reader; I just could not stop reading.

TEM: It just reminded me how you would have to cut it on the side, mark-

LM: Yeah, you had to fill out everything. It was so exciting because you saved up your money and then all of a sudden, the books would come. It was so exciting, so cool.

TEM: Being the parent of someone who is like that too, there is nothing like seeing your child get that into books.

LM: That must be exciting for you.

TEM: Where they just get lost, that feeling.

LM: Oh yeah, it was just great. In Oklahoma it was so dang hot in the summertime, that even though we had air conditioning it was still kind of warm in the house no matter what. It was way too hot, at least for this redhead, to be outside. [laughs] I'd either be in the pool with my friends, maybe riding bikes for a little bit, or I'd just be inside reading because what else are you going to do in the summertime in Oklahoma?

TEM: [laughs] What were some of the things that you were interested in when you were in school? Academically?

LM: Like my favorite classes and stuff?

TEM: Yeah.

LM: I loved English, I loved writing. I hated handwriting class because I was left-handed. I loved science, I liked math until algebra, then I don't know what happened it all fell apart. I mean I pretty much loved everything at first. I 00:09:00really kind of liked all of it, but as I got older, the English, the writing, foreign languages, that sort of thing. When I was in high school, it was choir. It was basically my savior. Singing was the thing that kept me in school and kept me going because I loved it so much. It was kind of my daily release. I still feel like the world would be a better place if everybody would take an hour and just sing every day, that would be so awesome. [laughs]

TEM: I could go listen to someone sing, I don't know if they would feel the same.

LM: Well, you're not just singing in front of other people, you could just sing for yourself.

TEM: Oh, just sing, I get it.

LM: You know, just like if you're in a car or anything, just sing! I think it's good for everybody, I don't care if you sound good or not, just sing.

TEM: The release.

LM: Exactly, and the breathing. You have to have that metered breathing to do 00:10:00it, so I think that that is also very good. I remember, so weird, I had bad allergies when I was a kid, and I'd get into choir class, and I don't know if it was because of the breathing or what, but they would always get better in choir class. Maybe because I wasn't concentrating so much on sniffling.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: You can't sniffle in choir class [laughs] no sniffles aloud.

TEM: Yeah, seems like they would discourage, would get in the way. So, obviously later in life, you've ended up in food and beverage as you focus.

LM: Yeah.

TEM: Did you love cooking or connect with that aspect of science?

LM: You know I didn't too much as a kid, but my mom wasn't really, my grandmother was a cook. My grandmother was a home ec teacher, so my mom's mom, and she was a wonderful cook. I think if I had a chance to spend more time with her as I'd gotten a little bit older, I would have latched onto cooking more. My 00:11:00mom wasn't really much of a-when she put her mind to it, she's a good cook, but she doesn't necessarily like to cook that much. So, it was a lot of canned vegetables and things like that. I mean, she'd always make nice meals, but it wasn't like "I'm going to get in the kitchen today!" kind of thing. It wasn't really until I got married that I really started, not just cooking for myself because that can be a "I'll throw something in the microwave" kind of thing. When we started cooking together is when I really found out that I really love cooking so much. For me, spending a weekend in the kitchen is awesome, I love doing it, it's great.

TEM: Do you think it's different growing up in Oklahoma, obviously agriculturally it is very different than Oregon. Was there a sense of 00:12:00agriculture when you were in Oklahoma?

LM: Yeah, there really was actually. We had a family friend, his name was K, but he was such a family friend I called him Uncle K. Obviously I didn't have uncles because-

TEM: [laughs]

LM: -only child of only children, I had a lot of uncles and aunts, they just weren't related. Uncle K was a farmer actually, and he had a farm outside of Tulsa. Believe it or not, in the Ozark area of Oklahoma, the ground is very fertile and rich, so we would go out and help him pick. That was another good summertime activity right in the heat of the sun. The beautiful thing was after you got done with all that you'd take a big old watermelon right out of the field and crack it right there. For some reason it was so cold, I don't know how they did that, it was just so amazing, it was the best watermelon in the world.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: Being in the hot sun all day, it was delicious.

TEM: What kind of farmer was he? Obviously, he had melons. [laughs]

LM: Yeah, he just kind of did a little bit of everything really. He had a little farm stand and we'd help pick for that and he'd sell stuff in this little farm stand. I'm sure he must have sold to other places. I don't think he made his money off of the farm stand, but again I was a kid, I didn't pay attention to that sort of stuff. I just knew we were going, and I'd say "Okay" you know?

TEM: And I've heard that in other parts of the country farm stands are more common and more of a source of income then we have here.

LM: Yeah, and maybe back then too, I assume. A little while ago, a minute or two. [laughs]

TEM: Little while.

LM: Just a little while.

TEM: So, when you were probably getting into high school you were aware of what other people were interested in, the community that you lived in. What were some 00:14:00of the things that you remember people doing, or people being interested in? Heading, maybe out of middle school into high school where we start to observe the world and compare the world a bit more. [laughs]

LM: Well, that's interesting because that's about the time that we moved to Colorado. So, in my tenth grade is when we moved to Colorado, so I was just kind of getting to do things like that. You know, with friends who had cars. We had to get away from the family, the parents. I was really involved in Campfire Girls, so we did a lot of that sort of stuff. We did a lot of camping and things like that. But then also in Tulsa the big thing was cruising, we would go cruising every Friday night. My friend Jenna across the street had a car so we 00:15:00would go up and down this one street all the time, it was hilarious. We didn't do that when we moved to Colorado though, that wasn't something that was done there. It was a totally different experience from living in Tulsa.

TEM: What brought your family to Colorado?

LM: We had, as a family, decided that we wanted to move to Colorado, and my dad and my mom, my dad especially, fell in love with it. He worked in the oil business, so he got a job working for one of the oil companies out there in Denver. Then we moved to Evergreen, which is a small, like really small mountain community, sleeper community at this point, especially to Denver where a lot of people commute to and from every day. It was interesting because it was about the same size high school compared to the one I was going to in Tulsa, but the 00:16:00geographic area that the kids fed into from was way huger because of the small amount of people that were there. So, I had a graduating class of about 430 or 450 people but they were so far flung, some of those kids would have to get up at like four in the morning to get to school in the mountains, in Colorado where it is cold and snowy, I was like "Oh my god I'm so glad I don't have to do that." [laughs] We just lived down the street from the school, so it was great. [laughs]

TEM: I think about when schools are cancelled in Oregon-

LM: Yeah, yeah.

TEM: -I do think about the people who are in that situation, probably still. So, what were some of the differences in the students that you went to school with, or what was that transition like from Oklahoma to Colorado?

LM: I was super excited to move to Colorado, but it was one of the most 00:17:00difficult things I had ever done at that point in my life, and I was not anticipating that at all. First of all, most of those kids I knew in Tulsa I had known since at least kindergarten, if not before, so that was kind of weird. In Tulsa the culture was, in our school, whenever a new kid came, they were like princes and princesses, you know. Everyone wanted to sit with the new kid, and show them around, and sit with them at lunch. Everybody was always super super nice to them, and I was so excited to do that, I was like "Oh my gosh, I get to be that kid!" you know? Not quite the culture [laughs] at Evergreen High School as it was in Tulsa, in fact it was just the opposite. It was more like "You're the new kid, we're going to pick on you, we're going to tease you" you know. I had a southern accent, I said 'y'all'. I still say 'y'all', I'm not going to 00:18:00stop saying y'all dammit.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: I literally dropped my southern accent, as only a teenager could, in like three days. It's so funny, I look back at that and it's like "Wow, that was kind of impressive." I did not want to be teased about that, so it was like "Alright, I just won't talk like that anymore." It's like, "How did I do that?" It's creepy.

TEM: You didn't necessarily feel a curiosity about being an outsider? They weren't sharing a curiosity like "What was it like to live in Tulsa?"

LM: Oh god no.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: It was more like "You're here, you're intruding, you're in our space." It was very difficult, very difficult. Like, even the teachers were kind of mean to me. I remember the typing teacher, she said, "Sit down at that desk" and I went and sat down at that desk, and she said "Okay, everybody pull out your typing manual from underneath your chair." My desk didn't have one, so I reached over 00:19:00to another desk to pull one out and she started yelling at me. [laughs] I'd been there for like two minutes lady. [laughs]

TEM: Ew.

LM: I know, and then she's like "Oh by the way, she's new!" It's like "Oh my god!" [laughs]

TEM: Hi...

LM: [laughs]

TEM: Well, I guess in that way that would maybe be easier, when you would have sibling maybe to share that kind of discomfort.

LM: Right, yeah exactly. That kind of stuff I always just had to shoulder on my own, I guess. I didn't have any friends at that point either, so it wasn't like I could be like "Wow, so-and-so is such a bitch, isn't she?"

TEM: Yeah

LM: Interestingly enough, I reconnected with somebody on Facebook that we went to high school with in Evergreen and she moved in after I did. Maybe like a few months after I did, I had kind of gotten settled down by then. I made a huge point of getting to know her and being really nice to her and everything so that 00:20:00she wouldn't have that experience. I had kind of, of course, forgotten about that, but she on Facebook, we reconnected on Facebook, and she actually said to me one time "I'll never forget how nice to me you were when I first moved there." She said, "I'll never forget you saying, 'I don't want to have happen to you what happened to me.'" And I was kind of proud of young Lisa.

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: I was like "Yeah, you go Lis!" [laughs] that's pretty cool. That was kind of one of those moments where it comes back, way back later, and you're like "That's kind of cool" and that that made such an impact on her for so long. Consequently, one of the gals that wound up being super nice to me near the beginning, she and I just reconnected on Facebook. She was up here visiting not too long ago, so I made a point of thanking her for that as well. I think she kind of felt the same way, I could see it in her face, she was like "Oh my gosh, wow, you remember that."

TEM: That's the kind of beauty of Facebook, I think. Being able to connect people who were not adults together, back together.

LM: Right, yeah exactly. And the other thing that's really interesting is reconnecting with the kids that you just didn't connect with at all when you were that age, but now it's like "Oh yeah, you're kind of fun, you're kind of cool, and you're funny" you know. Life does amazing things to people. [laughs]

TEM: Yeah, well I guess the characteristics maybe that we think are important when we're 17 year's old-

LM: Change a little bit.

TEM: Change a little bit. [laughs]

LM: [laughs] Just a little bit.

TEM: So, what were people interested in doing there? What were the activities?

LM: Skiing was really big, 'cause we were up in the mountains that was huge. Sun tanning, which worked really well for me. In fact, it was really funny, you would hear a lot of the girls talking about how they would lay under the sunlamp with ski goggles on to make it look like they had been skiing all weekend, when they were just hanging out at home. Obviously, I didn't fit in in that way 00:22:00either. [laughs] You know, there were a lot of sports, again choir was kind of my savior. There wasn't really a lot to do in Evergreen. There was no movie house, there wasn't anything that you wanted to do. You almost had to go together as a group of friends and like, go into Denver to do, which wasn't horrible because it was only like about, to get to the nearest Suburb was about 30 minutes, so it wasn't too bad to do. It wasn't like you could pop down to the... We went and hung out at the Pizza Hut, that's where we would hang out. We drank sodas, ate pizza.

TEM: Were people drinking? I mean, now we think about Corvallis-not Corvallis, where did that come from?

LM: [laughs]

TEM: We think about Colorado as having such a strong beer culture, did you 00:23:00observe that, or feel that?

LM: I'm pretty sure that there were kids that had parties and drank a lot and stuff, I was not ever a part of that group. My parents always had a very open policy about alcohol, they were very, you know they just said, in fact it was kind of cool, as I got older this may have seemed cooler. It's amazing how cool your parents get as you get older. They said, "If you go out and you get drunk, we want you to call us, let us know, we will come pick you up. We will not be mad at you, at least not that night."

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: My mom always said, "If you throw up, I'll hold your head" which I thought was cool. They also said "We'd prefer you to drink at home. So, there's the liquor cabinet. If you want something to drink, there it is, go for it, don't worry about it. If you're here with friends, if you want to do that, just make 00:24:00their parents think it's okay." Because of that, it was never really a stigma for me, and it was kind of like "Okay, there it is." It wasn't that big of a deal. I think I remember back then in Colorado you could drink at 18, 3.2% beer. So, I remember when my friend Jill was the first to turn 18, I was kind of like "Oh hey, cool! You can buy us beer!" and her mom was like "Umm, no, she can't because that would be illegal to buy it for minors." and we were like "wer wer wer." We didn't really push it too much, it wasn't that big a deal to us at that point, I guess.

TEM: Yeah, and at that point, I mean that's I guess, before the small explosion that happens in the '80s.

LM: Oh yeah, that was before, because I graduated in '81. So, that was really kind of before any of that was really happening. But I was still in Colorado 00:25:00when Coop opened, and that sort of thing. But before that, you know, we were drinking just Coors Basic Light cause we were in Colorado, Coors Light.

TEM: Big time for wine coolers.

LM: Oh my god yes!

TEM: [laughs]

LM: Oh my god, yes. I was way into the, Matilda Bay, I think it was. Bartles and Jaymes, oh my god.

TEM: I'm not suggesting that you buy them for the bottle shop, but you might want to think about it. [laughs]

LM: [laughs] You never know.

TEM: Get the retro crowd.

LM: I heard that Zoom is coming back. I never drank that one.

TEM: Yeah

LM: I think that was the second round of the wine coolers. But, yeah.

TEM: I love to bring up wine coolers and see people who do remember them.

LM: Yeah, you'd either get this reaction or get people going-

BOTH: "What?" [laugh]

TEM: "What was that?"

LM: "What?" [laughs]

TEM: [laughs] Not always what, people are like "Yes! Bring that back!" [laughs]

LM: Yeah right? "Yay wine coolers! Those were awesome!" Yeah, I'm sure that probably contributed to at least one diabetic coma. Good lord, nasty.

TEM: So, when you were thinking about graduating and what your next steps would be, did it feel like college was a natural next step for you?

LM: [laughs] There was never a question that I was going to college. I had a great aunt on my dad's side who passed away and gave me, I got a little bit of money, you know. Dad invested it; you know. As long as I can remember, he would sit me down once a year, whenever it was, and he would take out the little savings passbook, and he'd show me how much it had gained in interest that year, and how much money I had made that year based on just that little bit of money. Every single year after we talked about it and he'd show me how much money I was 00:27:00making, he'd say "Now, when you turn 18" because that was the stipulation of the money. He was like "When you turn 18, you can us that for anything, you can buy a car, you can go on a trip, OR YOU CAN GO TO COLLEGE!" [laughs] So, the message was loud and clear: I was going to college. I mean, it helped, but it wasn't enough money to get me all the way through college. But it was something, it probably paid for like the first year or two, which is better than nothing, you know?

TEM: Yeah, more than zero. What were you academically interested in studying? You majored in technical journalism, was that what you went in knowing you wanted to major in?

LM: Not really, I was one of those kids that you know, we went into the introduction to the school and everything, and I was with my mom, and they kept 00:28:00on saying "It really would be a good idea for you to declare a major right now." I just looked at mom like "I don't know what I want to do." And of course, then you are just like "Oh my god, whatever I choose right now is going to be my path for the rest of my like" you know.

TEM: Yeah

LM: It's like "no pressure or anything" and my mom just said "You know, why don't you do journalism? You're a good writer. You've been liking doing that sort of stuff for a while." She's like "Why don't you try that?" She's like "You can always change, why don't you give it a try?" I got into it, and really found that I really enjoyed it, so I stuck with it.

TEM: Did you hear the silent call of being an English major?

LM: I really didn't, and I think my parents tried to talk me out of that just because they were like "It's so general, what would you do with it?" But, in some ways I feel like it might have been a nice thing to have you know. The 00:29:00thing that was great about journalism though was they wanted you to have a very broad knowledge base because who knows what you would be interviewing somebody about, so you had to take a ton on electives, which was fun.

TEM: Yeah

LM: I loved that; it was great. For somebody who is very curious and loves learning little bits of everything, I'm one of those definitely. Just, broad based knowledge kind of people.

TEM: Yeah

LM: It was fantastic, I remember one time I was taking three electives, and they were back to back. It was art history, astronomy, and fashion design. I mean [laughs] how crazy is that, you know. It was so much fun though, learning just a little bit of everything was so cool. I liked that part.

TEM: So, how far is Fort Collins from Evergreen?

LM: It was an hour and a half from my door to my parent's door, driving. So, it's about 90 miles.

TEM: Was it weird to leave your parents? Did you feel like you were far enough 00:30:00away that you had some independence but close enough-?

LM: Yeah, that was one of the things. I had also gotten accepted at University of Colorado. My mom was like, you know I was there looking at everything, and my mom was like "Well you know, if you go to University of Colorado it's not long distance to Col. Boulder." and I thought "Maybe I should go to Colorado State University." [laughs] you know at that age, it's like "Maybe a little bit further away would be better." And I was, I'm still probably closer than ever to my parents, even then I was pretty close to my parents, that I kind of, I think instinctively knew it might be better for me to be a little farther away. Just so I got into college life a little bit better. As it was, I still went home for weekends almost every single weekend for like, six months or something.

TEM: Yeah

LM: Until this one day I was like "I'm going to stay up here mom and dad." [laughs] The best part about that was I tried calling them Sunday morning. I 00:31:00went to a party you know, and did all the college stuff and everything, and then I called Mom and Dad Sunday morning, and they weren't home, and I was like "Well, where are they?" I left a message on the answering machine, I'm like "Where are you?" you know. [laughs] "You're not just sitting at the phone waiting for me to call?"

TEM: "I'm calling!" [laughs]

LM: Yeah, I know! "I'm calling you, hello!" I think I called like two or three times, "You're still not home!" you know? They finally called back and they were just laughing and having the best time. They were like "Oh, we had such a great day, we went out to breakfast." "Breakfast! We never go out to breakfast!" [laughs] It was so funny.

TEM: It's a classically 18-year-old-

LM: Right, and so the empty nester began you know. They were just like "This is great!" [laughs] They were just like "We stopped off to get groceries-"

TEM: [laughs]

LM: "-we did this, and we did that" and I was just like "We never do those things." [laughs] It was hilarious.

TEM: Transition times.

LM: Yes, indeed indeed, but it was good for everybody. [laughs]

TEM: So, what were some of the differences that you noticed about the people you went to school with? It's not that far, distance wise, but certainly going to a college town.

LM: Yeah, I mean, well you know there were a lot of kids that I went to school with in high school that went to CSU so we were always running into each other, and yeah. I mean, I feel like it was a lot of the same people. Obviously, you get more of an influence from other people because there are people coming from out of state and stuff like that, so you get a nice, you know, a nice little gumbo going of a bunch of different things which is fun. But yeah, it was a lot of similar people, I think. I'm sure.

TEM: What was dorm life like? There was a story that I read about someone who was one of your, not dorm mates necessarily next door, he had a mom who sent him 00:33:00a keg from Manhattan.

LM: [laughs] Ralph! Ralph, yeah Ralph! So, Ralph. I can credit Ralph to my first, kind of "Oh my god" experience with beer. This guy came from Manhattan, and he was just one of those larger than life people. Seriously, everything was big and loud with Ralph. His mom would send the most amazing care packages with like Danish cookies and huge wheels of like Gouda cheeses. I mean, you're like "Oh my god!" It was the first time I had ever seen an espresso maker. He had one of those little silver espresso things, and he'd take it down to the cafeteria every morning and have his espresso.

TEM: That's nice.

LM: Yeah, it was great. I wonder what he's doing now, I wonder if he's still in Colorado or what. As you can well imagine, the care packages became legendary.

TEM: Yeah

LM: And they were huge too, obviously. Whenever you'd see that there was a care package, you couldn't miss it, for Ralph, everybody would just kind of be like, hanging around, waiting for Ralph to get back from class, you know. "Ralphs got a care package" you know. So, he and I were pretty close friends, so I always got into the room, and the other people had to kind of hang outside to get whatever we would hand them. Both: [laugh]

LM: "Here, have a cookie!" [laughs] So yeah, this one day she sent a little tiny keg Dinkelacker beer from Germany, and we were just like "Wow" and of course he's like "Dinkelacker, yeah!" and he like taps it. We start pouring it around and everything, and I just remember taking one sip and going, my first thought was "Wow, this is beer?" and I mean, it was so aromatic, and it was so rich and flavored, and it tasted so good. I just remember thinking "This is incredible. This is beer?" and he told me "Yeah, it's from Germany and mom gets it at 00:35:00such-and-such place in Manhattan" or whatever. I drank way too much of it.

TEM: [Laughs]

LM: I mean it was so good, and I think that was my first lesson in different alcohol volumes [laughs] because I was used to drinking Coors Light, so it was like "Yeah, I'll have another glass!" And oh my gosh, I remember just kind of like, standing up and going "I gotta go back to my room." The room was, the whole hall was spinning, and everything. I just kind of like laid on the bed, was trying to like keep it from spinning, and yeah. It was both a good and bad experience, but it was definitely a learning experience all the way around, and it was just so awesome that I couldn't believe it. So, then I got kinda interested in beer because of that, you know. And he had that amazing cheese to go with it, so the whole beer and cheese thing started too, a little bit even back then, so I started trying to find beer that tasted more like that. I kind 00:36:00of got into Michelob Dark for a while. Of course, this was all 3.2 beer still, so I could actually buy it legally. Then I'd have little beer and cheese parties in my room where I would cut up little pieces of really expensive cheese that I could barely afford, and we'd have our little Michelob bottles, Michelob Dark, and we would sit there and try it with the cheeses and talk about it, so [laughs] way back then.

TEM: I think of those fun, sort of microcosms that form in dorms too. I don't know if there are other times in your life when you-

LM: Right

TEM: -are in that kind of... you're experimenting.

LM: I think, yeah. You have to be surrounded by people so much to do that, I don't think it ever happens like that again, especially different minded people, so you get those experiences that you might not ever get, which is cool.

TEM: I just can't imagine sending, like putting together a care package where a keg stays fine, you know. [laughs] It should be-

LM: How much did that cost? My god, between the giant wheel of Gouda cheese and 00:37:00this Dinkelacker beer, and god only knows. I think there was like this big thing of Danish cookies and I don't know what else was in that thing and I'm like "My lord!" Not to mention just the cost of buying all that stuff, but that must have cost a couple hundred bucks to send. Thank you, Ralphs mom. [laughs]

TEM: Ralphs mom. [laughs] There are lots of people, I'm sure, who are thanking Ralphs mom for you-

LM: Oh yeah. [laughs]

TEM: -getting into beer too.

LM: Maybe, maybe. I wonder if any of those other people had that 'Oh my god' moment with that Dinkelacker like I did. I don't think so, I think everybody else was like "This is good" but I was just like sitting there going "Oh my god."

TEM: So, at that point did you know about homebrewing, was that the thing?

LM: No, not even then. I'm sure people were doing it, but it wasn't in my world. And honestly, except for me, like kind of trying to every once in a while, if I had a little extra money, trying to get like a bottle of Chimay or something like that, I still drank a lot of Coors Light back then. I remember, often times 00:38:00I'd get Budweiser because I thought it tasted better, but only if it was really really cold. So, if we'd go out dancing, which we did a lot, I'd like get a Budweiser and I'd drink it until it got warm and then I'd just put it on the table and go get another one because I was like "Eww." [laughs] But they were so cheap back then it didn't matter, so yeah. There was a bar that had penny beer night, how did they get away with that? So, you would go in and it was like four-dollar cover, which back then was like "Oh my god, four dollars!" but once you got in you got, you know like 8- or 12-ounce glasses of beer for a penny.

TEM: That's crazy. Did they have food so they would make money on-?

LM: I don't remember, [laughs] I never ate any food there! I don't think so, I mean sure they must have. I don't know.

TEM: Seems like a college town kind of thing.

LM: Oh yeah, it totally was, and it was all college students that were there, and of course it was packed.

TEM: Yeah

LM: Penny beer night.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: What could go wrong? But, yeah...

TEM: [laughs]

LM: Old Chicago was in Fort Collins. I don't know if it was the original, it might have been the one in Boulder was the original, I don't remember which one came first. But Old Chicago had their wall of foam, where they had a bunch of imported beer at that point, just a ton of them. It's like a little bit older. We would go there, and we would try different imported beers, so that was kind of my next step, you know. There was a little store, little grocery store Toddy's that was clear across town, but it had a good beer selection, so we'd go in there. But still it was like... it couldn't have Toddy's. It was the liquor store next door to Toddy's had a good beer selection. We'd go in there and try 00:40:00to, you know, like get something kind of foreign or something and try those every once in a while, when we had a little extra money.

TEM: Yeah, I mean that was, I guess at that point, imported beers are started to be carried more, like '83, '84, '85.

LM: It was in the 80s, yeah '83, '84, '85. At that point I was also beginning to work outside the school so I was, kind of, making some money so I could kind of afford some of those things. So, I'd kinda get a little bit, go and try to get those every once in a while. Then I wound up moving into that area, so that was really close, so it was even easier to find some of those beers.

TEM: So, what were you doing for money? And I guess as you were getting towards the end of college, and knowing that college would end-

LM: [laughs]

TEM: -and that you would need to-

LM: Eventually like, step out in the real world?

TEM: Step out in the real world. What were your options, what were your considerations?

LM: Well, I was really lucky because I took an internship with one of the local 00:41:00radio stations, and at that point I had decided I wanted to get into broadcast journalism. The journalism degree offered four different options, from like PR, technical journalism, newspaper and broadcasting, and I knew I wanted to get into broadcasting. So, I got this free, unpaid internship with one of the radio stations in town, and they asked me to stay on and become their cub reporter. So, I was the one who had to go to city hall everyday afterschool and go pick up all of the press releases cause they weren't emailed back then, there was no such thing as email! Then, go in and I would do the afternoon news, and I did weekend stuff. And then I got hired on by their sister station to be a DJ overnights on the weekends, so I'd go in on Friday, do the news, go back home, 00:42:00have a little dinner or whatever, then go back and work the overnight Friday and Saturday night, and then go back Sunday morning after I was done and read the newscast on the AM side where the news was again, and then I'd have to get my schedule back together to go to school for the rest of the week. [laughs]

TEM: Yeah, I guess as we can only do when we are-

LM: I was gonna say!

TEM: [laughs]

LM: Just thinking about that makes me exhausted right now. [laughs]

TEM: I know. [laughs]

LM: As I was saying that I was like "How the hell did I do that?" [laughs] Oh right, I was 19 or 20, sure, of course. I also had an internship at one of the TV stations in Denver in the summertime, so that really helped a lot. But when I got out of school, I basically had a full-time job that I had already been doing in broadcasting, so I just went from there.

TEM: What was it that was attractive to you about broadcasting as opposed to technical journalism or PR or newspapers?

LM: It's funny because I always loved the written word so much, I just fell in love with telling a story through pictures and sound, and even though I was working at a radio station, radio really wasn't what I wanted to do. I really wanted to work in television, I loved being able to tell a story with great visuals and editing it all together and everything was fascinating to me. That was the other thing I did, I also was teaching classes. I was like the professor's assistant, you know, the lab tech. And so, when I finished a class, I would then teach the lab portion of that class and be in the lab teaching the people behind me. Editing and stuff like that, videography and all those things.

TEM: Which had to be very different. I feel like that's one of those areas of major technical advancement. I imagine it was more hands on.

LM: Oh yeah! You know, we were lucky in that, I mean I'm sure it's really different now, but we were lucky in that we barely escaped having to do everything on film, if you can well imagine. We did actually have video tape, so we worked on video tape, and learned and got to do all that. We had some pretty good editing equipment and things like that. I'm sure it's all digital now, you can do whatever you want to with it. But back then it was at least still a little linear in that you would have to go back and forth to find stuff as opposed to "I want that clip; I want this clip" you know. I'm sure it's totally different now. It was fun, I loved it, it was great. It was really cool, just being involved in all of that for a while, I really enjoyed those classes. TEM: I imagine too that, or maybe I imagine and it's not true, that you were engaged with the city and community and politics in a way that was very different maybe 00:45:00from some of your other students.

LM: Yeah, because I was actually covering city council, that was my beat. So, I actually got very involved in what was going on with the city. That was really interesting, exciting. Fort Collins was very progressive at the time, so there was a lot going on that was almost kind of also gaining some national attention with some of the things they were doing, so that was really fun to be a part of.

TEM: What were they doing?

LM: [laughs] It sounds so silly now, but they were doing a lot of talking about doing retail on the bottom and living quarters on the top. Which, I mean here in Portland is basically what we do everywhere now, but back then it was kind of like "Wow, what?" you know. They had a pretty good transportation system for what they were doing. They worked a lot with making sure that they have a lot of green spaces and trying to preserve those green spaces. Bike routes, of course I 00:46:00think college towns tend to focus on that more than a lot of other cities anyway. But anyway, they had incredible on street, but especially really incredible off-street bike routes, that you could just like zip from place to place and not really have to worry about having contact with cars, which was so nice.

TEM: Yeah, so you were there for eight years? Nine years?

LM: Yeah, about eight years.

TEM: Did you feel like things, well you obviously changed and went through-

LM: Oh yeah [laughs]

TEM: -the young adulthood to the more established adulthood. But what were some of the things that you noticed, maybe in particular, obviously food and drink [laughs] but culturally or socially. What were some of the things that you noticed evolving or changing?

LM: Well, even though I feel like Fort Collins, because it was a college town, 00:47:00always had some good art, music and things like that coming into town, it seemed like that was definitely growing. And then, there was a little bit of, all of a sudden, there was a little bit of craft beer coming in. Microbrews as we called them back then. Well and then Fort Collins got an Anheuser-Bush Brewery, which was pretty remarkable. So, I got to cover the grand opening of that, which was really fun. There's an outtake somewhere of me standing with one of the Clydesdales and trying to do standup and it like, just like-

TEM: [laughs]

LM: -attacking my face. It was like wanting to kiss me and hug me, it was really cute actually. But then, gosh what was the name of that? So Wynkoop was the one in Denver, and this was... ah shoot, I'm drawing a blank. Coop-it's still around, CooperSmith? I think maybe it's CooperSmith, it'll come to me. But that 00:48:00was the first microbrewery to hit Fort Collins, I got to cover that as a reporter as well, because at that point I was working for the Fort Collins Evening News, which was a nightly news cast, television news cast. So, I got to finally get into TV and do what I wanted to do. But yeah, that was kind of cool, to be able to be a part of that, but the beer I thought was terrible, but it was exciting none the less. I'm sure it probably wasn't that terrible, it's just that our pallets weren't used to that. Ready for that yet, you know. But yeah, it was kind of fun.

TEM: So, what did you imagine, or did you imagine your career staying in broadcast journalism? Did you feel pretty satisfied?

LM: I did, I did, yeah. I loved what I was doing in Fort Collins with the TV station, the Fort Collins Evening News. It was a small group, it was just three of us doing reporter/anchoring duties, and then we had a couple people helping 00:49:00out with videotaping, but we'd almost always edit our own stuff. I really liked that, I like having all of the hands-on stuff, and then at the end of the day going "Okay, time to go and talk about what I did today!" It was fun, but I also realized that as you progress in that field, you don't get as much of that's hands-on stuff.

TEM: Yeah

LM: That actually kind of was a little off putting to me because I really did enjoy, I think editing was honestly my favorite thing to do, but I also really enjoyed being a news anchor, that was really fun too, and being a reporter. So, I felt like, you know as I was looking at things I was like "Well this is kind of weird because I'm gonna be having to give up some of the stuff that I really like to do to actually make a living because we were payed so little." We actually, all of us could qualify for government cheese when we were. [laughs]

TEM: No big wheels of Gouda? [laughs]

LM: Yeah, no big wheels of Gouda, we're talking those little bricks of that 00:50:00stuff, that actually melts really well for grilled cheese, but yeah. So, there was that, but the actual job was pretty fun and pretty cool, and I really enjoyed being able to do that part of it. As I kind of went into other parts, different jobs, I felt like I found myself kind of getting a little more, kind of Pavlovian about being called, you know when you get called on a day off. You're out with friends, your boyfriend or whatever, and you're have a couple beers, having some fun, or just hanging out with friends or whatever and you get, at that point, a page. They're not calling you in to cover a parade, they're calling you in to cover something that's horrible. A fire, or a murder, or whatever, something worse. I didn't like that part of doing news, if I could do good news all day, and talk about puppies [laughs] that'd be awesome.

TEM: Yeah

LM: But I was finding it harder and harder to kind of compartmentalize all of that and not take it home with me, and not feel that pain and sorrow that all those other people were feeling. And I started thinking, you know, they didn't teach you that part in college, you know [laughs] they don't teach you that you're gonna be dealing with people who are angry and in pain or whatever. You're going to have people running up to you because they don't like the media and threatening you, and all of that other stuff. I kind of started getting to a point where I didn't want to be in with that anymore. Did some other jobs where I was more removed from that a little bit more, so that was a little bit easier, but even then, finally it just kind of, it just started not being what I wanted to do. So, I tried to find something else to do.

TEM: Yeah, and I guess I imagined too that it's not a huge city, you know, it's 00:52:00not like you're living in San Francisco, you know where you-

LM: Right, well that was the other thing too. I knew I'd have to leave Fort Collins to do that. And at that point I still wanted to be, when we did move here, I did still want to be in TV news, so it was here that I had the other experiences where I finally was like "No, this really isn't what I want to do." We moved, my hus- well he wasn't my husband then, but my now husband and I moved from Fort Collins in '89.

TEM: Why did you move?

LM: He felt the same way. He worked in the city, we met because I was the city beat reporter, and he was assistant to the city manager, working in the budget office. We met at a budget hearing, isn't that just nice and civic?

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: Yeah, so we both, he felt like he wasn't going to be able to get anywhere else in Fort Collins. At the time we didn't really want to move to Denver. Denver didn't feel appealing to me. At the time, when I was about 16 or 17, 00:53:00probably more like 17, my family and I came out here to the Pacific Northwest on just vacation, a working vacation for my dad, and it was just one of those, it was weird. It just like, I just felt like this big chunk in my soul, and I went "I... this is where I want to live. It just feels right to me." It felt good to me physically, it felt good to me mentally, and everything. So, I had been trying to figure out a way to get here in the Pacific Northwest at some point since that time. Didn't have the money to go out of state for college. Every chance I had while I was in college, like spring break and stuff, everybody else was heading south, and I'd go with a friend and I'd be like "Let's go to Seattle!" and you know she's be like "Alright, whatever we're going to Seattle." [laughs]

TEM: Cause spring break, as we are approaching, as the rain in falling [laughs]

LM: [laughs] Because! Because we love spring break in Seattle. It's rainy, it's beautiful. Yeah, so when I pitched the first trip that you take with a serious potential partner, the one where you take the book just in case it doesn't work out.

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: I suggested we come out here, and his brother lived out here, in Portland at the time, and unfortunately had just been involved in a really, very serious car accident, that him a quadriplegic. So, he was like "Well that's actually probably a good idea, I should probably go out and see my brother anyway." So, we kind of tied that all together, and by the time we got done with the trip, we made a deal with each other that whoever got a job first, the other one would follow. So, he got a job almost immediately.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: I hadn't even updated my resume yet. [laughs]

TEM: So, what was it like to move here? I think as Oregonians we do feel a certain sisterhood: Colorado is similar in a lot of ways.

LM: I think so too, yeah. There's a lot of, I think people move back and forth a lot, it's kind of a migratory path. [laughs]

TEM: yeah, yeah.

LM: Yeah, you know it's weird when I first moved here, it was so funny. I'd be talking with people, and they'd say, "Where did you move from?" and I'd say "Colorado" and they'd say "Why did you come here?" and I never get that anymore because Portland now is so big and trendy and everything. Yeah, I feel like it was very, in a lot of ways, very much the same, and I've always been kind of a rainy-day person, so I'm okay with that part. It kind of goes back to the whole like, way better, way easier to read when it's raining. Yeah so, I thought it 00:56:00was a great transition and we were super excited to do it, we have never looked back. Still love Colorado, love Fort Collins, it's such a great town. My parents still live in Colorado, get to spend a lot of time there still, it's nice to kind of have that connection.

TEM: Yeah, so what was it like, again kind of heading back to food and drink. You're here when Bridgeport is in business-

LM: Uh huh, yeah.

TEM: -Widmer's in business, Portland Brewing's in business, the McMenamins are in business.

LM: Yeah, that was about it. It was funny because Mark, my husband, moved out here about a month before I did, because he had to get started on the job and everything, and I was gonna follow up with my stuff and he was going to fly back and drive out together with my car and, you know, all that sort of stuff. So, he was calling me, of course every night when he was out here, and he was living at 00:57:00his brother's house at the time, and he found a McMenamins just down the street from them. And you know, he and I bonded over beer quite a bit. Mark and I, we courted over beer, we went to-

TEM: [laughs]

LM: We did! We went to Old Chicago a lot, and did a lot of the imported beer exploring, and that sort of thing. Went to, it is CooperSmith's, went to CooperSmith's a couple of times when they opened before we left. You know, just spent a lot of time hanging out with friends and drinking beer. That what we did, what we do. So, he, I remember, I'll never forget, he called me up and he was like "I found a brew pub, it's just down the street from John's house." And I was like "Oh yeah?" and he's like "It's called McMenamins. Oh, you're gonna love this one beer, it's so great, it's called Ruby." [laughs] "And it's hazy" [laughs] So take that Vermont!

BOTH: [laugh]

TEM: "It's hazy"

LM: [laughs] "What!?" But yeah, one of the first things we did when we got here was, he was like "You gotta go, we gotta go to the McMenamins, you gotta check out this beer." It was exciting, you know. There was a lot more going on here than there was in Colorado at the time, especially Fort Collins. Maybe not so much Denver, but definitely Fort Collins. And you know, to have Widmer here, and have the Hefeweizen was huge back then, it was hazy too. You know, to have Bridgeport and Portland Brewing and actual places where you could go and try their beers. We just got really, kind of, wrapped up in it real fast. And we're always checking the beer isles to see if anything new came out. "Ooo a seasonal!" and stuff like that.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: The one seasonal that would come out. [laughs] But yeah, we got really connected with it really fast.

TEM: I imagine now that it felt like a big buzz, you know? That everybody knew 00:59:00something special was happening. Did it feel like that?

LM: Yeah, it did kind of. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that anybody else really knew about it at the time, so it was kind of our little secret. And we'd tell people, and they'd just kind of be like "Okay, whatever." and we'd be like "No, it's really cool. Try this!" We'd go back to Colorado, and of course we'd bring people beers, and be like "You gotta try this!" you know, and they'd be like "Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? This is great!" And then Colorado was kind of beginning to catch up to, so we'd also come back from Colorado with great beers from there, so we were definitely on that migratory path again, is definitely the beer underground or something was going on pretty big at that point.

TEM: The beer underground. [laughs]

LM: [laughs] Take that distributors, we don't need you!

TEM: We have a suitcase! [laughs]

LM: Oh yeah, totally. But yeah, you know it was exciting and it was fun. And then we got into home brewing a little bit. I remember Mark came home one day 01:00:00from work and he came home with The Complete Joy of Homebrewing from Charlie Papazian. I think he'd been talking with some friends at work, some guys at work, and apparently those guys were saying that their wives hated homebrewing because it smelled up the house so much. So, he comes home and he's all kind of like "So, I was thinking about maybe home brewing and I got this book..." and I was like "Cool, let's do it!" and he was so excited. So, we really got into home brewing for a while, entered in competitions, and then I got really into judging. Mark never did, but I really, I found that fascination, so I got to learn how to judge, basically at the elbow of Alan Sprints', at the time, Alan Sprints' partner at Hair of the Dog Doug Henderson. He sat down one time with me at one of the competitions, and was like "You got to start somewhere, let's go." And I'm like "I'm judging a competition?"

TEM: [laughs]

LM: "Wait!" [laughs] "I don't know what I'm doing!" he's like "No, you'll be 01:01:00fine. Just, following this sheet of paper, I'm right here. We'll do this." And it was like "This is fun." I really had a great time with it, so I kind of took that little piece on my own. Mark wasn't ever really interested in doing that. We were brewing with friends a lot, and trying new beers all the time, and getting excited when seasonals would come out. I remember, Deschutes started coming over here. I remember when Mirror Pond was a seasonal, and oh my gosh, we would get so excited. It was you know springtime, and we'd start calling places.

TEM: [laughs] That's what I was going to ask you. How did you know like, when it had landed? [laughs]

LM: Well, and it's funny because now we get people here at Belmont Station all the time calling about beers. Everybody's like "Ah, people are calling so much" and I'm like "That used to be me!"

TEM: [laughs]

LM: I can't get mad at them! [laughs]

TEM: They love it.

LM: It's like "We're excited!" Yeah, but I remember like calling like "Do you have Mirror Pond Yet? Do you have Mirror Pond yet?" and just being so excited 01:02:00and trying to replicate the recipe at home and all this crazy stuff. That was always so much fun, being a part of that at that point.

TEM: So, were you a part of the Oregon Brew Crew then?

LM: Yeah, and I really credit the Oregon Brew Crew for giving me a lot of knowledge. We joined the Oregon Brew Crew when we started home brewing. They were so helpful when I started actually writing the beer column, 'The online beer column' as we called it because we didn't have the word blog back then. At KOIN TV when I was doing, at that point, well that's a whole other story. They were so helpful in always giving me topics to talk about and information and I asked questions all the time and was just learning all the time from them. What a wealth of information they are, and just really helpful, sweet people.

TEM: So, who was part of the community? We know that there certainly were people 01:03:00who have gone on to become very well-known brewers, commercial brewers. But obviously not all of them did, so who was part of the crew? Was there a general type? Was there a generality or did it feel-?

LM: It was mostly guys.

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: It was a lot of dudes. [laughs] Yeah, it was mostly guys, and you know the occasional wife. I think that's one of the reasons why they were so nice to me, because I wasn't just the wife standing there going "Is this over yet?" I was in there going "Tell me about box [?]! How do you do this?" That sort of thing, so they were like "Wow, check out this chick, she's really interested." So, that was kind of cool. Especially once I started writing because I needed to have a, you know it was painfully obviously that I needed to have a better knowledge base than I did. [laughs]

TEM: I read something about, this is fast forwarding to your book, but how you 01:04:00felt challenged by adjectives, you know. Like how many- [laughs]

LM: Oh my god yes!

TEM: Like that, the vocabulary.

LM: Yeah, sometimes you know, especially when you're writing about stouts or something, it's like how many times can you say 'rich' 'dark' 'chocolaty' 'coffee.' [laughs] It's just like "Ahhhhh! Give me some more words god, please." [laughs]

TEM: Yeah, so I imagine that even in those early, writing beer columns you needed to-

LM: Yeah, and one of my, it was weird, one of my- So I don't know if you know Noel Blake, he's a long time Oregon Brew Crewer, he's one of the people that, he'd be an interesting person to talk to actually, he is one of the people who started the whole collaborator project with Widmer where the Oregon Brew Crewers submit their beers, they get judged, and at least one or two get to go and be brewed professionally at Widmer, which is super cool. He's been a long-time home 01:05:00brewer and everything. He's also just really really good at writing very descriptive beer descriptions. Obviously, I'm not.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: I was always, because he was so good, I always was very afraid to write beer descriptions. So I would write about everything else in the beer world, like how to make beer, what's going on in the business, everything else, but I was always afraid to do beer reviews because I just felt like I couldn't do it, it would just be too hard. Then I got the job writing in All About Beer, their beer talk, which is basically, have to do for beer descriptions. I remember the first few times, I would sit there for like... hours, just sitting there sipping the beer and going "What is it? What is the taste that I'm getting? I need to come up with something for this?" [laughs] It was only a hundred words, it's like "Come on, how hard could this be?"

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: But you know it gets easier, it's a muscle. You just have to exercise it. 01:06:00People today will be like "I'm really reluctant to write beer descriptions because I don't know if I can use... I don't know what I'm tasting." And I'm like "Just sit down with a beer, and just start writing the little things that you taste." It gets easier. It just gets easier.

TEM: Did you think about doing formal sensory training?

LM: There really wasn't such a thing back then. I would love to do some formal sensory training. I was just judging with a gal at the Oregon Beer Awards back in January, and she got her degree at Oregon State University in the Fermentation Sciences Department and she was talking about how once a week, in the morning they would have, because we were talking about how I always feel like, and she agreed that our pallets are so much fresher in the mornings, and she was like "Yeah, we always had our 8:30 in the morning, we'd have our sensory panel courses" and I just thought "Oh god, I'm so envious of you for having that 01:07:00opportunity." And how wonderful to have that opportunity for people right now.

TEM: Yeah.

LM: Maybe I should go take that class.

TEM: I just kill my pallet in the morning with coffee.

BOTH: [laugh]

TEM: What a funny thing that we drink coffee. [laughs]

LM: It's like "everything tastes coffee." So just taste Dots [?] and you'll be fine. [laughs]

TEM: Rich, chocolaty.

LM: Yeah, exactly.

TEM: So what was that transition like? You are working at KOIN TV, and you're doing something with there website? [laughs]

LM: Yeah [laughs] as I was transitioning out of being a reporter and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life for like the first time I guess, or the third time or something. I took an HTML class at Portland Community College because I was fascinated with 'how do you do this language that makes this look like this on a computer?' I was just like "That is the coolest thing, how does that happen?" So, I decided to take this class, and it was one of those classes 01:08:00where I was just immersed in it. Mark would come home from work and he'd be like "You're still there?" and I'm like "Did you come home for lunch?" he's like "No, it's the end on the day Lisa." "What?" I'd just been sitting there all day like 'woooo.' So, obviously I found that interesting. As that was going on there was an ad in the paper for somebody to start a news-based website at KOIN TV with this company called Internet Broadcasting. That was 1997, which is back when basically websites for TV stations were more like "Here's our anchors, here's our helicopter." There was no news on the sites. I looked at that ad and I just thought "Oh my god this is like the perfect marriage for me of what I used to do and what is interesting me now." So, I applied for the job, got it thankfully. I 01:09:00don't know what I would have done if I hadn't.

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: One of the things that happened when we were going through the interview process for the job was they, they had already offered me the job, but it was an internet startup and the pay was pretty low. I was lobbying for a little more money and they were like "We just don't have it, sorry." [laughs] And I had just started a beer column with City Search, they had asked me to write an online beer column. These people, Internet Broadcasting, told me I wouldn't be able to write for City Search anymore, and I said "Alright, well I'll take your salary if you let me write a beer column" and they were like "Okay..."

TEM: [laughs]

LM: "Idiot!" [laughs] "You're actually offering to do more work for the same amount of money we just offered you!"

TEM: "That sounds great."

LM: [laughs] "She's cute by she's not making any sense." So, once we got started about a year later or so, they were like "You know, you wanted to do that online 01:10:00beer column. I think now is a good time for you to start that." So, I did, and that's what kind of got everything going. And that's when the Oregon Brew Crew was so helpful too because I was always asking questions and you know, having them comment on things and stuff.

TEM: Yeah, and so at that point, I mean, there certainly are well known beer writers. But you were one of the first women who was writing, certainly in the Northwest.

LM: Yeah, I think maybe Lucy Saunders might have been the only other one out in Wisconsin, and she was definitely doing food and beer stuff, coming from her chef background and everything. And I was kind of doing more, just like general imports, microbrews, you know. Let's talk about the good stuff. And really, in having that platform that people could share a link, it really kind of exploded. I think Lucy was doing more books and magazine articles and things like that, which aren't as easily shared. So, I might have been kind of like the first 01:11:00female beer blogger. [laughs] Maybe, I don't know.

TEM: Online beer columnist. [laughs]

LM: Online beer columnist. [laughs]

TEM: I mean, I think it is funny for us to think 'not that many years later.'

LM: "Not that many years ago." I know.

TEM: You know, it's not like it's a hundred and fifty years.

LM: Yeah, exactly. How quickly all that has happened, yeah.

TEM: Yeah, it must have felt like a very different way of sharing information.

LM: It was exciting. It was super exciting; I loved that platform. I loved being able to do that, it was a lot of fun. It got a lot of, I had people from all over the country writing me and commenting on stuff, and it was like "This is cool, beer's such a great common language and such a great way to bring people together." That was such an awesome way of being able to display that and show that. So yeah, that was pretty cool.

TEM: What about locally? What were your, how did you grow more connected? I mean 01:12:00obviously Fred Eckhardt was living here, writing. [laughs]

LM: Yeah, well he was kind of the one that inspired me to even start that, because I saw him, I think at the Spring Beer and Wine Festival, and of course he was surrounded by, there were beer geeks back then too, he was surrounded. He's sitting there with his little notepad and he's like taking sips and writing stuff down, and I was "Well, that's just..." I mean he was using a reporter notepad too, so I was like "Well, that's just like what I do except he's just writing about beer" and I was like "Wait, I... I could do that." So, that's kind of how that got started. And it was great having him here, and having so many awesome brewers around, and a lot to write about here in Portland. I think if I had lived somewhere else I probably wouldn't have been able to have, even though I wrote about stuff like imports and other things as well, I often wrote about 01:13:00Portland beer because that's where we were located and that's what we were interested in here. Back then I could write about every single seasonal that would come out, because there weren't that many breweries. You know, you could just be like "Okay, today we are going to write about this seasonal, or that seasonal."

TEM: So, how did you get hooked up with Celebrator or All About Beer? How did you make that leap from your online beer column to this more national, international distribution?

LM: [laughs] Yeah, I think a lot of it had to do with that exposure from that online brew column. I think that I got some exposure because of that, because I had actually approached Tom Dalldorf at Celebrator a couple years before and said "Hey, I'd really like to write for you" and he was like "Yeah yeah whatever, here have a magazine and go away." [laughs] But it was actually 01:14:00Northwest Brewing News that gave me my first chance, so I wrote for them for a while, and then Celebrator approached me and said "We want you to write something, we're just trying to figure out what we want you to write." Then the guy who was writing the Oregon Trail column decided he didn't want to do it anymore, so opening automatically right there, and then all the other ones just kind of started falling in place, you know. As you get more exposure people start paying more attention.

TEM: People know you can do it.

LM: Yeah, exactly.

TEM: So, you were obviously covering imports too, but did you feel the pressure to try to document and cover beer across America, beer across Oregon? It seems like you very easily could have just been... you could have been busy, even at that point, just covering beer in Portland.

LM: I kind of, I feel like I never really, like, set a course and said, "I'm 01:15:00going to do this." I probably should have, but I didn't. I really felt like I, especially as more and more brewers started popping up all over the country, I felt like I just kind of became someone who was really championing Oregon beer, mostly because I was so excited about it. It wasn't because I was trying to dis the other places, or that I thought that we were superior or anything, I was just really excited about it. It was like "There's some really good stuff going on here. Portland is an amazing beer town and you guys should come out and check it out! You know, I want to share it with everybody, it's fun. You should come and join us." I think that, I think in some way I know that I've pissed off a few people by doing that in the past, I didn't mean to. I think I feel like now 01:16:00I'm a little more all-encompassing, but back then I do feel like I kind of, maybe had a little myopic view in terms of what we were doing but I felt like it needed attention. Kind of being tucked in the corner here, of the country, I felt like we weren't getting the attention we deserved, so I was kind of banging that drum pretty hard. But then, I was also really just banging that drum for craft beer too. I really wanted people to just try craft beer and hopefully that would help.

TEM: Yeah, and that's, I mean, Portland has certainly gone through a lot of changes in the last ten to fifteen years.

LM: Oh my god, yeah.

TEM: So, that was at the time when Portland felt like a different place, in many ways.

LM: In many ways, yeah.

TEM: So, what was the community of people who were reading your column, people 01:17:00who were drinking, what was that community of people like?

LM: It was family, it was really family. And, you know, for the only child of only children, it was kind of the big, happy dysfunctional family I always wanted, you know. It really was though, like you knew everybody at the festivals. You go to the Oregon Brewers Festival and they were, you know, 200 of your favorite people right there, it was awesome. And, you know, you'd go to an event, at a brewery or something, and everybody you knew was there. It was so much fun to just be a part of this really tight-knit club. I mean, even across, as I started venturing out beyond, you know, the quote 'walls' of Portland and Oregon into the rest of the craft beer world, even back then everywhere it was a 01:18:00small enough community that you pretty much knew everybody. Like, I knew all the brewers. I'd go to the Craft Brewers Conference and I knew everybody, you know. There might be a few new people that I wouldn't know, but I'd get to know them. It was just so much fun, just hang out and party with everybody and have a great time.

TEM: So, it's still very male dominated. Did you ever feel any resistance or pushback because you are a woman?

LM: You know, I really didn't. I know a lot of women say that they do, and maybe I just ignored it, I'm pretty good at ignoring things like that. I would get a lot of, kind of, surprise sometimes, the you know like "Oh wait" you know "where's your husband? Isn't he the one who's supposed to be interviewing me?" or something like that. I think most of the time everybody was kind of stoked about it, they were like "Oh this is kind of cool." I think if you prove 01:19:00yourself, you know, that you know what you're talking about and you go about it in kind of a professional way. I've always treated everybody like "Hey we're just people" it's not like "I'm a woman, you're a man" or anything like that. It's just "Hey, we're both doing this together" and I feel like women can do everything a man can do, they just might do it a little differently, just because maybe they have to physically or mentally or whatever. I think because I kind of always approach it like that, I never really had a lot of pushback or anything like that. I was always pretty pragmatic about it.

TEM: Yeah, and I guess different people interpret surprise in different ways too.

LM: Yeah [laughs] yeah.

TEM: You say "Yes, it is me" [laughs] "I am here to interview you." [laughs]

LM: Yeah, yeah "It's me." [laughs]

TEM: Surprise. [laughs]

LM: Exactly, I just, I think maybe I just kind of always let it roll off my shoulders. It just would be like "Well, you know, I'm doing my job, so let's 01:20:00just get at it."

TEM: Thinking maybe to the early 2000s, again because it was so male dominated, did you feel the women used you as a mentor or resource?

LM: Not so much then, but actually a lot more now. I feel like now I'm getting a lot of women. A month doesn't go by where I don't get at least one woman asking me to just sit with them and just talk with them about, you know, getting into the beer business. What's interesting is it seems like a lot of them are just kind of like "Yeah, I love beer and I want to get into the beer business." Then you're like "Okay, well what do you want to do?" "I love beer!" It's like "Okay well, you need to kind of..." [laughs] "let's focus a little bit, let's try to find something we need to do." So, you know, we'll see what happens with all that.

TEM: Yeah, well I think it's sort of like "I want to go be a writer because I 01:21:00like reading books" you know?

LM: Right, exactly. Or "I want to be a vet because I love animals." It's a little more involved than that.

TEM: Yeah, it's a good starting place. [laughs]

LM: Yeah, it's a great starting place! It's an awesome starting place. Come back and talk to me-

TEM: Interest. [laughs]

LM: Come back and talk to me when you figure out what you want to do. [laughs]

TEM: Were you traveling, I know you travel a lot now, were you traveling a lot in the early 2000s?

LM: Not a whole lot. My husband and I went with some friends in, right after 9/11 actually, to Germany for my husband and my tenth wedding anniversary. In fact, we were one of the first flights out, international flights out, which was kind of amazing. We went to Oktoberfest, and then we hit a few places in Belgium and a few other placed in Germany and had a really wonderful time. That was my 01:22:00first time ever in Europe, which was incredible for sure. I hadn't really travelled too much before that.

TEM: Did you want to write about it? Like, at that point were you so naturally a writer that you documented-?

LM: I was, that's when I had my online beer column, so actually, I think did some articles about our trip and everything. I honestly don't remember. I mean, I'm pretty sure I did. I'm sure I must have; I took tons of photos and did that sort of thing.

TEM: Yeah, I can imagine that there was, you know, when you are personally interested in something but also professionally doing it that it can very easily blur into never having time off. [laughs]

LM: Oh yeah, yeah. There was definitely a lot of that for sure, yeah.

TEM: So, you won an award starting in... "starting, you won an award starting as a-

LM: [laughs]

TEM: -continued to have." So, in 2004 you win the-

LM: Oh right!

TEM: -National Beer Journalism Award by the Brewers Association. First woman to win that award.

LM: Yeah.

TEM: Was that a point where you, I don't want to say felt validated because it's 01:23:00not like awards validate us exclusively.

LM: Right, it's a nice little feather in your cap though, for sure.

TEM: Yeah.

LM: Yeah, I mean, the thing that was kind of the coolest, I'll never forget that day because, I mean, Michael Jackson was there too. Michael Jackson was standing there, and he won an award, and I got to stand next to Michael Jackson with the same award. You know, you are just sitting there going "Wow." But the thing that was interesting was, and there were a few other people, I don't remember who all won at this point, but there were likely four or five awards that came out. But, when my name was announced, and this sounds silly, I got the biggest hollers and hoops, and I think maybe it's because I was a woman, and people were like "Yeah, that's so cool!" you know what I mean. I don't necessarily think it was for me, like everybody's like "Yeah Lisa, wow! She's amazing!" or anything like that. It 01:24:00was just like "Yeah, that's so cool that, you know, a woman got this award." And that was pretty cool. It was deafening.

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: It was like "Wow, geez guys." [laughs] So that was pretty cool. And then, just obviously being honored like that was a great experience, for sure.

TEM: Did things change after that? I mean, did you feel-

LM: I got a lot more people asking me to write for them after that. That was kind of the pivotal point for me, for sure. A lot of the, like all the magazine, every beer magazine was like "Hey Lisa, hey Lisa you want to write?" And that's when I started, basically really killing myself. [laughs] Because I had to be at work at five in the morning for my shift doing the news, doing the TV news website.

TEM: Oh, so you're still working?

LM: I'm still working.

TEM: Oh, and is that for-?

LM: So at that point Internet Broadcasting and KOIN TV had parted ways, but I 01:25:00was still working for Internet Broadcasting, but I was working out of my house, and I was actually inputting news on a number of different websites of their across the country, which is why I had to wake up at five in the morning: because I had east coast sites. So, my shift was five in the morning until like two in the afternoon. I would work with all these TV stations, kind of like across the country, through the time zones I'd post stories on their sites and do all kinds of cool stuff like that, and then in the afternoons after I got off work, because I was done at like two or whatever, I'd start doing beer stuff. I would almost at that point, starting in 2004 and on until I finally quit Internet Broadcasting in 2008, I was basically working two full time jobs. My husband was like "Lisa, you're killing yourself. You need to like, one or the other." And it was so hard because I wasn't making a lot of money with the beer 01:26:00stuff, but that's where my passion was. But I still enjoyed what I was doing over there and it was fulfilling and that sort of thing as well, so it was a very tough decision for me for a very long time, and then finally I just had to do it. Make that leap.

TEM: One person, you know. One person doing two jobs is unsustainable. [laughs]

LM: Yes, it was unsustainable. Looking back, again, it's one of those things looking back where you're like [laughs] "How did I do that for four years?"

TEM: So at that point, I wonder about Portland still being, it feels like a tight knit beer community.

LM: It was, yeah. Well, it still is, but not like it was.

TEM: What was it like to write about your friends? [laughs] Like, did you, was that sort of strange?

LM: You know, it kind of was, but back then too we were still really really in the 'You've just got to try craft beer' mode. We were still banging that drum really hard. There still wasn't enough core people to really start being 01:27:00critical about beer. And I know that sounds weird because there's so many people now that are beer critics, and I think that's great, I think that's wonderful. But back then we wanted people, we wanted to entice people to drink craft beer still, so it was more: If there wasn't that great of beer, you just wouldn't write about it, or maybe you'd list it in like "Hey, upcoming seasonals" or something like that but you wouldn't be like "I'm sorry, this beer just is not" you know. You just kind of ignore it, and then you'd talk about all the really great ones that came out instead. So, that's kind of how that worked out back then, which is kind of weird, I know, but there was kind of this higher purpose of really trying-

TEM: Yeah

LM: - to just get, more critical mass excited about craft beer.

TEM: Which again is so funny thinking, just, the number of years since then and how much things have changes. In 13 years.

LM: Right, I know. And I'm actually one of the people now that are saying "We need to stop calling it craft beer and just call it beer." Because I think we're at that point now, because when I say to you "Do you want to go have a beer?" you know that I don't mean I'm going to go have a Budweiser with you.

TEM: Yeah

LM: We're going to go and get something local that's delicious that, you know, yeah. Or something craft, like you don't have to say craft. So, you know, we've moved past that, we've moved to that point now, which is really amazing.

TEM: Yeah, in a very short amount of time.

LM: In a very short amount of time.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: And I think a lot of that, honestly, is the internet and online beer columns [laughs] AKA blogs and all that kind of thing. I think that, you know, all of the Untappd, and the TapHunter and the RateBeer and all that sort of thing, BeerAdvocate. I feel like those and just, you know, people texting and talking, and all that sort of stuff has really helped, helped our cause for getting more 01:29:00people excited about beer in a very short amount of time.

TEM: But then it, it really changes the work of a beer journalist though, a beer columnist.

LM: It does.

TEM: That, even if you had something that was online in the early 2000s.

LM: Yeah

TEM: We were not where we are now 15 years later.

LM: Absolutely not. We weren't where we were now five years ago. Yeah, and I feel like that's where Belmont Station kind of really stepped in for me. It got to a point where you couldn't cover all of the beers that were being released, and that really bothered me because I used to drink every single one of them, or at least taste them, and I couldn't do that anymore. I kind of had that moment where I was like "Oh my god" [laughs] "I really can't do this anymore." And plus, I wasn't getting any younger either [laughs] so it's like, my body was 01:30:00kind of going "No, you don't really need to try all those seasonals, you're good." BOTH: [laugh]

LM: "We're good, we don't need that anymore." You know, so I was looking at something as going "Well, what is going to be my next thing? I don't feel like doing beer writing exclusively is going to be sustainable for me anymore."

TEM: Yeah

LM: So, then what's the next step?

TEM: Yeah, so before you came to Belmont Station though you do a little radio show.

LM: Oh yeah.

TEM: [laughs] A little radio show.

LM: Did a little radio show. Yeah, yeah.

TEM: So, that was 2008-2009, how did that start?

LM: Well, actually before that I did another one called The Libation Station.

TEM: Okay, I wasn't sure if the... yes.

LM: I think that one started like two years before that one. So maybe 2006, I think. As Don Younger would have said: "If we... We would have written it down if we thought we were making history." So, started out with that. That started 01:31:00because there was this guy Mack in town, who was part of the Oregon Brew Crew, who was doing a radio show about beer called On Tap with Mack and he would kind of float around from radio station to radio station because he'd get himself kicked off the air. He got on KXL, and all the other ones are like little stations, he got on KXL and I went "Wow, Mack got on KXL. That's amazing." Then he had me on the air, he had me on the show because he would always have me on the show. And then I was ... I don't know, it seemed like he was doing something that was really unprofessional. I remember telling my husband after I got done, I was like "I just feel like he's not..." again, it was all about, at that point, it was all about promoting craft, promoting beer. You know, promoting craft beer and getting people interested and I felt like a lot of the stuff he 01:32:00was... was kind of unprofessional. I thought 'I just don't feel like this is really doing the mission of getting people interested in craft beer.'

TEM: So, like talking about people or encouraging more drinking than was needed?

LM: Just, encouraging more drinking and frat boy kind of mentality. More so than he had been before with the show. As it turns out KXL felt the same way and got rid of him. But then they were like "Uh oh, we don't have anybody, we don't have a show. We've got an hour-long slot on Saturday. What are we going to do?" Somebody suggested me, and then the guy who was doing the show after that, Mr. BBQ said "I can do a radio-" he just wanted more airtime. He was one of those old-time radio guys, you know, that was just like, you know "I wanna be on air, I wanna be on air." And had the radio voice and everything, and he was great, I mean he was fantastic. So, he came in and he was like "I can do a beer radio 01:33:00show" and they were like "Okay, well you can do it." And then he did it once and then he was like "Oh, actually I can't because-"

TEM: [laughs]

LM: "- I actually don't drink beer." [laughs] So they were like "Well how about if we bring in somebody who knows beer and you can kind of..." you know. So that's how I came on, and they were like "Bring Lisa in." I did a live audition, like on-air that next Saturday. It was just like "Yup, here you go! Sit down with this person." And I'm like "Oh my god, what the heck?" So, I obviously pass, and we did the Libation Station for the next two years, and he didn't want to do all beer because: A. he didn't know a lot about beer; and he didn't feel like it was sustainable. He didn't... He wasn't in the beer community so he was like "Well, we can't talk about beer for an hour every single Saturday." I'm like "Oh yes we can."

TEM: [laughs]

LM: But, yeah. So, we did that. The station owned that show, so we were payed just 75 dollars a week just to come and talk, you know. And then they were like 01:34:00"Well we can't sell this show, so we're gonna nix it." And that's when Don Younger got word of that, and he was like "You can't nix a beer show, Portland of all places has to have a beer show." So, he and I had worked on Portland Beer Month together and got that started and he had done a thing for The Pull-Out for The Oregonian, where he basically bought the space as an advertisement. He was like "What would the advertising be for this?" and he fronted it and then payed himself back through advertising. So, he basically kinda did, he was like "Let's set this up the same way with the radio show. Lisa, you buy the airtime." "With what?" [laughs] "Lisa, you buy the airtime, and then you'll get advertising and you'll pay it back and you'll make some money." And I was like "Okay." So, he 01:35:00fronted me some money to buy the airtime, at first. And then he was supposed to help me get the advertising, but that's when the smoking bill passed, the smoking ban passed, and he fell into a funk and he didn't want to do anything anymore. So now all of a sudden, I'm stuck with doing all the advertising, getting all the advertising and everything. But it turned out for the best because then I didn't really need his help, you know.

TEM: Yeah

LM: He just kind of kicked me out of the nest and I was like "Fly!" So, that's how that was set up that whole time when I started doing Beer O'Clock was-

TEM: So, who was your first interview?

LM: I don't remember! [laughs]

TEM: If you knew you were making history you would have written it down.

LM: I don't know! I have no idea who my first interview was. I remember setting it up so that I, because I didn't want to- first of all, I didn't want to do call in. We tried doing, we did call in with Libation Station, and it just didn't work. You either would get, like, no body, or, and he would always do 01:36:00call in, like live call in interviews and stuff like that, and I actually kinda wanted my Saturdays back too, because I was still working full time and doing beer full time, and I was like "I only get Saturdays."

TEM: Yeah

LM: So, or Sundays, you know, and I was like "I really want my time back." So, I prerecorded the shows, like "Okay, I'll do this if I can pre-record the show, and we'll do it at, you know, we'll get everybody on, and we'll do it that way." And that worked out really well actually, but yeah. I would like, get the people on, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't have just one person on for a whole hour because I just felt like that would be a lot, so I broke it into four different segments. There were basically three commercial breaks in the show, so 01:37:00that worked out perfectly. We'd just do, a segment was up to the next commercial break. So, I had Carl, here at Belmont Station, who wanted, he's an old radio guy too, loves radio, so he wanted to actually be on air talking about new beer, so I was like "perfect! That's a segment."

BOTH: [laugh]

TEM: "You're hired!"

LM: "This is working out very well." And then, you know,, might always have somebody on, a brewer on, and I'd always have something else kind of different cause again, my goal was to try to get people interested in beer, and that's one of, that's really the only reason why I did this darn radio show all this time. I hate talk radio. [laughs] I truly, honestly hate talk radio. And here I am doing a talk radio show, which is hilarious. But, yeah. So, the only reason why I did it was I was like "Wow, this is a great, this is KXL, this is a great 01:38:00opportunity to reach out to people who are, cause a lot of the stuff you do with beer magazines and anything, beer blogs, anything you do, you're kind of preaching to the choir. This goes out way into a general audience, it's way beyond any other thing we could reach into, and if we're telling stories, and somebody goes "Wow, that's really cool, maybe I'll try that beer after all." Then you've got somebody in, and that's the only reason why I did that darn thing all those years. [laughs]

TEM: So how did you choose who to talk to? I mean, it sounds like you, even though you weren't writing it down maybe in the beginning-

LM: [laughs]

TEM: -you had some sense of the impact of, or the larger-

LM: Or at least what I wanted it to be.

TEM: What you wanted it to be. So, who did you choose? Like, how?

LM: Well, so because I had different segments, it was kind of easy because one segment was always kind of, one of the longer segments was always like ten minutes with a brewer. So, if something cool was going on with the brewer, they had a new release or they just bought a new brewery, you know something like that, we could always have that. We always had the new brews with Belmont 01:39:00Station, and then I'd always have like a couple that were, maybe somebodies got a book that they just put out, or somebody's got a cool beer gadget that, you know, so that it always opens a bottle top in a cool way, you know. Just, all those kind of interesting, quirky, different, something to kind of, and I'd always kind of put that in between more kind of beer geeky stuff, so you'd kind of like go into something a little more like "Oh hey, this is kind of interesting. What the- What?" you know. Beer enzymes, so that I don't have, you know, only beer...

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: Whatever, you know. Just kind of try to get that kind of going, and then we'd always end with somebody coming on, having a brewer come on and actually talk about one of their beers. So, our beer of the week was like, somebody coming on and just talking about that beer. So, that's kind of what the format was.

TEM: Yeah

LM: And it worked out well. Like I said, I was actually buying the airtime from the station and then selling advertising to pay myself back, and I did it every 01:40:00single time, and I sometimes would even make some money too. Not a whole lot, but sometimes.

TEM: Yeah

LM: And I did that for like eight years, I think.

TEM: So how did it evolve? Obviously, Portland evolved a lot during that eight years, and I would assume your show evolved too.

LM: Yeah.

TEM: What are some of the things that you remember about changes during that time, and how they showed themselves maybe through your show? The choices you made.

LM: Yeah, well I think, you know, that was a time when there was a lot of, kind of that first wave of new brewery growth. So, there was a lot of fodder. I'd be bringing these new breweries on, talking about what's going on, or bringing in somebody and checking in. "Hey, let's check in with..." You know, like I had Mike Wright when he was Beetje Brewing and then of course I had him back on again when he decided to become Commons, and no longer had a Nano brewery in his house and what that looked like. And then, I think we brought them on again... 01:41:00No, I think I might have been done with the show by then. But you know we brought them on to talk about their first space and what that was going to be like, and now of course they've moved into another space and gotten even bigger. So, a lot of times following some of those breweries as they go along or maybe following a brewer as he goes to another position somewhere. You know, "Hey, now I'm now..." Or, I know like Bolt Minister, who's now at 54-40, which is one of, I think he's an owner of, talking to him when he first was brewing at Astoria Brewing Company, and followed his career along a little bit. Talking about what that was like for him: changing from one brewery to another, and you know, learning the different systems and all that sort of thing.

TEM: So, you were beyond Portland's boundaries. Did you reach out beyond Oregon's boundaries?

LM: Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes if I had a chance. I know, one of my favorite 01:42:00interviews was Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head. I forgot why I had him on exactly, but we were talking, and he had pulled over onto the side of the road, to do the interview, cause he was traveling in Delaware, and he was on his cellphone. In the middle of the interview, and I just kept it, I could have edited it out, but I kind of liked it, I thought it was cool, cause we did pre-record, so I could have edited it out, but I didn't want to. He was like talking, all of a sudden, he's like "Oh my gosh wait, a police officer has just stopped behind me." [laughs] He's like "Hold on a second" and you can hear him roll down the window, and he's like "Hi officer, is there a problem?"

TEM: [laughs]

LM: And the officer is like "No, I was just checking to see, are you okay?" and he's like "Yeah, I just pulled over to talk on the phone here for a minute. I'm in an interview." [laughs]

TEM: "I'm on the radio." [laughs]

LM: Yeah exactly, it was hilarious. You know, just some fun stuff like that 01:43:00sometimes, that are great great memories and things like that. I remember one time we had Kyle Hollingsworth from String Cheese Incident band. I'm a big fan of String Cheese, so it was really cool. He's a home brewer, and he's done a few collaborations and he had just done a collaboration with Stone Brewing. So, I was like talking to one of my favorite musicians about his other project, you know.

TEM: Yeah

LM: That was pretty cool too, so some fun stuff like that sometimes.

TEM: Yeah, I imagine too it's a different dynamic when you're talking to people that you know, you know.

LM: Yeah, I mean I didn't really know...

TEM: Not in that case, but-

LM: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've known Sam for years, so it was fun to just like, and of course I was just howling. I was like "Oh my god" [laughs] "I can't believe this is happening." It was great.

TEM: [laughs] That's like a live radio thing, you know. [laughs]

LM: Yeah, and I mean that's the thing, because I thought 'Well, you know nobody 01:44:00knows that we're not not live-'

TEM: Yeah.

LM: '-except that we don't take phone calls. But that, might as well just leave it in.' And we pretty much recorded as if it was live, unless like somebody just had a complete meltdown or something. We had a couple people that were just like so nervous that they were just like "Gah gah gah gah blah blah" and I'd be like "Okay, take a minute, we're going to start over from this point. We can go one from here" you know. I mean I would say 99% of the time it was all recorded as if it was live.

TEM: So, as you did it longer, I'm often curious if people who clearly have had a big impact on an industry or in an area, was there a point where you felt like your own interviewing style had changed? Were people trying to get onto your show? Were people more nervous? Like as- LM I don't think so. You know, the show was remarkably not listened to, I think. You know we had it on Podcast and 01:45:00everything, so you can get it a million different ways. The beer community just wasn't really that interested in it.

TEM: Hmm...

LM: And I, it was weird because I feel like a lot of people who weren't really in the beer community really liked it a lot more than the beer comminuty did, which is weird because it was all their own people listening, you know it would be like "Hey I just heard you on the radio."

TEM: Yeah

LM: But it was more like, I get a lot more comments from people who really aren't in the beer community. Like, I had a guy, not too long ago, at a restaurant come up to me and say, "I really miss your radio show." He was just a server at a restaurant, and he was just like "You know, I live in like Sherwood and I have to drive into town on Saturdays to work." And he goes "And I'd just listen to your radio show and I loved it so much. I just really wish you'd redo that." And I was like "Well, that's not happening so..."

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: "But thank you." [laughs] The best one was my little old lady neighbor 01:46:00across the street from us who came up this one day and apparently, she loves listening to KXL. She was just like, and she doesn't know anything about beer, she doesn't even drink beer. But she was just like "I just love your radio show Lisa, it's just so much fun to listen to." And I thought 'Now that's actually... I have succeeded, because if I can get her interested. I mean, she's probably not going to go out and try those beers, but she loves the stories. She loves listening to about what's going on, she loves hearing what the brewers are doing.' And that to me was successful, because it reached out beyond our little community, and hit home with somebody who really wouldn't ever ever ever give craft beer a thought.

TEM: Yeah, and I'm curious too about how maybe festivals have changed. You were instrumental in establishing Portland Beer Week.

LM: Portland Beer Week, Oregon Craft Beer Month, Fredfest, Sasquatch Brew AM. Those are kind of my little projects. I've let go of Portland Beer Week and 01:47:00Oregon Craft Beer Month. I think they've definitely changed quiet a bit. You certainly see a lot more different people, you see a lot more women, it's awesome. You see a much more educated, larger crowd, which is great. You see a lot wider range of attendees in terms of age. A lot from just turned 21 and to their 70s, which is pretty cool. So, I think it's broadening.

TEM: Yeah, broadening to include, maybe beer related things, like cider or mead. Do you think that, I don't know I guess I'm just sort of thinking about this idea of introducing something to the masses, you know, and making it accessible, 01:48:00and sort of diversifying the beer festival experience. It seems like they sort of exponentially grow, and then a festival gets realty big and maybe becomes less specific and becomes maybe all-

LM: Becomes more generalized, yeah.

TEM: Yeah, maybe more things to more people.

LM: Yeah, I think the Spring Beer and Wine Fest is a really good example of that. It started out as the Spring Beer Fest, and then became the Spring Beer and Wine Fest, and then it started including cheeses and chocolates and lots of different foods, and cocktails and things like that. You know, it's still a fun time, and I think that's kind of cool because when you do that, you might have the friend who just really isn't into craft beer, but then they can find something that they like as well, and I think everybody sticks around longer and enjoys themselves more because you don't have that person kind of sitting there going "[sighs]."

TEM: Yeah

LM: "Are we done yet? Are you just going to get one more? Can we go?" You know, that sort of thing.

TEM: Yeah

LM: I think it, and who knows, there's going to be that one time where they're 01:49:00like "No no no no, try this one" and then the light goes off-

TEM: Yeah

LM: -and it's like "Oh, I actually like this beer." I always tell everybody "It's not that you don't like beer, it's that you just haven't found the beer that you like."

TEM: So, you taught classes and led workshops. I imagine that a lot of those same skills and that same kind of approach to beer bleeds over into the work that you do now at Belmont Station.

LM: Oh yeah

TEM: Teaching at a maybe micro level.

LM: Which is really fun and different for a change, as opposed to this big broadcast thing that I've been doing all of my life.

TEM: Yeah

LM: It's really nice to be able to chat one-on-one or like with a couple of people about beer and just kind of have it be a lot more casual and not quite so written and planned and scripted, and you know, photographed. [laughs]

TEM: Yeah

LM: All that stuff.

TEM: Yeah, so what kinds of workshops or, like beer 101 sort of sessions? I know 01:50:00you did food and beer pairings.

LM: I did. I did a thing for a while called Sud Sisters, which was through Portland Brewing. Fred Bowman, at the time, was like the head, the owner of Portland Brewing, and he was kind of one of my first champions. He called me up this one day and he was like "You know what, you want to get together after work?" and I was like "Yeah, sure." That's when I was working at KOIN. I sat down with him, and he goes "You know, I've been thinking." He goes "I've been looking at a lot of marketing, and how to, you know like better market our beers." and he goes "And I realized, we're not marketing to women at all." And I said "Yeah, nobody is."

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: I mean obviously, you know, Budweiser and things like that with the bikini team and all that really isn't, but even the craft brewers weren't reaching out to, they weren't doing that. They weren't anti-marketing, but they were not 01:51:00marketing to women. So, we started talking about it, and he was like "How would you like to do some classes?" and I told him I'd love to do that. They would host, they would give me a space, they would do everything. They'd put together some snacks, and all the beer, and I said "Okay, but here's the deal: I don't want it to be all Portland beer." I said, "It really needs, if we're going to do this and do it right, if you really want to educate women about beer, it has to be not just your beer, because then it's just marketing." I said "If you really want to educate, then yes, we- if you can bring, if I can bring in some other examples of beer, obviously have a couple of Portland beers in there because you are being so nice to do this, then yes, I would love to do those classes." And so, for a while there where had once a month Sud Sisters classes, where we would-

TEM: What year was that?

LM: Oh gosh [laughs] I don't know! Maybe like around, I want to say like 1999/2000, something like that. I know somebody who would know actually. There 01:52:00was a guy that, we had little certificates we'd hand out and they were cleaning through a bunch of stuff recently and posted it on Facebook and found it. So, that was pretty cool, yeah. I think it was probably about 1999/2000 maybe.

TEM: Yeah, and what was the impact? Like, what did the women say when they-?

LM: It wound up just being so much fun. It was great to be able to, and like the first one we had like 25 people and I quickly said "Oh, we gotta really like, bring this down. We've got to take this and have it be something that is way smaller." Because with that many women talking about beer [laughs] it got so loud!

TEM: [laughs]

LM: I couldn't talk over anything. A couple of beers in and it was like "Ladies! Ladies!" [laughs] "Come on, simmer down!" So, we took it down to like ten, and 01:53:00it was a good number, and that was cool because we had a waiting list then. It's like "Well, tens filled up for this one, so you'll have to go next month, or even the month after that." So, it kind of got to be a hot ticket, which was kind of fun. I didn't mean for it to happen that way, it was just like, my voice had to do that.

TEM: Yeah

LM: But yeah, it was cool because you know, we'd go in and we would explore a variety of different styles and I'd always make sure that I put a very approachable stout in that very first dark beer category. We'd start out light and kind of work our way up, and every single time, every month, I'd have some women who wouldn't be good, and their pre-paid and everything, and one of my ground rules was 'just try it.' That's all I had, 'just try it.' There's dump buckets, there's no shame in dumping it if you don't like it, no bodies going to get hurt, but just try it. And every single month there'd be this one woman who's go "[gasp] No no no, I don't like dark beer, no no no, no thanks." And I'd be like "No no no, remember the ground rule, just give it a sip, that's all we ask." And they would always be the person afterwards, when we were finishing up 01:54:00the bottles after the class, would be like "Could you give me that stout, that one stout? That was so good, I loved that so much!" because it was always like really approachable and sweet, and not a bitter stout you know. So, it was always great to be able to, kind of, make that conversion with somebody. It was fun.

TEM: Do you think we still need gendered groups like that?

LM: I don't, I really don't. Not here, maybe other places. You know, I was one of the, I founded Barley's Angels too, which was a consumer group to help get more women interested in beer. But even then, even though that'd founded in Portland, I really, and now it's an international organization, I really feel like that was more for other places then it was, it just so happened that because I live in Portland I started it in Portland. But I feel like it was really more for other locations, and it still is thriving, so that's great.

TEM: I am curious though about advertisement and from that marketing standpoint 01:55:00as we sort of transition mentally to where we actually are. What do you think about marketing? If you type it into the internet [laughs] women in beer, you type, gender in beer, you type.

LM: Oh god, I hadn't even thought about that. Is that just god awful? I'm sure it is.

TEM: It is... you learn a lot if you approach it with curiosity. [laughs]

LM: I'm sure you do, there you go.

TEM: I don't know. Do labels and advertising play into the decisions that you make now in your position here?

LM: Oh god no, not at all. I mean, I one time said that I would never serve something called, on the bar side, I would never serve something called 'Double D Blond' just because I think its demeaning. I also, there was a brewery that 01:56:00had a beer called 'Stepchild Red' and I was like "Nope, I'm not doing that either because I feel like that's very demeaning to redheads." Those are the only two times I said "Nope, I'm not going to do that." That being said, that beer has been changed, the name of the beer has been changed. They got smart. But here, when we're selling beer, we sell what we feel like people are gonna want to buy, you know. We tell people that, you know, that they're voting with their wallets, so if it's a beer that they really like and it goes away, it's like "Well, I'm sorry but unfortunately not enough people wanted to buy it to warrant us, with our very limited space that we have, keeping it. However, we can always special order it, you know if it's still around." It's not like we aren't gonna not buy it anymore, we can always special order it for somebody who wants it. But we don't really pay any attention to advertising or anything like that. It's all actually very scientific. We have a lot, we keep a lot of data, 01:57:00and really pour over it when we're making our purchasing decisions.

TEM: You came here, 2013/2015?

LM: 2013? Yeah, yeah 2013.

TEM: And you were still doing the radio show.

LM: I was still doing the radio show, yeah.

TEM: Were you still, what year did your book come out?

LM: 2011

TEM: Okay, so I guess at least you weren't having -

LM: That was kind of a mind game.

TEM: - [laughs] at least you weren't having seven full time jobs at once.

LM: Yeah, exactly. When it managed to kind of, when it went down a little bit so that I was doing the radio show, I was still doing a quite a bit of writing, but that's kind of when I had that moment where I was like "I really gotta find something else because this is kind of getting hard on me." I was turning 50, so yeah I was like "Yeah, this is hard. [laughs] This is [laughs] this is hurting me."

TEM: Yeah

LM: So, it was great that this came kind of out of the blue, really. It was interesting, my [sniffs] excuse me. My husband and I had just been talking about like, what retirement might look like. Just in that kind of fun way, not like sitting down and going, you know "Okay, we gotta bring out the expenses, all that sort of" but just kind of like "Well, where would we want to live?"

TEM: yeah

LM: "What would we like to do? Do we want to have a retirement job? Do we want to do something together?" That sort of stuff, and we both talked about possibly opening, moving out to the coast, because we've always loved the coast, and possibly opening up a place quote "like Belmont Station" out there. Seriously, that's what we said. And, not three days didn't go by before I got a phone call from Carl Singmaster, my now business partner, saying "I want to talk with you." 01:59:00He was, of course, still on the radio show as a sponsor and then also doing that segment. I thought "Oh my god."

TEM: [laughs]

LM: "Carl doesn't want to do the show anymore. What am I going to do? This is going to be terrible." So, I met with him, and I was scared. I was like "Oh no, he's gonna like nix. I have to find a sponsor and I have to find somebody else to do this segment." Because he was so good. He asked me if I was at all interested in becoming his business partner at Belmont Station, which was not what I was expecting at all. Kind of threw me a little for a loop. Then I started thinking about it, and I was like "Well why would I, why would I wait to do something out at the coast when this is here? Carl is an amazing businessman, and I wouldn't make any of those rookie mistakes," which have been proven I would have made-

BOTH: [laugh]

LM: - if Carl had not been here. [laughs] So good, you know he's like, he's 02:00:00behind me for months going "No no no no! No no no!" [laughs] So yeah, it was one of those things where it was like "Wow, okay yeah universe, loud and clear, gotcha." So, we talked about it, and we thought 'Yeah, let's just go ahead and do this instead, and we'll see what happened out on the coast down the road. That's something else.' But it was just the perfect timing, and like I said I was kind of looking for something a little different, kind of frankly getting a little tired of the whole broadcasting thing, all the time, always. From teaching classes to the radio show to all of the writing and everything is always just kind of outed to this like public abyss. [laughs]

TEM: Yeah

LM: Sometimes you hear somethings about, and sometimes you never hear anything back, and your just kind of like "Is anybody even there? Is anybody listening?" You only, you know, hear something if you're making mistakes and if somebody doesn't agree with you, and it was kind of getting a little old. It was really 02:01:00perfect timing, so.

TEM: I can imagine too, that there is a pressure to engage, you know, and at this point it would be really hard to cover everything that is-

LM: It was impossible for me, and there were other bloggers at that point that were doing a much better job than I was doing, especially on blogging and that sort of thing, and were way younger and had fresher 'le verse.' [laughs] So I was like "You know what, this is the perfect time for me to do something different." And it really has worked out well, I really have come to enjoy, first of all learning a whole other side of the beer business that I've never really paid that much attention to before. I feel like if I did get back to writing at some point, which I probably will, maybe when I'm living at the coast.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: It would be something that I would be able to pull from that no other 02:02:00bloggers or writers really have that kind of experience. I really probably should write and blog about being a bottle shop and bar owner, but I don't have the time. [laughs]

TEM: Well, and I think you maybe have gotten to the point in your life too where you realize choices have to be made, and that not everything can be done. [laughs]

LM: Right, I am well past that point of having to do everything and not saying no to things. And I actually really do enjoy having time at home with my husband or being able to travel, or do some other things like that, yeah. I'm much more about work-life balance than I used to be, yeah.

TEM: Yeah. So, do you miss writing? Do you miss being on the radio?

LM: Surprisingly not. I really don't, I really do not miss being on the radio.

TEM: Yeah

LM: Never liked it anyway! [laughs]

TEM: Yeah, the talk radio.

LM: Hate talk radio!

TEM: Never liked it! [laughs]

LM: Mark would want to listen to it. He'd be like, my nickname is 'LB' and he's always call it the LB Show. He'd be like "It's time for the LB Show!" and I'd be 02:03:00like "Do we have to listen?" [laughs] He's like "Yeah, we gotta listen!" I'm like "I just did this like two days ago. I don't need to hear it." He's like "I want to hear it!" I'm like "Oh my god." [laughs]

TEM: "I was there"

LM: Yeah

TEM: [laughs]

LM: "I really don't, don't be doing this for me because..." and he's like "No, I want to listen." I'm like "Alright..." So yeah, I was just like never that interested in, I mean, it was fun to do, it was great, it was a wonderful experience. I think it served the purpose it needed to serve, but it was not, it was never a passion of mine to do a radio show. So, farewell to that. It was a good opportunity and a good time to get rid of it because I was getting so busy over here. One again I was having that time where I was just like, I was killing myself. Again, my husband was saying "Why are you doing the show? Why don't you just get rid of the show?" And I, you know, for another year was like "No, I gotta do the show, I gotta do the show." Then all of a sudden, I was like "You're right, why am I doing the show?"

TEM: Yeah

LM: "I can stop doing the show." So, yeah.

TEM: What continues to surprise you and excited you every day about beer?

LM: About beer? The creativity, the creativity in the beer especially. People just coming up with amazing, amazing beer still. The fact that you can do so much with basically four ingredients really blows my mind, still to this day. The different hops, I think, are super exciting. The different ways of using them. We're getting ready to do our 20th anniversary here at Belmont Station, and just yesterday we brewed with Gigantic, and they're not dry hoping, their hop dipping.

TEM: [laughs]

LM: "What's hop dipping?" It's kind of like tea, they do like this big... hop dipping.

TEM: That's awesome.

LM: I know! "That's really awesome, I can't wait to try it!" you know, so that's really cool. The fun, the creativity. I'm still amazed that, for the most part, 02:05:00there's still really a lot of super cool people in this industry. One of the reasons I fell in love with, I mean I love the beer, but one of the reasons why I fell in love with the beer industry so much is because of the industry itself, and the people, and the fact that they are so willing to support each other. You don't see that in other industries you know. I mean, most industries are like "Oh hey, so-and-so's having trouble over there? Yay, let's go take advantage of that." Here, brewers help each other out even though they're competitors, and I love that. They're showing that it works. They're proving that that is sustainable, and it's something, I mean we're growing because of it. We're growing, you know Don Younger always said, "Don't cut the pie smaller, grow the pie" and we're growing pie, and it's working, and I love that. I think it's just so amazing that we can show corporate America that you can be a kind and helpful 02:06:00and generous human being and not have to be cutthroat and be successful. I just think that's amazing.

TEM: Well it's amazing too, to me, that you've really watched the industry here in Portland, and probably generally in Oregon, but Portland is still its own...

LM: little...

TEM: microcosm.

LM: Yup, it is.

TEM: You know, and I wonder what some of the changes that maybe you do miss, as the industry has matured, and has grown, you do see the pie growing larger.

LM: Yeah

TEM: What are some of the things that you're like "Man, I liked it when blah blah."? [laughs]

LM: Yeah, I mean I, despite the fact that I'm super happy to see the pie getting bigger, I do kind of miss that smaller family feeling of knowing literally everybody.

TEM: Yeah

LM: And not just knowing them, but intimately knowing them. Knowing their 02:07:00families, knowing their, you know, what they're doing with their beers. Knowing what's happening. I miss that, I feel like that's something we'll probably never really get again. We might have little microcosms of it where I know this circle of people or whatever, but it's not the same as knowing everybody in the industry. But that being said, for us to have a very successful and sustainable industry it had to happen somehow.

TEM: Yeah

LM: But you know, those were the days of course. Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest thing is that, for sure. Just kind of that little bit more of a familial feeling.

TEM: Yeah, I think it's that complicated relationship with success, you know.

LM: Right, exactly.

TEM: On one hand, you want things to grow, but if it grows it changes, and it's sad. It isn't-

LM: It's not quite the same as it used to be.

TEM: Yeah

LM: Yeah, but it's still really good.

TEM: I guess it's better than going the other way. [laughs]

LM: Right, exactly, exactly.

TEM: So, what do you think your impact will be?

LM: I don't know. I mean, I think getting more women into beer has been a big thing. I don't really necessarily feel like I have to have, you know, like a hall of fame you know, designation or anything like that, or be honored like that in any sort of way. I just want to know that people are enjoying really good beer and people still recognize Portland as one of those like, important beer cities. Other than that, I think, you know, I think we're good. You know it was kind of weird cause when I turned like 40 or something I was like "Oh crap, I forgot to have kids. What am I going to do to give back to my community in a positive way?" and that's when I actually started really looking at beer as a 02:09:00viable thing to do, because I was like "What am I passionate about? What do I love?" and I was like "Well, I love the beer community. I love all of those people; I love what people are doing. I love that business model." So, I was like "Well, I want to champion that. That's going to be my way of giving back to my community."

TEM: It seems like you've done that.

LM: I hope so.

BOTH: [laugh]

TEM: What did we not talk about or what did I not ask that you thought that maybe...?

LM: I can't think of a thing. I think you've covered it really well.

TEM: [laughs] Talk about being a librarian.

LM: Yeah right.

TEM: You still have time.

LM: About, oh I think so, I think so. I don't know, I mean we'll see what happens when I get to that point. I might be like "Nah forget it, I just want to go read."

TEM: Yeah

LM: But I think it would be fascinating to take the classes-

TEM: Yeah

LM: -and just see what that's all about, and what that means, and maybe, maybe get to be a librarian someday.

TEM: Yeah, continue your curiosity.

LM: I don't think I'll be a vet, which was my other thing I wanted to be, cause 02:10:00I can't do that. It's way too much studying.

TEM: Well you have two animals, you can be. [laughs]

LM: I'm a vet to them enough, trust me. [laughs] You do a lot of vetting at home when you have a, when you have animals anyway, so. That's plenty.

TEM: Yes, psychologist for your animals.

LM: Right, exactly. And when they get older, taking care of them.

TEM: Yes

LM: There's that too, so.

TEM: Well, thank you.

LM: Thank you.