Lynn Coody Oral History Interview, January 5, 2018

CHRIS PETERSEN: All right, today is January 5th, 2018, and we are in Eugene, Oregon in the home of Lynn Coody. And this is our second interview with her. Last time we talked about her early life and the history of Oregon Tilth, and today the focus of our interview will be more on Lynn's career as a consultant, primarily, but I want to begin back in the late seventies again. So, last time you told a really interesting story about coming to Oregon, living in an intentional community, and sort of scratching your way to a master's degree.

LYNN COODY: [Laughs] yeah.

CP: And which it was fascinating to hear. So, we arrive at the point where you finish that, and it sounds to me like you had basically two jobs at the same time. So, you're working at Lane Community College teaching, and you're also working at Fresh Start Farm. Can you tell me about both of those?

LC: Yeah. Well, actually I worked at LCC both on the Eugene-the Cottage Grove 00:01:00campus and the Florence campus, both kind of the outsiders, teaching biology. And I taught biology through teaching about organic farming. So, I had developed this whole actual approved biology class, but it was all based on our farm. So, we would have a class where we would teach basic concepts that, you know, really with a real biology text, you know, the real deal so the people would-could get the credits, but the lab was held on our farm. So, I taught things like practical things, but related them to the concepts that we were learning about in class.

So, people would learn about the xylem and phloem of the plants, and then they would come to the farm and they would learn grafting. And so, they saw the xylem and phloem and understood how it had to lineup, and you know, they were peeling it back and cutting with a knife. So, that's how I taught biology at LCC. And 00:02:00they actually approved this class for, you know, a real biology, full credit class, which I give them a lot of credit for, because in those days it was not really the most normal way to go. But this class appealed to quite a few people because it was something they could relate to in real life, and they got some skills that they could use on their own, you know, in their own gardening. So, that was fun.

And I enjoyed teaching quite a bit. So, that was my first teaching venture, which later on played out where I ended up teaching for 15 years in Italy. So, that was where I learned how to do it and how to make a case for this is how, what the course should be.

CP: And that came fairly natural to you, developing that class and teaching it?

LC: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think it was just a matter-to me everything is a matter of organization. It's just a matter of making an outline and then figuring out 00:03:00how to implement it. So yeah, I guess that was pretty natural. By then I was so-biology was so ingrained in everything that I did and everything that I saw, it just made sense to try to convey it in that way to people, through practicality as well as basic scientific principles.

That's how it always seemed to me, and so when people got exposed to that, I mean I had some students, especially one-her name was Laurie [phonetic], I'll never forget it-she had failed in high school and now was trying to go to LCC, and she was so nervous she could not take the test in class. So, I arranged for her to have a separate, you know, place and a time where she could take the test, still with me, you know, not so she could cheat or anything, but so that she could just be outside of the pressure of everyone around her taking the class. And when she-she actually did really well, because it was the first time 00:04:00that science made sense to her, and somebody wasn't really pounding on her that it was scary. So, I have a picture of her that they published in the LCC newsletter from-this was over in Florence-and there's a picture of her looking through the microscope in the first time with this incredible look of excitement on her face. And when they published it, I cut it out and stapled it to her test paper for her, because I was so-it was really encouraging to me, and I wanted it to be encouraging to her too.

Anyway, so that was teaching, and then yes, I was farming in Cottage Grove. Fresh Start Farm was our farm, and it's about five miles to the east of Cottage Grove off of Mosby Creek, on Scott Lane. So, that was only a three-acre farm, 00:05:00three and a half acres, and we had very intensive plantings that were also very diverse. So, one of our goals was to provide our own food, so we basically just grew too much of our own food and then sold that. And we sold it through-we did sell some through [a] health food store in Cottage Grove. It was a tiny store, so of course they weren't keeping us afloat or anything, but it was great to sell stuff there.

But we developed what we called subscription farming, which was inspired when Fukuoka, who wrote One-Straw Revolution, came to speak in Eugene. And that-somehow we got connected up with a bunch of people in Japan. Part of it was through Tom Forster who had lived in Japan, one of our fellow Tilthers, and he 00:06:00could speak Japanese somewhat, so there were just all these funny connections. And eventually we found out about this way that they were marketing in Japan that were-that people would come to the farmers and sign up for what they wanted and the farmers would grow it for them. It's the beginning of CSA, but CSA wasn't a word then.

So, I made up the word of subscription farming, because I envisioned it kind of like a magazine subscription; you bought a subscription and then you got the food. And so, that's what we did, and we had a number of different families, all in Cottage Grove, almost all related to our intentional community that we were still involved in at that point. And, so that's how we had a little diverse farm in Cottage Grove. It was not a model for everyone, but it worked for us. And we 00:07:00did that for, oh gosh, I don't know, five years or something, and then I hurt my arm, because I'm pretty small-boned and I was doing really heavy work for a long time. So, I started having elbow problems and had my arm-every-for two winters I'd have my arm in a sling. It was basically nonfunctional. And after the second year, a friend who is a chiropractor who was helping with this said "you've got to stop. You can't keep doing this kind of work at this-for this many hours a day."

So, I had to learn another way to deal with farming. I didn't want to give it up, but it became clear. At first I kind of transitioned over to doing just the marketing and the bookkeeping and that kind of thing, but that was not really 00:08:00too interesting to me [laughs]. So, I...I did come to my senses, and I said okay, I got to find another way to interact with organic farming. And that's why I became a consultant, was because I-the first few years of my consulting, I was living, still living at my farm. And I had, you know, I was able to parlay that scientific education that I had to help other farmers, basically is what the idea was when I started out.

So, I would research; I would go to their farm and see what I thought the problem was, or help them identify insects or diseases and try to figure out what to do. In those days, there was not a lot of readily available information, but one of the things that happened on our farm was we won a national award from 00:09:00Rodale and they let-and there was a prize connected with this, and we were allowed-they had a whole panoply of things you could-that were offered as a prize, and they'd just let us pick which ones we wanted, up to a certain amount of money. And so, I picked books. I picked all the books that they had about organic farming, from Rodale Press. I mean, my god, who had a library like that, right? And we also got, you know, a beautiful compost turning fork, and many, many tools, but the things that were important to me were the books, and that was the basis of my consulting business, was I had the books. And I had-I was able to kind of interpret scientific language, and so that was what got me started, was winning this prize and getting the books.

So, it was just an amazing thing. And then when I said okay, I-I farmed with two 00:10:00other people, and so I said "look, I really need to move off the farm. I can't stand watching you guys work, and sitting inside and doing paperwork. It's just too much." And so, when it came time to leave, they said "you take the books." And that was how I launched myself off my farm, was with these-this library. I mean really, it was-it took up quite a bit of space in a bookshelf, of all these books, with many explaining potential solutions for all of the problems that you would find on farms and gardens and things like that.

So, that was, that was it. If I hadn't won that prize, I don't know if I could have started being a consultant. I wouldn't have had the information. So, that was lucky [laughs]. Yeah, it was just an amazing thing. And we got a really big 00:11:00nice write-up in the Rodale organic farming magazine that they had then, and that did give us enough kind of publicity, or PR, so that people started to know that we knew what we were doing. And so, that helped too.

CP: So, this is Organic Agsystems Consulting, which has sort of been the organizational hub from which you've operated ever since.

LC: That's exactly right. So, that was 1982 that I started that, and it was in April, so that's what I count when they ask me on forms, you know, "when did you start your business," that's what I tell them, because now that-it was April, I know because it was the beginning of the growing season, and that was the first growing season that all I did was work in the greenhouse. Just the light work. I didn't do any work outside. Well, not any. I would do planting, things like that, but no compost turning, no digging...it was a tough year for me [laughs]. 00:12:00I mean, I still found a lot to do, but it was-I-it's seared into my memory, how different that year was.

So, I did get some jobs that year, and I started to see that wow, I guess this knowledge is needed out there, because remember now, there were no OSU Extension agents to help people then, about organic. There was very few newsletters, that it-information was at a premium. Just a premium. So, it was the good graces of Rodale that gave me information that other people needed.

CP: It sounds too like there was a demand for this.

LC: Well, there was starting to be a demand for this, because you know, I live it-I was connected with all these people in Willamette Valley Tilth, in Eugene and the south Willamette Valley, and many were starting farms. Many were trying 00:13:00to ramp up their gardening activities into more commercial ventures. Some people were lucky enough to scrape together money and buy land, either mostly in groups, and so...yeah, there started to be a need for someone who could have a keen eye and a microscope and, you know, the tools to actually diagnose things.

So, I self-studied on plant pathology. I still have the book. I went up to OSU and bought the book, and it's probably the most highlighted book in the history of the United States [laughs], because I was like, I didn't know anything about that when I first started. So I did, I learned quite a bit. I wish I could have gone and taken a cla-I've never take a class in plant pathology, to this day, but I have been studying it for so long that I have quite a base of knowledge in 00:14:00that area.

So, that's kind of what happened. When I would see an area that was a problem, I would start to learn about that, and then I could spread that knowledge. So, in the beginning the farmers all would call me and say "oh, I've got this terrible insect problem," and that's all they could envision, because they could see, they could see insects. They said "I don't know what it is, because I don't know why it's happening," and I realized they were often seeing either plant pathology problems or nutrient deficiencies and blaming it on the insects. So, that became kind of three separate areas for me to delve into and to try to help people understand: "no, you see this little tiny film of white on this leaf? This is actually a fungus, and it's attacking your plant." And I would-I had it 00:15:00in my hand lens and I would show them. You know, I'd take the leaf and show them so they could understand it too. So, my goal was to try not to just always be the one that had the knowledge, but have the farmers learn it.

And so, that was a really exciting thing, because it gave me, again, a chance to learn, learn, learn, really steep learning curve. I'm good at steep learning curves. So, then I can take in a body of knowledge and translate it down to practicality. So, it was kind of like teaching my people at LCC, only now it was farmers, which was really fun because I got to go around and, you know, visit lots of farms, and it felt great because these were my friends, and so to be able to help them out was great. So, often I got paid in blueberries, or you name it. You know, I got all kinds of trades and things like that in the 00:16:00beginning, which was fine. And then later on I started getting a lot more jobs that were-well, the farms were all expanding and multiplying, so after a while they actually had money to pay me [laughs]. So, that was the very beginning of how I started out.

And since then, yeah, I've had a constant base. I've used it as kind of a multi...let's see, what would you say; it's a multifaceted base where I can basically do whatever I need to. That's the wonderful thing about being a consultant and being self-employed, is that I could choose my own direction throughout my entire working life. Now, sometimes I would have to choose a 00:17:00direction because I needed money, and so I'd have to take a job that wasn't super fun, but-or required a lot of grit to get through it, but I would say in the last, certainly the last 10 years, I haven't had to do that at all. I've just been able to take jobs that seemed fun, were in a direction that I wanted to learn about, things like that. So I, as time went by, I could-I had a completely different criteria for what types of jobs I would like to do.

So, I had different phases. So, first I worked on farms and then I worked actually at Organically Grown, then it was Co-op, but now it's Company, being their horticultural consultant, which was basically the same job that I was doing with the farmers, except for I was employed for three seasons. And in that 00:18:00job, that's where I started jumping off into policy, because that's when all the laws started happening. But I also had, after that, I did a lot of work on policy for a long time, which then started to meld into a track on accreditation work, where I started helping certifiers all over the country, and later even in other parts of the world, become accredited to the NOP system, so they could certify and grant NOP certification. And I had lots of opportunities in that phase. I had the opportunity to work as a consultant, to be a technical expert for the National Institute for Standards and Technology, who were overseeing, at 00:19:00that point, the NOP accreditation system. So, then I was into recognition systems.

So, it was so, it was so theoretical, almost. It was almost theoretical. But still rooted in the very practicality of the farms. So, I really spent quite a few years writing policy manuals and setting up document control systems, which seems dry, but it appeals to my love of order and precision. And so, that was the personal payoff for me. Also, once again, leaving behind a staff at a certification agency who could do that whole thing by themselves, that was the goal. So, sometimes I would go in and actually have classes for them about how to do document control, why you need document control, this kind of a thing, and 00:20:00then teach, literally sit there and teach someone how to do it, and help them refine their system, and then be here and be able to take questions from them if they got stuck.

So, I like to think of my...my pride is that I've left behind a lot of people who knew a lot more about quality certification systems, and all over the country and even the world. So, that is-that was the accreditation kind of a phase of my work. And throughout the whole thing, I was still doing activism and everything else, but this was my bread and butter. My bread and butter was doing what I wanted to do, which who gets to do that, right? I mean it was-it's just really been a wonderful opportunity, and I feel like I got to-in my business-I 00:21:00got to live out a lot of the parts of myself that I really enjoy. So that's, yeah, it's been a base, and I've been able to do lots and lots of things with it and have many-make many friends all over the place and work with so many different people, all over. It's been fun. Been really fun.

CP: I'm interested in knowing more about what it was like for you to become a business woman, where you're going from-you've started your own business, you are getting paid in blueberries originally-

LC: Yeah [laughs].

CP: But obviously that changed at some point.

LC: Oh dear [laughs]. Well, that's quite a good question. And I was not a good business woman. I had no clue. I was not even really interested in making money. I was interested in the outcome of the project, and then I realize oh my god, 00:22:00I've got to-I've got to be able to make it sustainable, otherwise I can't do this for very long. So, I think I mentioned the last time, we took this class at LCC, the Farm Business Management program, did I tell you that?

CP: I don't think so.

LC: Okay, well it's like the best thing. It's the best thing ever [laughs]. It's a three-year program, and the teacher, you go to a class once a month and then the teacher comes to your farm and teaches you the basics of business. So, that was the entire-my entire universe of anything related to business. And...so, I was able to take at least that idea of like the revolutionary idea that you had to sell something for more than it cost you to produce it-wow, like for people 00:23:00who just grow food to eat it, that's not a concept, right? You're just thinking do I have enough to get me through the winter. That was my original plan for farming.

But, so I started understanding a lot more about [laughs], well I started understanding what-there was a big hole in my knowledge, and so I had-oh my god, it's actually embarrassing-I made up [laughs], I made up two complete accounting systems that were almost [laughs], oh my god, it's like starting from the caveman and the wheel, trying to learn how to account for things, and what should you record and what should you not. And the first one didn't work very well and got more sophisticated, so I-and by hand-I still have copies of these 00:24:00dumb records, because I could not throw them away-all by hand, I transferred from one accounting system to another accounting system, which was then based on you have to make a profit.

And the first one was just how do you share a communal economy equally and fairly. That's what the first one was based on, which was what we needed at our intentional community. And it counted labor as well as monetary inputs, so this was an unconventional accounting system. Then, when I got to farming, I got a different idea, and then I went to-oh my god-an accounting class at my famous LCC again. And the teacher-the first day of class, the teacher started talking about double-entry accounting, and I went oh my god, it's like a new religion! 00:25:00It's a new religion for me. It solved every problem I ever had, including something I didn't know the name of, but I had the concept of, which was depreciation. I didn't know the name. But I had been-I had been trying to figure out to deal with this thorny issue [laughs] on my own dumb accounting system.

So, she of course, they had a book; got the book, read the whole entire book before the next class, and then I brought in my homemade accounting system and said "look at this, this is depreciation, this-" and she's like "this doesn't make any sense at all to me." But I said "I see it, I see the light! I see the light." So, by the next week I had transferred my entire accounting system to double-entry accounting, by hand, on these big sheets of paper that you used to 00:26:00buy for accounting with like 18 columns and all this stuff. Oh my gosh. But it was an enlightenment, and it was one of the best things. It was like one of the fastest things to ever enter my mind, because I had struggled with it so much on my own, so when they presented it to me all laid out, I was just like oh, it was the best thing ever.

So, since I learned accounting [laughs], life has been much easier. Much easier. And I-then I struggled along in trying to figure out how to set my rate for consulting, and I-some years I would have a profit and some years I wouldn't, and some years I didn't know whether I did or not really, so I decided okay, next step I need to learn how to do this. So, I went to Smith Family Bookstore 00:27:00and bought a used book on how to run a consulting business. Once again, they had a little-now this was just in a book, but I made it into a spreadsheet, because by that time I had a rudimentary computer-about how to calculate out-how to say okay, I need to have this much money as an owner's draw, and so then to calculate backwards how much time do I need to have off, how much time do I need for marketing, how, you know, how many hours can I work and be-remember I have a young kid at that time, so that was an issue-and then you have to make the equation balance.

And ever since then, that was all I needed. Two books, and that was it. I haven't ever studied business in any other way, but I've been profitable every single year since [laughs]. So, that's-and actually I've given that-now the darn 00:28:00book is out of print, so I have actually copied this, this chapter, and sent it to other people who've come to me saying "how do you become a consultant?" Say "this is all you need to know, here's this, and here's my spreadsheet. This is all you need." [Laughs]. Now, I don't know whether it's worked for them, but it worked for me [laughs].

CP: You mentioned the Organically Grown Company. I'd like to know more about that.

LC: Oh boy. Well, I have had a working relationship with OGC since 1989, till now. We have never...never had a break, and we've always worked together on really incredible projects. So, OGC, as I said, they hired me to be their horticultural consultant, and at that time there were like 40 farms involved with OGC as-the ones that I worked with anyway, approximately. And my job was to 00:29:00go around to the farms and try to identify what was going wrong and was going right.

And so, basically they hired me-they had a concept-so, have you interviewed David Lively yet? Okay, well David Lively was my boss, and David Lively was a big picture thinker, right? So, he gets these big ideas, but...a lot of times relies on other people to either help or to fully implement the idea. And so, that's a good pairing for me, because I'm a person who can implement an idea. So, David came to me and said-well, actually I was there working at night in my volunteer job with Jack Gray and Robert DeSpain. That's when we were writing the 00:30:00state law, and at the same time, they were trying to hire a person who was going to be this horticultural consultant.

And they were having trouble finding someone who could fit, because you could either have a classically trained agronomist type person who didn't know anything about organic, or you could have a person from organic who didn't have enough scientific background or-they were having trouble finding someone. So, I was not looking for a job, but when the other-they hired another person and...didn't work out. They didn't feel like they could actually do it when they got going. So, they-David-offered the job to me, and at first I was like wow, okay. How would I work for someone else? And like the concept of working for someone else was completely foreign to me.

So, I said "well okay, I'll give it a shot." And you know how much I got paid? $7.50 an hour, which was actually, to me, a good salary, plus you got this unknown thing called benefits, and I was like "what is benefits?" I mean, I had no clue what they were talking about. They kept telling me this was such a good thing, and finally I said "I don't know what you mean by benefits, could you tell me what benefits are?" and they're going "oh, you get to go to the dentist, you get to go to the doctor, all these-you get a vacation." I'm like "oh wow, that does sound good! I think I'll try that." [Laughs].

So, I took the job, and I had the best darn time working there. I enjoyed being around the other people. Now, I think I was like the 23rd employee or something, so it was still a small staff, and they had a smaller, much smaller warehouse 00:32:00than they have now, on Prairie Road, when I worked there. And I got a little office and they bought me a desk, and they said "here, start a program of helping growers. We are growers; we need to have better quality." And so, basically it was just like somebody saying "start a business," so I just kind of did my thing again.

And I-one of the things I really enjoyed there was I started this program for monitoring, where we taught the farmers-I made formalized sheets and everything, and they were supposed to report in once a week. They were supposed to fill out a little form, and they just put in the box with their vegetables that they were sending it, you know, with the paperwork, and that piece would come to me and I would read it and say "oh my gosh, they're-it looks like they're having trouble 00:33:00here, here, here." So, I could call them, and a lot of times they could either put a sample in the next delivery, like I'd say "send me a sample of your bean-pull up three bean plants, and make sure you get the roots, and send them here," and they'd put them in a bag and I could see if there was a problem. That was the first level. If they started having bigger problems, I could then know which farms to go to.

So, then we were having a yearly-well, another part of it was a yearly grower conference where we would identify-so, we would have metrics then: what were the problems, how many were insects, how many were diseases, which crops were affected. And so, we started really making a study of where the problems were and what could we do about it. So, then we'd say "okay, biggest problem is garlic, we're having lots of problems on garlic, so we're going to get"-luckily by then-"someone from OSU to come and talk to our growers," who were all now 00:34:00commercial growers.

And we'd get the best garlic expert that OSU would have, and you know what? They never said no. I would call them up out of the blue and say "hi, I'm from OGC. We would like to know-we need to know what you know. We're going to have, you know, many growers here, they're all commercial skilled growers; can you please come? Here are the problems we had." And since I had the metrics, they said "oh yeah, sure. We can see you're organized," and they never said no. I was really grateful. So, we would have that, try to educate the growers for the next season-that was always held in the fall, so the goal was finish the season, have the class so then the growers could implement the changes the next year.

So, that was my little corner of OGC. Other than that, it was, oh my gosh, again 00:35:00a, like boom and bust business, depending on what the growing season was like and how they could truck in stuff from other places, and people trying to solve problems that nobody even knew existed the week before, and doing a darn good job of it and having growers involve-because the growers owned the co-op, and the whole co-op at that point, so they have, you know, they put their money in and they were hoping that this would be some infrastructure for them to market their vegetables from their farms together, because at that point you pretty much had to pool it, because we didn't have enough volume other than pooling.

So since then, OGC, you know, has become a real institution here in-especially in Lane County, but really all over Oregon too. They're the biggest wholesaler 00:36:00in the Pacific Northwest, of organic products, now. And they have a very big, I would say organic civic responsibility heart. So, they've funded things, they've helped growers, like they do things like if a grower can't afford to bankroll their seeds, OGC will give them a loan, and then they pay it back slowly when they bring the crops in. So, they've really-they've done so much. They-for keeping farms afloat and keeping organizations afloat, they basically have played a large role in starting organicology, and the Oregon Organic Coalition. So, they've done so much. Really they've contributed immensely to the 00:37:00infrastructure in this whole area of the Pacific Northwest, for farmers and organic as a whole.

So, that was a great place to work. That really met my-I mean their goals are very much the same as mine, so working there was super fun for me; really, really fun. And the reason that I left was because I wrote a grant to-actually to write one of those books that I gave to you last time, that went much bigger than I ever expected it to be, because I had done a-the first book was written with money from the Oregon Department of Ag, at their request, but then that idea got used in the federal law, and so I got a big grant from the USDA that was multiyear, and I couldn't do that and work at OGC. So, we parted completely 00:38:00amicably, and I've continued to do project work for them and now am running the Organic Produce Wholesalers Coalition with folks from OGC.

So, we have just had many fluid, many very, very fluid but productive connections over all these decades. It's, you know, they're the only client I still work for with no contract, so that tells you a lot. It's just call me up, I do it, they pay me. It's that simple. So, it's been a-it's really family for me.

CP: Can you talk more about like the relationship, I suppose, between the organic community and Extension and Experiment stations? From talking to Harry, it sounds like originally it was not particularly strong-

LC: Yes [laughs].

CP: But it improved over time.

LC: Well, if that's what he said, he was very diplomatic [laughs].

CP: [Laughs] that's my phrasing of it.

LC: [Still laughing] well, you're very diplomatic. I'll give you a story of what it was like in the beginning. So...my first-I won't use the person's name, because that's only fair, but that was a very influential Extension agent in the OSU system who we would really would have liked to have been on good terms with, because he dealt with vegetables, and that's what we really needed. We really needed him to come through for us. So, they-I was working at OGC and they were having a group tour of a whole bunch of OSU Extension agents in a van who were 00:40:00going around looking at organic farms in, I think they went to Washington and Oregon, but there were also people from Idaho in this van for some reason. I don't know why. But they-so, they decided to come to OGC, and I was supposed to present our way of helping growers, my horticultural consulting job.

And so, I was ready to go. I had charts, I had my metrics, I was giving them information, and I-of course my sell was "and here's exactly how you could help us," right, that's why I was doing it. So, they got there and we had cleaned up our lunch room, which was normally a complete mess, and really mud all over the floor, and cleaned this up for them to sit at a table. It was the only big table we had, and they-this Extension agent started making fun of-one of the farmers 00:41:00who they had visited unfortunately had a broccoli crop with lots of aphids on it, and that got my hackles up. I was not happy with that.

And so, I asked them if they could, you know, kind of settle down, and they were heck-this one guy was heckling me, and so I said "you need to chill out." That's-and you know, so this is a young woman saying this to a very influential OSU Extension agent, and I said his name as well, I said "you need to chill out." And he didn't, he continued, and I said "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave if you cannot be respectful of our organic growers and our efforts to provide services that we feel you should be providing as farmers, 00:42:00part of the farming nation here in Oregon." And so, the other Extension agents were just silent. They didn't say anything, they didn't say "yeah, we agree," or nothing. Nobody said a word.

So finally, he did kind of stop being so blatant about it, and I gave my presentation. And then the other agents asked really good questions, and I could see they were trying to be supportive, which I greatly appreciated. So, then it was over and one of the other Extension agents from Oregon came up to me and said "gosh, I'm really embarrassed. I'm so sorry. You know, we really do-some of us really do want to help. We see-we know there's barriers." We both knew what the barrier was [laughs]. And so that-but that was one of the worst experiences I'd had with Extension agents.

But then, as we started getting coming more into our own, we-like I said, 00:43:00whenever I asked OSU to work with us in our grower conference, they never said no. They began to let us use the facilities at OSU to have conferences for Tilth. That was a huge help. They started writing in our Tilth newsletter-it was still a newsletter back then-you know, contributing articles. Like we would beg them, "could you please write us an article? Do you have anything that you've already published that we could publish again? Do you have anything, pictures, anything?" You know, "could you send us pictures of five broccoli plants with different nutrient deficiencies? Could- anything? " You know, we would pub-anything that would come, we would publish. We were grateful to get it.

So, but since-over the years, you know, it's become, I think now, very much 00:44:00symbiotic. We started getting-one of the big things, a big hurdle was we started getting research grants from the federal government that required OSU to cooperate with farmers, and I think that was a big selling point for them, was oh wow, look, here's a way I can bring out my latent interest in organic and actually bring money into OSU. And it was like the win, win, win.

So, now I feel very comfortable with OSU Extension, and OSU in general. I mean, I am grateful for OSU being in our state. I advocated for-I mean, I went to D.C. and advocated for a specific grant funding for research on fire blight, alternatives to treatments for fire blight, and a lot of what our-having our 00:45:00grass roots actually made a big grant come into OSU. I mean, Peter DeFazio was like "wow, this is amazing! I didn't really think this was going to happen," but here it was. So, that was great, and it helped tremendously on the farm.

So, I feel like now we're on a roll. We've come such a long way. It's an absolute reversal of a very negative interaction to a very positive one, and that is-that's very fulfilling. It's wonderful. I am so glad to see it. Now OSU is one of the ones like when you're talking, like when you're in just an organic circle and there's no other people around and you say "well, this is what OSU says," people go "oh! Oh, okay. All right." You wouldn't believe how many times I'm citing OSU in my policy work now. It's very fulfilling, yeah. So, a complete turnaround.

CP: I want to ask about a couple of organizations that at least interfaced, or maybe even spun off from Oregon Tilth, and the first would be the Western Alliance of Certification Organizations, and I'm asking this specifically because I want to know a little bit more about Yvonne Frost.

LC: Okay, well that's a good place-that's a good nexus. So, in the [laughs], in the beginning, there was Yvonne Frost [laughs]. Let's see. Okay, so with regard to-oh, so you want to know...all right, so there were three-we had the three big states: California, Washington and Oregon who, you know, traded a lot of organics, and we had slightly different standards, and we also had different certification agencies. So, by that time we had WSDA and Tilth, and CCOF was the 00:47:00main one we worked with. There was also QAI, but we did not work with them very much because they were privately owned, and at that time were not interested in really sharing a lot, but CCOF was. So, Yvonne got it in her head that we should have an alliance of these certification agencies on the west coast and we should just give it a shot. So, she gets on the phone. Now, she was a phone woman!

CP: [Laughs]

LC: [Laughs] she was a phone woman! She would get on the phone and talk for hours. Hours. If she wasn't on the phone, the only other thing she'd be doing is going to the bathroom or having a meeting. That was it. So, she never really got good at using email. You'd have-she'd have the staff print out all her emails. She never typed, she never wrote, except for like on napkins, but she-on the 00:48:00phone, watch out. And she had this kind of a loud and kind of a grating voice, so on the phone, boy, if she was talking to you, I could hear every word, sitting where I am.

So, Yvonne got on the phone [laughs], talked to the people in California, and they said, "yeah, yeah. We're in, we'll do it." And the people, folks from Washington, were right onboard right away, too. So, we had some big meetings, and we started in Ashland because it was kind of like halfway for everybody. And we-Yvonne's method of travel was rent a really big car, like a Cadillac-I'm not good on cars, but I think they were Cadillacs-and pile in as many people and go like a bat out of hell down with her like, what did she call it, like the cop 00:49:00buster or something [laughs], which she would speed like crazy, and they're like [gasps] "slow down fast" when this thing would start beeping. So this, this was your trip with Yvonne, like you're in the back of the seat going "oh my god, am I going to make it?" And the whole time, talking a mile a minute.

So, we'd get down there, and we had-actually I facilitated the first meeting of the-it was called the West-well, we had no name at this point, but it ended up being called the Western Alliance of Certification Organizations, which was intentionally acronymized [sic] as WACO. And so, we had a big chart and we tried to look at all the main elements of standards and try to say "okay, what do you do here, what do you do here?" So basically, it was an in-person comparative analysis. Now I know that's called comparative analysis, but we did not know 00:50:00what we were doing yet, so we did everything face to face, because a lot of it was super contentious. We disagreed.

So, it was better to do this face to face, because we said okay, now let's see, Oregon and Washington are having a three-year transition. California has a one. So let's see, who needs-which one doesn't fit in here? But of course, that meant they had to-when you had to raise a standard, it was tough. It was going to put-make a difficulty for your growers. So, we would, you know, hash it out and say "well, how can we fix that?" "Well, how about if you raised it one year each year so that the people-you don't lose people, but the new people coming in have to have a two-year transition, until you get up to three?" So, eventually we all got to three years for pesticides and fertilizers, and that was great.

So, the idea was we were going to try to first get our own agreements together about where we were aiming, and then use that goal to harmonize the state standards. That was the big goal, and that was a really big goal for like 10 people sitting around a table, mostly arguing. I mean, arguing a lot, or disagreeing. And-but you know what, we got there. We did get there, and when Oregon and California were making their state laws, because we acted first before Washington did-Washington had a little bit different system than we did-so we acted first and we did get a lot of things harmonized in the next draft of each of our laws.

So, that was a very big vision that Yvonne initiated, and in her-you know, 00:52:00Yvonne was not a detail person. She really relied on Harry and I to do a lot of the standards, like conceptualizing, and certainly getting it down on paper. After a while, Harry was no longer doing that writing, and I was doing the standards and the procedures and the materials list and all that stuff that I actually, I know I told you last time I never thought I was a writer, but it turned out I had some hidden talent as a technical writer. So, I don't write plays and novels like Harry does, but you would not believe the tens of thousands of pages of technical writing I've done over all these years.

So, that became my job, and I became-at that point I was the policy...what did they call me? Policy director of Tilth, I guess. And so, this keeping these standards harmonized and dealing with the other folks and the state law was what 00:53:00I was doing. And that all basically arose out of Yvonne's idea, like we need to be able to ship stuff back and forth and we need to be able to process stuff in Oregon that we got from California. That was the real true thing that Yvonne noticed, was we needed product to go into our processing. And so, that was-Yvonne, when that was clear to Yvonne, there was nothing that was going to stand in her way. So, it didn't matter what the big project was; if there was a solution, she was going to go for it.

And that's the kind of person she was. Yvonne was, she's...oh my gosh. Now, Yvonne and I have had both a love and hate relationship, which probably everyone has had with Yvonne, because she was a very...she did not let things get in her way, and if you were in her way, she was just going to mow you down [laughs]. 00:54:00But at the same time, we-she gave me many opportunities in my professional career to go to conferences and to interact on the federal stage, so I would not really be where I am today without Yvonne giving me opportunity, kicking me in the butt, and also running roughshod over me to the point where I just had to standup for myself and, you know, take a stand. So, oh man, those were some tough lessons. But that's what Yvonne gave to me, so.

She also gave me a waffle iron when I got married. [Laughter from both]. And she was the first one to notice I had an engagement ring. So, see what I mean? That's the kind of person she was. She was very involved with people's own personal lives, but also she had big goals. So yeah, it was a very long, complex 00:55:00relationship, but one I wouldn't have traded for the world. I mean, it was an amazing run, me and Yvonne together.

CP: What was her background? This personality was important to this community, but very different, I gather, from...

LC: Oh my god, you would not believe it. So Yvonne, when we knew her, was pretty overweight, but one time when the Tilth office was in her house, we went to her house, and on the wall was a picture of this beautiful bombshell blond figure skater with a short little skating outfit on, and that was Yvonne. In her younger years, she was athletic and she was a professional figure skater, and her husband Rich was a drummer for many different like Hollywood type acts. So, 00:56:00they were a pair. The pair of-together they were, I mean they were a hoot. I loved Rich dearly. I mean he [laughs], yeah, he was a wonderful guy. He went on a lot of these trips with us, and went to bookstores while we were doing our organic stuff, but we often had dinners together and things like that.

So, Yvonne was a-was a figure skater. Somehow I think I remember she had something to do with a floral business. That may be wrong, but I have some recollection of that, and then she was doing a lot of restaurant businesses with Rich involved as well. So, she was good at entertaining and putting on a spread for people, like Rich would make these lasagnas in these giant pans, and we would feed all these farmers who would come in to these Tilth meetings. And so, 00:57:00they were like...it was like Yvonne putting on a party for all of these farmers to come and get together. So, she knew how to bring people together, and that was something I didn't know. That was not in my skillset at all, compared to Yvonne.

She just had no fear of like "yeah sure, we'll just rent a big room and we'll just bring in this and we'll bring in that, and we'll have these pans magically show up, and these tons of ingredients," and OGC would be giving food for these things. It was wild, it was just wild how the whole thing-and then I would be the complete doubting Thomas, like I'd be like in the corner writing my policy report and just going "holy crap, I hope this thing will come together." And sure enough, at the last minute, everything was fine.

So, after a while I just gave up worrying about it. I just said okay, that's her 00:58:00thing, she's good at it, I'm not even going to worry. I'm just going to show up with my charts and my scroll and my-you know, because that's how we did-we didn't even have like slide projectors then-and show people what's going on. This is the policy scene. So, she was-she was-she could just have-she could pull things out with, I don't know, she just didn't have-she was fearless in many, in many ways, and in many ways where I'm fearful. So there you go, we were a good team [laughs].

CP: The other organization I want to ask you about is the Oregon Materials Review Institute.

LC: Okay, another big Yvonne presence there too. So, let's see. That came out of-we had a joint materials review system, so Oregon Tilth with CCOF, and Diana 00:59:00Tracy, who runs an analytical lab at that point in Tech-Labs. She and I were the main players who would be contributing to this from Tilth. And then there were a bunch of folks from CCOF who were also participating and playing a very big role in this.

And so, our goal was to try to have a harmonized materials list. Now, this is the hardest part of the organic standards to harmonize. It's very detailed, and it was also very-when they were first developed, they were regionally based. So, California was somewhat different than Oregon. So, our goal was okay, let's sit down, hash it out, and figure out how to do this. So, when the federal law came into play, it was passed, but there were 10 years where was no standards.

So, we said wow, if we're trying to implement this throughout the country, we've got-we can see we've got to come up with a harmonized materials list for the NOP eventually, so we better do it on our own first, because we know more than they do [laughs]. That was really our thinking, and actually it was true at that point. So, we...Yvonne and a bunch of us sat-Yvonne once again arranged for this meeting held at the Hilton in Eugene in a meeting room, and Yvonne had the food and all that stuff again, and we pulled together a bunch of people from across the country who were known materials experts; who were doing this work like for OCIA, and a couple of people who were selling materials, or had materials companies, and we said wow, how can we solve this problem.

So, we said okay, we need a nationally based materials institute who could do some of this work of reviewing materials and come up with a list of brand name materials that were okay for organic. Well again, another giant project. Holy mackerel, we're just like, I mean even I have to say, at the meeting I said "oh my god, this is going to be like as bad as an organic EPA!" That's what I said, because I realized the scope of the mission here. And sure enough, that's exactly what it turned out to be like [laughs]. But taking it one little chunk at a time, you could actually get there.

So, we did start up an office here in Eugene, and I was the first policy director. And they hired Brian Baker from-who was-had been working at CCOF, 01:02:00moved to Eugene, because I was a young-I had a young child then and I couldn't move. Plus I was married. So, Brian moved from California to Eugene. Still lives in Eugene. And we became the folks who were working on this. Brian-we eventually figured out that Brian would focus on the brand name materials and I would focus on the generic materials.

Now, if you know what that means, the generic materials would basically become the national list for the NOP, and the brand name materials were the ones that you would-you would use this generic list to review materials and say okay, it's made up of three things, and these are all on this list, so now we know that this brand name material, like DiPel BT is okay. So, these were basically two 01:03:00separate streams that needed different work, and OMRI was tumultuous at the beginning, as these organizations always are. You know, you have to be able to put up with a lot of uncertainty and find solutions and deal with people's own strengths and witnesses.

So we-again, it was tumultuous, but we did manage to have an office, we did come up with a generic list, and Brian did start out a materials review system. CCOF and Tilth put together their-we were both reviewing materials, and we just declared "we're not doing that anymore, we're doing it through OMRI," and then OCIA, which was a big certifier in the Midwest, also was brought in. So, with these three main players, we were able to kind of get a kind of a starting 01:04:00point, a big enough foundation that after a while all the others starting just saying "okay, that's a good idea. I'll become a-" so, the certifiers would become subscribers to this, and then they could use the brand names list, which would go to the farmers and they would take it to the feed store and say "okay, I'll buy this, I'll buy this, oh, better not buy that, I'll get de-certified."

So, that's what OMRI is about, and OMRI now has very big offices on Willamette Street here in Eugene, run by a very wonderful woman named Peggy Miars, who I-now, Peggy does have a background, guess what, in business. Hallelujah. So, she really stabilized it and professionalized it and made it more efficient, 01:05:00made the employees happy, like gave them this odd thing called benefits, things like this. You know, like she actually knew how to run a business. She has really training in business. So-plus she's the type of person that people just like to work with. I'd love to work for OMRI myself, you know, if I had the opportunity. But anyway, that's kind of where it started and where it is now, and again, another thing that Tilth, along with others, you know, was a, you know, it was an outgrowth of us working with others. So, lots of community interactions there.

CP: There's a central question I'm still trying to answer for myself, which is related to standards and materials review, and I asked Harry. It was made very clear to me that a big moment for Oregon Tilth early on was developing these standards that nobody else had.

LC: Yeah.

CP: And we're talking about OMRI now, we're creating a list, we're looking at different products, different materials and deciding what's okay and what's not, but how do you figure that out? How do you figure out if something's okay or not? Harry said you basically sat in a room and figured it out, but what exactly happened there?

LC: [Laughs]. That's what we did in the beginning.

CP: Yeah.

LC: We said-well, we had the basic idea that natural is good and synthetic is bad, and we also knew like some other specific criteria, like for fertilizers they should be-they should not be something that decomposes rapidly. They should be long term contributors to soil fertility, like rock phosphate is way different than, you know, chemical types of phosphate that go in and pump up the plants right away. Another rubric, or founding principle, for materials review is feed the soil, not the plant. So, that's where like the long term 01:07:00implications come in for fertilizers. So, we had a few general ideas, but Harry is absolutely right.

When we sat-the first way we sat down, we just said "what do you use?" Like we had-we said, "well, what do you need on your farm?" and we asked a bunch of farmers, and so they said "well, I use rock phosphate, I use lime, and I use BT, and I need something for fire blight," for example. That's what one farmer might say. And "yeah, I use copper on my blueberries," and they would-because we didn't have a list. They were bringing in like their-they were looking at what they bought at the feed store. Their receipts was how we got the original information. And then-so, we kind of knew...my approach to it was to try to make a universe, a list of what was in use at the time, and see what commonality they 01:08:00had, and then decide whether this fit with the basic principles of organic.

So, we were pretty clear on what a lot of principles of organic were, and that's how we started with materials review, and also standards writing, but materials review was tricky because we already had a lot of people farming, and we knew they were not just doing this with magic. They were doing-they needed certain things. They need fertilizers, they need pest control, you know, mostly is what they need. And then, in Tilth later on, we found out oh my gosh, we have processors, and they need certain things too, which was harder for me because I don't know much about processing.

So, we started out making a rudimentary list, and there were other folks doing this all over the country, all over the country. People were doing this same 01:09:00process. It was like the Awakening or the Enlightenment or something like that, where everyone was just sitting around doing the same exact process. It was organic all over the country. So, that's how we started, and after a while we-one pivotally important moment was I was asked to be on a...it was called OFPANA then, the Organic Foods Production Association of North America, but now it's called OTA, thankfully, the Organic Trade Association, thank God, because who can remember that name, right?

Anyway, they created this taskforce, and the folks from Oregon Tilth and CCOF were asked to participate to try to take a look at this nationally and to create the first OTA materials list, which we then had materials-they're like materials 01:10:00supplying companies, like there were catalogs that you could buy organic stuff, because you couldn't get it from your feed store lots often times. You had to send away for it. The approved ones were in catalogs. So, those folks also were playing a role, saying "this is what farmers are buying, this is what's used."

So, then we started having big debates about what is the basis for reviewing materials, and there were lots of different schools of thought. There was natural and synthetic, there was, what was the word...I can't remember the word right off the top of my head. I'll remember it, though. There was this idea, was if it wasn't found in nature, it couldn't be used, and we were stuck on inerts, 01:11:00because inerts are in all the pesticides and they're not natural, they're almost all synthetic, so then what would we do? So, we had a lot of conceptual things to-hurdles to get over, and we made some exceptions. We made an exception for certain types of inert. So, we would take the universe and always narrow it down to the best we could possibly do, and the narrowest that we could possibly live with. To this day, these things have been enshrined in the national list.

And the books that I gave you last time, those explain in detail-if anyone ever wants to know the details-it shows the evolution of this thinking from just "yep, that looks good to me" to a scientific basis and a set of criteria for judging these materials, which really, truly is in the federal law and the 01:12:00federal regulations. So, those books became the criteria in the federal law which, for better or for worse, that's what we all live with now, which came out of my brain.

CP: Yeah.

LC: It was-so, yeah. And the way that happened was the...Organic State Department of Ag, we needed a way to implement our law in Oregon, so they asked me to write that first book. It's like "please explain this. How should a state agency implement this crazy idea? We can't just say 'it's organic,' we have to have something to base it on." And so, I wrote the first book, and then because that book was actually in writing and out of my head, it got used when-it came 01:13:00to the attention of Kathleen Merrigan in D.C. who was the-she was the aide for Senator Leahy, and she said "let's get this person involved." And so, I got called to D.C. to work on the federal law with her, to write the section about materials.

And so, let's see, I can't remember exactly what the timeline was, but I was working on the second book by that point and it was getting really a lot clearer about what it was going to take to actually evaluate materials at the federal level, compliant with international equivalency agreements, so it got a lot more sophisticated. And in those books, you can see the evolution of that thinking. So, anyone who's ever interested in materials evaluation, that's one thing they should look at. Yeah, and they can call me if I'm still around [laughs].

CP: I'm interested to know more about your D.C. experience. It sounds like it was Senator Leahy on one side and then Representative DeFazio on the other.

LC: Yeah, yeah. Well, that was probably one of the most exciting things I've ever been involved in, really. It was the chance of a lifetime. I... well okay, so I got called in by Kathleen Merrigan; they were looking all over the country for experts in different areas that were contentious, and people were arguing. So, they said "can you come to D.C.?" And I'm like wow, I have no clue how I'm going to get there, I don't know what's going to happen. So, in the meantime we had this big convening of a farmer group called OFAC, which was Organic Farmers Associations Council, so it was basically certifiers contributing their experts 01:15:00to create a brain trust, for all across the country. That's what it was to me.

So, this is-the first meeting was in, oh my God, it was in Kansas, Leavenworth Kansas, I think that was-and we went to...Kathleen was there and she was saying "look, here's the areas we need to come to agreement on; what are you going to do? Where are we going to land on all these areas?" What does that remind you of? WACO, right? It was familiar to me. So, they asked me to come and make a presentation on the Oregon State law and the materials list, which I did, and in the course of doing that, that was the first one to have a materials list, the first state law with a materials list.

So, Kathleen started, you know, took me aside and started asking me a lot of questions, and some I could answer and some I couldn't, and some I could kind of spinout ideas for. And so, then she said "okay, you need to be involved." So, I 01:16:00became-gosh, I don't know exactly how this happened, except for Kathleen wanted me there-I became the one who would be the representative of OFAC in the federal law process, along with Patti LaBoyteaux from California, because of course you had to have someone from California. Absolutely important, because they already had a huge organic business there.

So...wow, it was completely like trying to swim up Niagara Falls. Unbelievable. I didn't know anything about it, I've never been in a congressional building, I didn't know anything; I just tried to go and tell people what I knew about organic and hope for the best. And yeah, I did not fit in, I did not look the 01:17:00part. In fact, when I was in an elevator with someone who-you know, they dress very formally there, still to this day, and I pretty much dressed like I am today, with a jumper and, you know, a hand-knit sweater usually, and I was in the elevator and she said "where are you"-we were the only ones there-"where are you from?" And I said "well, I'm from Oregon and I'm here working on organic stuff with Senator Leahy," and she said "well, I figured you were probably from some state like that, or Ireland." [Laughs]. So, after that I just quit worrying about everything, because I just figured it was better to be ourselves.

So, I went to a series of meetings. I was basically commuting between Cottage 01:18:00Grove and D.C. I'd never done anything like this at all. I mean really, I hadn't really flown that much before. So, and we had an unfurnished third floor tiny apartment in D.C. where Tom Forster, who was working with OFAC, and was my friend from Oregon Tilth, was the main lobbyist for OFAC, and basically organic as a whole. And so, Patti and I would show up with our sleeping bags and we would sleep on the floor, and that's how we were lobbyists.

We went in on the subway, which I didn't know how to do either. I mean, Tom had to show me how to use the subway, and then I was forever after thinking I would get lost, but luckily it was actually pretty easy, pretty logical. And I was 01:19:00present at many historical meetings. It was absolutely incredible. And my famous moment was, we were having a knockdown, drag out, last-minute fight about the materials list, all-you know, that's what I was there to do-and the people representing the processing side, which was a very high-paid, D.C. lawyer lobbyist, was telling us "oh, we're not going to have-we're not going to allow any synthetic materials." So, I took our OTA, now materials list, that we had, and I redacted every single thing that had any synthetic element into it, and I simply held it up and I said "this will kill the organic world. You cannot do this. You will not have any farming happening."

And this meeting was filmed, and I have a copy of it, but it was like a video that got transferred to a-it's really crazy, but you can see me saying this, with my little chart, and they-and luckily-so we said-they said "no, we're not"-this lawyer lobbyist, I mean I never met-this guy came from a freaking other planet from me. You could not even talk to him about organic. He did not know anything. And so, we're sitting there telling, you know, what farmers in Oregon and California need, and he can't relate to this at all. So, we said "okay, if it goes this way, OFAC is pulling out."

So, Patti and I promptly went down to the cafeteria in Longworth, which was where Peter DeFazio's office is, and he told us, "just go down there and eat. That's where you should eat, because you won't get lost." I mean he-we used his 01:21:00office literally as a base of operations. We had all our PACs in there, everything. And so, we were there and we tried to call people on the phone, but of course in those days there was no cellphones. We were using the, you know, put-the-money-in thing, and of course it was a different time zone, so nobody was ready to talk to us, so we just cried. We just literally sat there and hugged each other and cried until Tom came and said "you need to stop crying. We need to get in there; we need to figure out what to do. We can't-we do need to have OFAC pull out, but that needs to be the killing of the bill, then."

So, we went to the ladies' room, dried our eyes off, got ourselves fixed up and went into the room, and as we were going in, I found Roger Blobaum, who worked 01:22:00for CSPI at the time, Center for Science in the Public Interest, and he was in this negotiating session as a consumer group, and I said "look Roger, this is it, this is over, unless someone speaks up on the behalf of the farmers besides the farmers." And as a consumer group-now you would never see this happening now-but as a consumer group, Roger, and he's very...he's a Midwesterner, originally from Iowa, so he has that kind of calm way, and he just said "I think we need to side with the farmers. We need to listen to what their saying. Lynn and Patti know what's actually needed. They've given us good information, real information, and we need to listen. So, let's do this again and let's listen. Let's not have, you know, predisposed ideas."

So, we explained it again, and I had my little book from the Department of Ag that I had worked on, I said "look, you know, we can-" so we came to a compromise where we would have categories of materials, main categories that were in use now-they're basically like grandfathered in, in the law-and then we would buildout from there based on these criteria, and the criteria were also put in the law. And that's how the compromise came about. The main piece that we argued about was a compromise thanks to Roger Blobaum speaking up on behalf of organic farmers.

It is on tape somewhere, but [laughs] anyway, that to me was the absolute turning point for the whole-that was the Senate side. Then, lo and behold, so we got it through the Senate and we had-Leahy was on the ag committee, so he 01:24:00personally made it happen. Okay, then we're like okay, at that point we've got no one on the House ag side, ag committee, who's remotely going to introduce this bill. So, we're all sitting around, and Kathleen's there and we're saying okay, check him off, check him off, check her off, him, him, him, no, can't find anybody, and I said "well, how about Peter DeFazio from Oregon? I know he's interested in this, and he used to work for Jim Weaver, who was involved in that," and Kathleen said "that idea has legs. You go talk to him."

I'm like "me? Really? I don't know how to," you know. I knew Peter because he was the county commissioner and I had made public comment to the county commissioners on behalf of small farmers before, and Peter had expressed an 01:25:00interest and asked me to give him more information about how small farms could actually function, and like how did we make a living, and what was subscription farm-he was literally interested and asked me specific questions. So, I thought okay, let's give it a shot. So, when he came back to this Eugene office, I asked for an appointment to come in and talk to him, and they gave me the appointment. I mean, they didn't know me from anybody, and I walked in and just said "look, we've got this through the Senate, we need somebody to champion it, it's this far along, I helped write this point, I have confidence it, would you do it?" and without batting an eye, he said "yes."

Simple as that and I'm like "what?" And so, he said "it's going to be really hard though, because you realize you should have someone from the ag committee. I'm not on the ag committee." I said "well, we've already been down that road. 01:26:00You know who's on the ag committee; you see anybody we should ask?" "Nope." So, he was in from then on and is still in to this day, and he has been a consistent supporter of organic and organic farmers ever since that moment. I mean he's-and you know, he-that was not an easy pull from him, because he was not on the ag committee. Of course, the ag committee voted it down. He...so, it wasn't included in the farm bill, and he had to add it as an amendment on the floor, and he had lined up the Democrats to vote for it.

So, I was then working at OGC by this time. I was actually doing my horticultural consulting job, and we didn't have, you know, we didn't have the internet or anything then, so his office here in Eugene said "when the vote happens, when we think the vote is going to happen, we'll call you and you can 01:27:00come and watch it on our CSPAN TV." And so, I got to see the vote in Congress with Peter. They were all-you know, there's this long break when they vote in Congress. They vote, they state the case and then make the motion and then there's this long period, and I felt like I was just going to faint. I was just like my heart was pounding, and their-and the tally was going up and down, up and down, and the staffers were saying "don't worry, don't worry, he's done his job, he's got the Democrats lined up," but for the longest time all the Republicans came in and said "no, no, no, no, no," and then slowly, slowly it started to climb, and hallelujah, it passed.

So, OFPA was passed, and really, if we hadn't had somebody who was really willing to go to bat for us and take it, you know, through this...you know, I'm 01:28:00sure Kathleen understood all this stuff, but none of us understood the implications of how it was going to go, but he made it happen. So, that was an incredible opportunity, I mean just a really, a once in a lifetime miraculous opportunity, to be able to be involved in that and actually have written parts of OFPA and negotiated parts of OFPA, and now to have, in the rest of my professional life, see how it plays out, for better or for worse.

Yeah, so that's how it went. It was-yeah, Oregon played a pretty big part in that whole thing, and a lot of people don't really understand, because a lot of my funding at that point was paid for by OGC. Well, Oregon Tilth didn't even have enough money to do that kind of stuff. So, that's another big-hearted thing that OGC did for the organic community, and for me too. They never said no. I said, "you know, I got to have another plane ticket." [Snaps fingers], they 01:29:00never said no. So, that's kind of how it played out from my perspective. There were many, many people that worked on this from all over the country and, you know, some-there were consumer groups and environmental groups and farm groups, and lots of certifiers, and many, many, many meetings [laughs].

CP: So, that happened in 1990.

LC: Yeah, that was 1990, farm bill in 1990.

CP: My understanding is it took a little while for the bill to manifest in a real way.

LC: Yeah. I think the first NOSB meeting was like in 1992. Maybe it was earlier than that. No, I think it was the spring of 1992. Yeah, because the one in the fall of 1992 was right on Andrew, my son's, due date, so I didn't go to that one, but I did go to a bunch when I was pregnant, in Minnesota and in places 01:30:00like that.

So, they started trying to pull together the standards. So, now we have to do this all over again, pull together federal standards and federal materials list, all over again, starting from scratch with different people involved. Now we got the USDA, who doesn't really yet understand much about organic standards, and there's no NOP set up yet really, so they-it took 10 years of this process to get enough settled that they could actually put these standards into regulatory form. And in the meantime, in this process, they published the first regulatory rule in...I forget the date of that, when they published the first rule, but 01:31:00they-it was terrible. And you know, it had like the big three: they had GMOs, sewage sludge and, you know, just terrible ideas for-and the standards weren't well-written and the process for certification had big gaps in it.

So, that was-that was the one that received thousands, hundreds of thousands of comments, which by the way, in those days there was no big security risks in the USDA, so one time when I went to an NOSB meeting, I asked if I could see them, and I got to go down, down, down into the basement and see all these mail crates of all the comments. I think there were like 186,000 written, handwritten comments that were sent into the USDA and I got to see them just because I was curious [laughs].

But, so that rule didn't fly and they decided to rewrite it, and in the meantime 01:32:00OTA decided to write the American Organic Standards, based on the original USDA premise, with all the comments that had come in, of where people found holes. So, we would create a private sector package of standards fully formed, with a materials list, everything, accreditation, everything in it that the U-the idea was the USDA could use this when they would write the next rule. So, it was a proactive way of solving the problem, integrating it and proving a template. That was the idea.

So, I got to work on that project with Jim Riddle and Emily Brown Rosen. So, I was a writer of that standard as well. And, lo and behold, it did function. We got it done-oh my god, these time pressures, right? So, you had to get it done 01:33:00and then get it to the USDA so they could actually use it in their drafting process. So, when the next rule came out, we did notice substantial improvements, and that's the rule that's in place today. So, that made the NOP get implemented and the-the certification programs of the NOP get implemented in 2002, and an accreditation system came to oversee that.

So, that's the basic structure that we have now, and that was [blows air] another big chunk of work [laughs]. Just a lot-yeah, I mean that's why my life kind of went in phases with these different projects and different phases of development of the organic world, and I somehow got to work on lots of pivotal 01:34:00projects. In fact, that was my goal at that time, was to look for things that would create the next step up. Otherwise I wouldn't accept the work. I would have to feel like it was creating the next level of infrastructure or step forward. So, that was...yeah. And luckily I had the track record that people would often say okay, let's choose her to do that. So yeah, that's how I have tens of thousands of pages of technical writing on my computer still [laughs].

CP: Well, on that topic, you've done a lot of work that could be headed, lumped under the heading of technical advice, advisory work-

LC: Yes.

CP: With a lot of different organizations. There's a specific thing I want to ask you about though, because it stood out to me as being interesting and unique, and that was helping to draft national standards for organic bee keeping methods and honey products.

LC: Oh yeah. Wow, well that was I got selected for an NOSB taskforce, and I 01:35:00had...I had been a beekeeper on my farm, so I knew the ins and outs of it and the difficulties for trying to do it organically, because we were starting to have Varroa mites and some diseases where people would use antibiotics, which is not really used in organic. And so... What happened was, I had drafted an original version of standards for Oregon Tilth in the early days, and so that was kind of a contribution that got noticed, and so I got onto this taskforce at the NOSB and worked with a bunch of folks from around the country to try to come up with regulations. Something that could, again, be a template for a 01:36:00regulation, and now, since we have the NOSB, those things generally go before the NOSB; there's a recommendation, and then it turns into a regulation, and then hopefully it gets implemented.

So, we had a bunch of conference calls and worked together to draft a standard, hashed out a bunch of stuff. It got delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed by the USDA, but eventually in, I think we were in...Wisconsin NOSB meeting I think was where it first actually came to the light of day, at the NOSB. So, that meant that someone from the NOSB was willing to basically put this on the agenda and create a recommendation that these standards should be adopted. So, there is-they were adopted by the NOSB, and they did receive a positive recommendation 01:37:00for being turned into regulations, but they have not been implemented yet, mostly because the livestock side of organic, even right now we have a terrible problem where the livestock standards for humane care of livestock have been blocked by the Trump administration. They were approved by the Obama administration, but Trump has taken them off the table. So, there's a-actually, there's a comment period; you can write a comment up until January 17th in support of making these into regulations.

So, this has to do with much more important livestock, you know, like dairy and pork at this point. So, it got kind of sidelined while we were working on this other big piece about humane livestock care in the NOSB, and with the whole 01:38:00organic community. So, it's still a process, you know, but it is an-after recommendation, it's still on the USDA's website as a recommendation that has not been kind of made it through the USDA process yet. Plus the U.S., you know, the NOP, under the Trump administration, has lost staffing, and it has-it's not as...it's not as robust as it used to be, as far as being able to push things through.

They have a limit on how many rules that-regulations-can be put through the federal process right now, and so-and you know, Trump had the policy of "put one in, take two off," so yeah, writing-so any program now, based on regulatory updates, is in hot water, and that includes the NOP. So, I'm not sure how that's 01:39:00going to be resolved. Well, I could think of some ways to resolve it, but I won't say it right now [laughs].

CP: Well, in a broader sense, I think it's important to talk about this moment in time. This is an interview that's being deposited as a historical document, and this is a strange moment in American history. What has it been like for you and for the community in which you work to be operating under this administration?

LC: Well, if I had to give you a one word answer, I would say discouraging. We are making big strides in changing the face of organic agriculture, and yet the budget does not-the federal budget does not reflect that. The elements of the farm bill related to research are not fairly apportioned, like we always use the 01:40:00numbers that organic is about 5% of the full U.S. food supply, the value of it, but we get a 1% of the research, and we really need research. And not only that: our research on organic systems can be applied much more broadly to conventional systems. The opposite is not always true. Like, if you do a study on how to use-how to do soil sterilization with chemicals, we can't use that. If we do a study on how to decrease Verticillium wilt in soils organically by growing mustard or something like that, we can-that can be used by conventional growers.

So, I think we have to have a much more-basically it's got to be turned around. 01:41:00We have done our part for turning around agriculture, but the USDA needs to turn around its systems, and it's a gigantic ship to turn. I mean, if you ever get to walk around in that USDA building, you know, by the way, it's designed by a person who also designs prisons, and you can see the similarity, but they...that we need to work on policy, and that's one reason why I did have a thread in my career of working on policy, because I can see how, how...agriculture can change, but it needs this support from policy. So, even though I knew nothing about policy-I mean, I knew as much about policy as I'd known about accounting, right? I knew how to make it up, but not how to actually do it, but I learned, and I think it's incumbent upon all of us now-all of us, no matter where we 01:42:00work-to learn about policy and to get out there and do it, in whatever-using whatever skills you can.

So, I have a pussyhat and I go out to many demonstrations. I'm going to one on the 20th here in Eugene with my whole women's group, and you know, I do that, I also do a lot of commenting to government programs, I also lobby in Congress, I am happy to say I've, you know, had that opportunity all these many years for, you know, 20 years. I've been going to my representatives and giving them very specific information about what, how they should advocate for organic and why it's important. And luckily, as an Oregonian, they listen to me in Congress. 01:43:00They have been extremely responsive.

Jeff Merkley, Peter DeFazio, Wyden, I mean they have been, oh yeah, I mean even the-we even visit the other folks from Portland, because OGC has a facility in Portland, and we take whatever foothold we can get and go into their offices, and they are very responsive. I mean, they're some of the most biggest champions in Congress come from Oregon, not only just Peter DeFazio, but others, you know, some of our senators as well. So, we have a lot, you know, and not only that; they're doing such a good job on so many issues that are related, you know, like if you're going to have a farm, you got to have farm workers; if you're going to have farm workers, you got to have healthcare, right? So, it all ties together, and that's why our Oregon delegation, it's worth gold. I can't say enough how 01:44:00thankful I am for their work there, in such a bleak time. I mean, in my opinion [laughs].

CP: Well, a few happier questions as we move towards conclusion here.

LC: Let's have some happier ones [laughs].

CP: The first is Italy.

LC: Oh, Italy is another wonderful thing! So, where I worked in Italy is the Institute for Mediterranean Agriculture, and this is-so, in the Mediterranean region, they have similar-they recognize that they have similar agricultural problems and opportunities, so they created an inter-governmental system of agricultural research extension and education. So, there are these five facilities in different countries, and they each have areas of expertise, 01:45:00because they're doing research, so they have to, you know, they want to have people who are working together on the same types of topics. So, in Italy the facility has focused on irrigation and IPM and organic production.

So, oh my gosh, I forget exactly what year I started there, but I've taught there like 15 years or so, and they-I actually went-I was on the IFOAM standards committee for a while, and we had a meeting in Italy where I-and then the Italian folks asked me to give a presentation for a seminar they were having. 01:46:00So, I came and did that, and it was held at IAMB. So, the person who runs the organic program, which was just starting out then, saw me do this presentation and liked the way that I was teaching, so he offered me this opportunity to create a program [laughs]-again, create a program-to teach about certification and accreditation systems, which I'm, you know, is my specialty.

So, of course I said yes. And the students come from all the areas of the Mediterranean. The only country that doesn't participate is Israel. All the others-so, you get the ones from Europe, the old Russian satellites, and the northern African countries. Wow. So this, the first year I went, I had no clue-I 01:47:00mean, I knew what I was going to talk about, but it was a total culture shock for me, and even worse culture shock for the students, because they were almost all men, and many of them were pretty old-school Muslim type thought processes. So, I was the first person they had met from America, I was the first woman teacher they had, and I wasn't wearing a scarf.

And so, this was tough. And I didn't know much. Now, since then I've learned a lot from my students, and also studied it myself, because I wanted to be able to understand what they thought about. So sometimes, like one guy, his main goal with me was to tell me how bad the U.S. policy is in Palestine, and I said "you 01:48:00know, so be it. I get it, I hear what you're saying, but that's not what we're here to do. We're not going to talk about that. If you want to write your paper about that, you can-you tell me how you're going to make things better in Palestine, but it's got to be through the lens of organic."

So, I quickly realized that what my goal-my goals was to teach them, but my other goal was, as an organic ambassador from the United States, to try to convey to them how we function in the United States; that we go talk to our government officials, like their-a big part of certification accreditation is due process, and the first time I started to talk to them about due process, they could not even get it. It was a completely different mindset, and they 01:49:00had-it's almost like they had no word for it. I had to explain "this is what due process is," and that, for me, was culture shock, because I could not imagine the way that they lived with their government and their families and their whole society, and I had to bridge that-I had to bridge the gap if they were going to bridge the gap, so we had to meet in the middle.

So, over the 15 years, I learned that the main thing I was there to do was to explain to them how to be an organic citizen and how to contribute in their own country, how to branch out into working in this more international scene with other people and other countries, and what it's like, and how to-like when you're a certifier, you have to work together. You can't say "my system is right 01:50:00and I'm not listening." So, I eventually-over the years, I do update my class every single year, and over the years, what I just decided to do was make them pretend that they were an NOP reviewer and a certifier. I created it-my class was like "this is a certification agency and I'm the boss, and you're working for me."

So, I would have practical application. I would bring in an initial review, and they had to use the standards to tell me whether or not they would pass along this operation to further certification, to get inspected. And of course, I wrote the OSP, the Organic System Plan, and so I included mistakes in there. And 01:51:00so, I expected them to find the mistakes and say "oh, this was not up to the standard, oh." So, it really made them work. And they could work together, they could work with me, I was always at their beck and call. I'd say "well I don't know, you tell me, why is that-what standard is being broken by that?" and they'd say "oh yeah, you're right, that isn't it, but over here."

So, it was very, again, it had this element of practicality, but it also, it was like the first time they ever worked together in a group on a project, and the way that the teacher interacted with them was so much-it's very much less formal. I'm not a formal teacher at all. And the other-in the EU even, they're very-they're professors and they're like revered and they are not spoken to by their first name, and they don't eat the meals with the students. They all go off in their own little dining hall, and I eat my meals with the students and I say "if you want to ask me any questions, now's your chance."

So, it was completely different for them, and for me. And so, I would get very good reviews from the students, because it was almost like not a class to them. Even though it was this really dry stuff they were supposed to learn, and they did learn it, it was different. So, it was a wonderful opportunity. The best thing for me, since I already know quite a bit about certification and accreditation, was bringing that into extremely clear focus so that it could be conveyed efficiently to other people. That was fun, and I have an incredible set of slides. I guess I should give it to you. It's a PowerPoint presentation. I'll give it to you. And also they have-meeting the students was the very best thing.

So, at the end of the class, the very last class, they were going to go off, we would have a recap of the class, a review session, and then in the afternoon they would take their exam. So, they were like all really nervous and they were asking millions of questions and trying to cram it into their heads at the last minute so they could do well on the exam, and before they would leave I would say "wait, I want to say one thing," and just tell them how important they were to me and how much it meant to me to come there, and that I hoped that we could stay in touch. After the exam, they could write to me on my personal email. And you know what? I still am in touch with many of them. In fact, one guy, a Muslim guy, wrote to me on Christmas and said "merry Christmas to you," and now he's from Syria, he can't go back to his country. He went back to work; now his 01:54:00family has immigrated to Germany and he's gotten a job in Germany. But I mean, that's the kind of thing, that's what it's meant to me; just incredible opportunities to meet so many different people from all around the world who were so different from me, and to just be able to tell them, you know, "this is how we do it in the U.S.," because I was teaching about the NOP. I was teaching using the NOP as a base, so I was allowed to go there and just be an American, which was great. And I told them from the start, "I'm not a professor. I'm a consultant, I'm not a professor. Do not call me Professor. This is not me." [Laughs].

CP: We talked last time about some of the resistance that you felt as a girl interested in science, that you were working now to help others that maybe are facing that same situation, through some volunteer work. Can you tell me about that?

LC: Yeah. Oh, well actually, one thing I do is write recommendations for my 01:55:00female students who are trying to go on to get PhDs and things like that. That's one thing that's really made a huge difference, because they have gotten positions because I wrote letters for them, which is amazing. Just amazing. I mean, I've only known them for a short time, but I write a really convincing letter [laughs].

And let's see. Okay, so I've done work with-there's a group out of Portland where they got together women scientists to try to help girls who were interested in science. So, they have this-most of the gatherings are in Portland, but the way I worked with it was I was a mentor for girls who were-they were mostly in high school. I had one that was in college and was kind of unsure whether she could-she should keep studying science or if it was too 01:56:00hard, and it was just like ugh, because she was running into all kinds of roadblocks, and so the ones that were kind of oddball they would send to me. Like people who were-didn't really know what they were doing, or they needed encouragement, or they were involved in agriculture, those were the types that would get referred to me, because you could tell them, you know, what you work in and what types of people you wanted.

So, I had one girl who was in high school, and she was really-I could see she had what it took, but she was actually from rural Oregon and had no real scientists in her life. She had no one to talk to. So, when she first wrote to me, she was needing to do a science project, and she lived in an agricultural 01:57:00community, so she wanted to do one in agriculture. So, I helped her design something that was doable, you know, and we got the thing going, and I would tell her "okay, you, you do the work and I'll review it and I'll give you comments on, you know, what to change and why I think it won't work or it will work." So, eventually she got a project set up and it got approved in her school and she did it, and she-it turned out to actually have some unusual results. So, making a long story short, eventually I said "I think you should shoot high. You've got what it takes! You should apply to good colleges, you know. Don't just think you should-you know, maybe you should think you should go out of state. Try to get scholarships." So, this was before my son was going through this, so I didn't really know what that meant, but we worked together on that, 01:58:00and you know what? She got a scholarship to Stanford, and she went and she graduated, and she became a scientist, and I'm like holy mackerel! See what I mean? It just takes somebody who's going to pay attention. It's just incredible.

So, she's an environmental scientist now, yeah. And it's like things like that, it's just...amazing. There's lots of girls out there; they just need someone who can relate to them, because she, like her example, she's in rural Oregon, she has people that are thinking she's a little bit odd, you know, there's just no one who's understanding why she's drawn to this, and what could be a possible outcome. Like the only possible outcome they can imagine is you could become a farmer, you could, you know, that's like kind of sciency [sic], but they can't imagine research, they can't imagine a path through education for her. So, it 01:59:00takes somebody who's on the other side of it to almost reach out and pull; give some weight and pull them through, and that's what I think-that's what I just love to do.

I mean, I've done that for many of my own students, for actually some of my son's friends when they were coming through. You know, they're at South Eugene, for crying out loud, but do they know any women scientists? Not many. Not many. I mean luckily they have a wonderful advanced AP chemistry teacher there who is a woman, very inspirational, but there needs to be more. I mean, we're just starting to filter in. Just starting, even after all these years. It's really-it really does need some work. It still needs some work. Yeah, so that's why I wear a pussyhat [laughs]. That's who I think of when I wear it.

CP: Well, my last question for you is about work/life balance. You-

LC: Gah!

CP: --have had a-

LC: [Whispers] I'm terrible at that [laughs].

CP: --very busy career, and work has obviously been important to you, but you're also a mother and you have a husband, and a life, I assume.

LC: I do!

CP: Tell me about trying to make it all happen.

LC: I do, oh my god! That is probably one of the hardest things ever. So, the way I solved it [sighs]. Okay, when-okay, so I had my son when I was 40, so I was launched already, and I was wanting-this was the period of my career where I was saying to myself "I'm only taking the jobs that make the great leap forward," like I'm like Chairman Mao or something, you know. I'm like wanting the great leap forward.

So, what I did was-this is how I solved the problem-when Andrew was born, I was 02:01:00working on my big FSMIP grant from the USDA, so I had to get a six-month extension, but what I forgot, or I didn't know-I had no clue how to, you know, what being a mother was going to be like-was I would have a baby in this six-month extension, and I'd have to then produce the paper with the baby. So, I was literally typing, typing, typing, right up until like the night before I went into labor. I was-and I was making myself all these lists and notes, and what was I thinking, and documenting the endpoint of my thoughts and where I would pick it up.

Yeah, so then I went into labor and had the baby, and wow, life changed. So, it became clear to me I was going to have to be very creative to do this. So, like Harry, I don't need much sleep, thank you Goddess, because what would happen-I 02:02:00never would have survived this. So, this was my schedule: [sighs] after the first month, my husband took off work. He was working for the county in Roseburg, and he took off work so-because he could not commute. I mean, we were both totally exhausted. So, thankfully he was home, and he was a godsend father as far as even taking care of messy poopy babies. He was hands-on, right. And I was breastfeeding, so that was my main job, and his main job was everything else [laugher from both].

So, we said okay, we need to get to work, I need to get to work, and we hired an LCC student who was studying-she was trying to be a teacher. And so, she was a 02:03:00very calm person, and I said "okay, we'll setup tables all around you and you can lay out your books and you can study. All you have to do is hold Andrew for four hours a day while I'm working." That's-and he would sleep a lot. You know, other than nursing he would sleep a lot, so literally she got the best grades ever. Her mother came and thanked me for giving her this job, because she was the most focused during this period that she worked for me. So, we paid her to do this, and she was downstairs, I was upstairs, and Jeff, who's a very good writer, was helping also on this project to do a lot of editing. Oh, he was an English major at OSU, so he knows his way around writing. So, he was editing and doing bibliographies and all this stuff, and I was cranking out-I was just so-I 02:04:00had to be so focused that I just worked, worked, worked.

So, the way it worked was Andrew would eat at two AM, conveniently waking me up. He would go back to bed with Jeff, I would work from 2:30 to six, when Jeff would get up. Then we would have breakfast; I did my favorite part of the day, which was goo-goo-ga-ga with Andrew and getting him dressed; that was my favorite thing to do with him. Then Susan [phonetic] would come, I would go to work. And so, I already had in a substantial part of the day when it was very quiet, and then I would go to work for four hours and it would be noon, so she would have to go to class. I would take over with Andrew, and then Jeff and I 02:05:00would eat, so then Jeff had some time off, and then Jeff and I would have dinner with Andrew, and about eight o'clock I would go to bed and Jeff would get going with Andrew until, you know, whenever he could get to bed, like about 10, and then we'd start it over.

So, that's how we did it in the beginning, and then after that, we teamed up with another family in Cottage Grove who had a son who was two weeks older than Andrew and we jointly hired Susan to take care of our-they were a little bit older; they were like one year old at this point-and so she would have them one day at our house and one day at Jane's [phonetic] house. We were both self-employed mothers working like this. So, it was definitely taking a community, right?

CP: Yeah.

LC: So, it was very unusual. And then, from there we moved up to Eugene, and at that point there was childcare. So, Andrew was three and a half and he went to 02:06:00EEI, which was a really good, progressive childcare place that was academically or educationally based. It was a godsend. It's like the only place I would have ever felt comfortable sending him, and there it was. So, he went there, and he went there through kindergarten, and the whole time, I have just the time between when I drop him off and when I pick him up to do anything related to deep thinking or being on the phone. Then he comes home and he plays and I am like constantly interrupted to get him a sandwich or help him with a Lego problem or something like that. Or it's a play day and it's at my house. You know, you can't-you never know.

Anyway, I got good at thinking fast and getting my work done really efficiently and still working on great leap forward projects. And so-and then of course 02:07:00Andrew got older and it got easier as time went on, until high school. Andrew became a professional cyclist. So, I basically was managing him in that career, helping him figure out how to go to college. He was a very high-end student, so I constantly had to go in and address things with the school, saying "okay, he's bored, we need to figure out something else." So, they eventually sent him to the U of O and he ended up with two years of college math under his belt and five AP classes from South, which got him started at Tufts School of Engineering as a sophomore, and he got, in four and a half years, a master's degree.

CP: Wow.

LC: All the way through BA and through master's degree. So, you can see Andrew 02:08:00learned a lot from living with me, how to be efficient and how to, you know, pay attention and be focused. So yeah, Andrew and I are very-we have a lot in common in that way, just in personality and the way that we work and stuff like that. So, we were-if I had had a different child, I probably would have been a complete failure, but because he was the one that came, it was great. He is a wonderful young man and I feel like a success as a mother, except I also feel totally guilty for every minute I spent away from him [laughs], to tell you the truth.

And there were many times like Jeff had to stay home and, you know, when I was doing traveling and things like this, Jeff had to stay home from his work and work at home. He's in IT, so luckily that was doable. I mean, we definitely had to balance everything, and it was carefully thought out. And here's our family 02:09:00motto [brings triangular paper into frame with family names and motto]. This is it. I actually made this when Andrew was born, in like the first week. It's got the three of us and it says "to meet the most needs possible for the most people the most time," because you see, it works like this [holds triangle parallel to floor and tilts each side in different directions]. It's a balance, and when one is down [tips one corner down], the other two have to rise. So, this was my conceptualization of family life about in week two of being a mother, and I still have the darn thing [laughter from both].

So, that's the story. I mean, and it has not been easy and it's not been perfect, but luckily the three of us managed to be able to cut each other slack at the right time and understand when we were too tired to go on, and pick up 02:10:00the pieces. And we're all completely cross-trained. Andrew is an excellent cook, knows how to do his laundry, you know, knows how to sew, he knows all kinds of things to take care of himself when he went off, he was fully prepared. So, that comes from having to be sometimes the person who's balancing out the mother who's absent, or the father who needs a minute to really think about IT.

CP: Yeah.

LC: So yeah. So, it does work, but it's-the main thing I tell young mothers is "just don't let anybody tell you how to manage anything. Whatever seems right to you and whatever would work, that's what you should do, and don't make any apologies for it, because everyone has to find their own path through this kind of a life." If you're a person who has a lot of drive, there's really not a lot 02:11:00of paths, so every path has to be your own, including being a mother. So, that's how we did it [laughter]. A rough path, but we got to the end.

CP: Well Lynn, this has been terrific. I thank you very much.

LC: Oh my gosh, it's been fun.