BRIGITTE MARS. Born 1952.

TRANSCRIPT of OH 1285V A-B.

CLICK on SUMMARY above to access a summary of this interview.

This interview was recorded at the home of Brigitte Mars, in Boulder, Colorado, on

December 9, 2004, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Joyce

Gordon. This interview also is available in video format, filmed by Joyce Gordon. The

interview was transcribed by Pat Holman.

NOTE: The interviewer's questions and editorial comments appear in parentheses. In the

second half of the interview, Brigitte Mars is joined by her husband, Tom Pfeiffer.

Sections where Tom is speaking are labeled "Tom:" Otherwise, words not in parentheses

are those of Brigitte Mars.

ABSTRACT: Brigitte Mars discusses being an herbalist in Boulder including her

training at the Boulder College of Message Therapy; her work at the Rocky Mountain

Center for Botanical Studies, Naropa, Pearl St. Market, Alfalfa's, and Pharmaca; and

educational activities for the public that she has undertaken, such as regular "herb walks"

on Mt. Sanitas. She also discusses Unitea, the tea company she and her husband started;

books she has written; eating for health; the raw food movement; and her family.

[A].

00:00 (My name is Joyce Gordon and I’m a volunteer with the Maria Rogers Oral

History Program of the Carnegie Branch Library for Local History. Today, December 9,

2004, I’m conducting an interview with Brigitte Mars, long time Boulder herbalist,

teacher, and writer.)

(Brigitte, I’d like to begin by asking where and when you were born.)

00:25 Well, I was actually born in New York City, although I never lived there. I had a

Russian Jewish father, a French-Canadian Catholic mother and my mother started labor

on an airplane and the airplane landed in New York City. So, I was born there.

(What an incredible way to enter this incarnation.)

And I only lived there for a week in the hospital and went back to Syracuse, New York.

00:52 (And as a child did you take a great interest in the outdoors and what was growing

outside, and all of that?)

Well, I loved fairy tales and in fairy tales there was often some sort of magic herb that

could be used for a potion, so I did like that quite a bit, and I did go to camp in Maine

every summer, in Deer Isle Maine. And, remembering harvesting wild blueberries and

actually one of my counselors was Sal of BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL by Robert

McCloskey, and we had a class called campcraft. But a great passion of mine came from

my grandmother who gardened and had chickens in the backyard and did use medicinal

herbs . But I really lived in the suburbs and had a very manicured lawn growing up and

didn’t know a whole lot about it, but I was interested in that there might be some power

or magic there in those plants.

01:51 (And did you use herbs as a child?)

No, not at all. I grew up back in the days of, the doctor would come to your house and

give you a shot of antibiotics. And I was on antibiotics a lot for frequent ear infections,

frequent sore throats, and I think I probably went to the ear, nose, and throat specialist at

least once a month. And, I wish someone did know about herbs back then, but back then

they just said, you know, drink a big glass of milk every meal and white bread is,

wonderful and just do it this way. But I was really sickly as a child.

02:30 (And how did your journey to Boulder come about?)

Well, I had done a number of things. I had lived in a teepee for two and a half years

before coming here, in the Ozarks, and ate nothing but wild, edible plants. I had a

vegetarian restaurant in Miami called The Supernatural and which is a wonderful little

place in south Miami. And I lived in the Virgin Islands and helped open up one of the

first natural food restaurants there in the early Seventies.

So, in 1976 I found myself a single mother. And really needed to do something with my

life, and I heard about this school, the Boulder School of Massage Therapy. Back then

we called it the Rocky Mountain Center of Natural Healing, I think it was called. But I

had a boyfriend at the time who worked for Celestial Seasonings, and he was a roadie

also for a very popular band at the time called Navarro. And he said, "You should come

to Boulder. People there are really into herbs and spirituality and wholistic health.' So I

came out here for a Rocky Mountain Center conference, like a healing arts festival. And,

I just fell in love with Boulder. I couldn’t believe the beauty. I was surprised ‘cause, you

know, back in upstate New York I always thought that Colorado was way freezing cold.

But now I know that the winters are much milder here than they were, than I experienced

growing up.

So, I came out here, checked it out, and decided I was going to come to go to massage

school and make something of my life. I already knew quite a bit about herbs, having

lived off of wild edible plants. But I thought if I learned anatomy and physiology and

nutrition and pathology it would give me a good foundation so that I could raise my two

children.

Back then in Boulder, as I said, I came here as a single mother with my two little girls

and in the Seventies, you might remember, the people hitchhiked. And so I would

hitchhike to take Sunflower to Misty Mountain Preschool and hitchhike to massage

school which is over by where Target’s parking lot is now. And then I would hitch home

to nurse the baby during break, hitch back to Massage school, hitch to go pick Sunflower

up from Misty Mountain Preschool. What a life! And after about a month of being here

this wonderful man gave me a ride home from a Navarro concert because the roadie had

kind of dropped me off, so to speak, and he never left.

05:12 (Brigitte, what was your experience with massage school in those days; what was

the massage school like?)

Well, there was certainly a lot to overcome—people’s impression of what massage was

all about—and this was a very serious, studious school. I felt like some of my teachers

were amazing masters. People like Hal Paris, and many teachers who have gone on to

become Rolfers, and Win (?) Smith who taught herbal medicine. And the days in the

Seventies, the massage school was really quite different. Nudity was pretty much

accepted, we did rebirthing, hot springs. It was a wild time, and I don’t know how much

wild times you want to know about, but all the things that you heard about of the Sixties

and Seventies, they all happened at massage school. But as the school got a lot bigger we

had to have more rules and regulations. But I loved being part of that program, and I felt

that I was getting a wonderful, wonderful education.

And I now teach there. So it’s wonderful to see that the vision has continued. Way back

then Honora Wolfe was the director. Honora Wolfe is the partner of Bob Flaws and also

a wonderful practitioner of Chinese medicine herself. And of course the school was

smaller. But I felt like I was getting a wonderful education, and herbal medicine was

taught there as a six-week long program, and I thought that would be another reason for

me going there.

(Did you anticipate becoming a massage therapist at that point?)

Well, I kind of thought that I could do that, but there were so many people who were

doing massage therapy and my passion, even then, was to talk about herbs and natural

medicine. So, I think that I figured if I had that education I could do massage but I

wanted to have something else to offer, and that really had a lot to do with natural

medicine. And I quickly found myself getting fatigued with doing massage and telling

people, you know, you really should drink this particular tea. You really ought to cut

back on wheat or sugar and people really just wanted to get massaged, and I felt like

there's plenty other people that could do massage. I want to focus more on the nutritional

and herbal aspects of health.

07:44 (Brigitte, what direction did you take after graduating from massage school?)

Well, I met this wonderful man, Tom Pfeiffer, and we went on the road for a little bit. He

had a job remodeling department stores, so we traveled around the country. We went to

Olympia, Washington; Kansas City, Missouri; somewhere else—Missoula, Montana.

But it was hard moving with two little girls because my children, at the time, were about

six and one years old, and I wanted to have some stability.

So, I, you know, as a teenager I had gone to an all-girls boarding school, Miss Hull’s

School for Young Ladies and, I used to say to myself, “Some day, some day, I’m gonna

work on Broadway.” And I did eventually, I worked on Broadway and Arapahoe which

was then Alfalfa’s Market and is now Wild Oats. So, I kind of had this feeling, that, well

I’m gonna do something with herbs, but before Alfalfa’s there was another store. I

worked at Cabin Country, which was a little store on 28th Street. And there I found

myself bagging brown rice and organic candies, and it was a nice store. I didn’t get to

use my herbal knowledge that much, and I was really ready to just sign up to go to travel

agency school. I actually was registered. I was going to go to travel agency school

because I speak pretty good French and pretty good Spanish and I thought well that’s

some way I’ll be able to afford to stay in Boulder and have some stability. Because the

moving around thing was quickly getting old. I still don’t like moving very much.

09:32 (What was your clientele like at Cabin Country in those days?)

Well, I loved that Boulder always attracted people that loved natural foods and that was

certainly one of the things that made me feel this is a good community. Because, when

we lived in Kansas, it was really hard for my children to be the only ones who had tofu or

seaweed or even whole wheat bread was a little bit foreign So, I figured if we lived here

in Boulder, it was just more mainstream. And I loved that you could get products that

you really couldn’t find anywhere else. There was more organic produce here. But my

clientele was people of all walks of life. Everything from homemakers to students to

hippies to intellectuals. You know, that just great eclectic mix that Boulder offers and

still makes me very glad to be part of this community.

10:28 What happened after Cabin Country?)

Well, I was just about to go to travel agency school when I got a call from someone I

considered a very dear friend and mentor, John Hay. And John Hay was one of the

founders and political backers of Celestial Seasonings. And he said, There’s a job

opportunity at Pearl Street Market. And I think you ought to apply for it." And Pearl

Street Market is now, well, it doesn’t exist any longer, but it was on Pearl and 18th I

think, 1825 Pearl St. And, back then that was considered a really big health food store. I

think this is maybe 1980, 1981? And I wrote up a resume and John Hay said, You can’t

write all this hippie stuff about living in a teepee and giving birth in a teepee, and you

know, being—your kid’s godmother’s Timothy Leary’s wife, and —like leave all that

stuff out. They don’t want to hear about that." And he, like, tore my resume in half and

made me write it again, and tore it in half again, and says, "No, no, no no."

So after like three tries I finally got the resume right, and I applied for the job at Pearl

Street Market and back then, you know they had a really nice herb section. It was one of

the first stores that really offered bulk herbs. And they wanted someone to educate

people about herbs because the herbs really just sat there. There wasn’t enough

knowledge, and I think they did something like 60 dollars a day in herbs, and so they

wanted me to come and talk to people and do demos. And they really were one of the

first health food stores to my knowledge that had someone kind of walking around the

store assisting people, helping them figure out what’s a good vitamin for your child and

what might some helpful remedies be. So, I’m very grateful because Hass Hassan and

Mark Retzloff, who started Pearl Street Market—they also started Rainbow Distributing

Company, in Denver—hired me, and became wonderful allies, and I think we made a

really great team. I’m grateful because they believed in me, and we got to stay in

Boulder. And then when Alfalfa’s opened up a few blocks away I moved over to there.

12:52 (Right about that same time, Hannah Kroeger had an herb company and she was

kind of a Boulder legend; she also ran New Age Foods, which was a vitamin,

supplement, and herb store, and then upstairs they had the all-you-can-eat for-a-dollar-

five lunch, and Hannah used to counsel, some of her customers and recommend certain

remedies and eventually, she was charged with practicing medicine without a license.

Can you give us any more details, and did anything like that, were you afraid that

something like that might happen to you?)

I certainly remember New Age Foods and loved those inexpensive lunches, delicious

lunches, and I remember that people would just line up for blocks down the mall to have

just a few minutes with Hannah Kroeger. I did get to take a few classes with Hannah.

Although, interestingly enough, there was a time when my daughter Sunflower was really

good friends with her granddaughter and she came to the house quite a lot. Helena. But,

I remember when Hannah was cited for practicing medicine without a license and it

really did put fear and concern into me, because I thought, well, whose next? And

Hannah is this old, respected, you know, woman who’s I believe even a naturopath, that

the same thing could possibly happen to me. (coughs) Excuse me.

So what I’ve always tried to do is bill myself not as treating people or curing people but

that I’m educating people. So if someone calls me up and says, "Do you heal

fibromyalgia?" I say I don’t really heal people, I do one-on-one health education

seminars to educate people so that they can take better care of themselves. So I think a

lot of it is in the wording. And of course, I taught classes, and still teach lots of classes

because I really don’t think you can cure anybody else. You can help provide the right

situation so that the body will heal itself. So, I’ve always kept it very much under the

guise of educating people and I really don’t diagnose and most people who come to see

me already have an idea of what is going on with them.

But I remember that Hannah ended up turning her practice into part of her religion

because she moved her practice, I believe, into Niwot, and people would come to church

and that you could heal within the guise of the church. So, I remember thinking I should

get my minister license, my minister divinity. So I got one of those just in case I needed

to use that card. Not that you know being connected to divinity is—it’s a wonderful

thing, so it wasn’t like a hard leap. But education really has been my way of getting the

message across. And I’ve often felt that what I was providing was helping to be a liaison

between the plant kingdom, or queendom as you might call it, and people and helping to

get people to recognize that very often the medicines that they might need might be

growing in their own backyard and that certainly diet is a big part of why health might go

awry in the first place.

16:25 (Did you have any customers come back and say that, a remedy or supplement

that you suggested didn’t work for them and…)

Well one of the things that I always did at Alfalfa’s was I asked people please let me

know how this works for you, because I wanted to know, I wanted to know what worked

and what didn’t work, and I was always changing things based on you know—80 people

this month told me that this was a great hay fever remedy so, this is what I’m going to

recommend. And I had, you know, five people say that this remedy didn’t work. So I

certainly did have customers help me to figure out what was the best product. And, of

course, not any product is going to work for everybody and different people have

different constitutions. But I learned a lot by doing those little five-minute consultations

with people, and I just always asked people, my name’s Brigitte, I’d love to hear how this

works for you. And, you know I want to know if it does work or doesn’t work, ‘cause I

really need to know. I can’t take all these remedies myself and I don’t have all the

ailments that these remedies are made for so I’m very grateful for the kind people that

came back.

Certainly there were things that didn’t work, and one of the things that doctors often say

is the most difficult for them is patient compliance. And I’m big on it’s not enough just

to take a remedy, an herb, a vitamin. You need to look at lifestyle things as well, so if

someone can’t sleep yes, I can sell them a bottle of valerian, and hops, and chamomile

and skullcap and kava kava. But it’s also good to look at, well why can’t you sleep? Is it

‘cause you drank a lot of coffee during the day? Is it ‘cause you’re eating late at night?

Is it because you’ve too much on your mind? Is there too much light coming into your

room, what about doing an aroma therapy bath before bed? So I think one of the things

that people really liked about how I helped them was I gave them some lifestyle ideas

that would make whatever they were buying work even better and help them see how

their lifestyle was contributing to whatever condition they wanted to improve.

18:38 (I’m curious about the process of becoming a minister. Did you do that here in

Boulder?)

Oh, it was some little, you know, fill out some papers and things like that. Although my

spiritual path has certainly been a big part of my life.

I’ve long been a Urantia book reader. So the minister thing was really just to get some

docentation so I could perform marriages or, you know, baptisms or something like that.

(Did you do any of those?)

Yes I have spoken at a number of marriages. But, you know, there was always a little

Celestial Seasoning tea tag that I always liked a lot. It said, “Cut out the middle man,

deal directly with God.” So, you know, I think, you know, you could always just have a

direct line too. But for ceremony things, you know, baptisms and weddings, yeah, it’s

nice to have someone, but in the state of Colorado, really anyone can marry you.

19:36 (When you were at Alfalfa’s were you also involved with the Rocky Mountain

Center for Botanical Studies? When did that come about?)

I believe the Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies started, I’m going to say 1991

perhaps, and interestingly enough, Feather Jones, who I went to massage school with and

who was really one of my closest friends at massage school, is the founder of that school.

So, the school started and there were only a few herbalists in Boulder, and so Feather

asked me if I’d teach at the school and I was delighted! Because, so often to teach you

know good classes, long classes, I would have to get on airplane and fly to Memphis or

some other state. And so the Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies opened up,

and it was actually on Arapahoe, around 55th and Arapahoe. And my daughter

Sunflower, who was then maybe 19 years old, said “I’m going to go there, that’s sounds

great.” And I was so happy that one of my kids wanted to go to herb school because, I

just felt what an amazing thing for this tradition to carry on, something that my

grandmother had inspired in me that my daughter would want to continue to learn about

herbs. And I didn’t think I should be her only teacher. I thought, you know, you need to

learn other things from other people.

21:04 (I also was wondering about your two daughters and their names and did they

have to endure any teasing in Boulder, or was Boulder alternative enough that nobody

made fun of their names?)

Well, I did, you know, true to hippie form, name my daughters Sunflower Sparkle Mars

and Rainbeau Harmony Mars, and that was another reason why living in Boulder was a

lot kinder than living elsewhere. I know for a while Sunflower’s best friend was named

Earthstar and, I kind of decided when I was pregnant with my children that kids are

gonna make fun of whatever your name is. If you’re Charlie, you’re going to be Charlie

Brown. I was “Bridget the Midget” you know, and growing up in elementary school. So

I kind of figured they’re going to make fun of your name anyways, and there was a time

when Sunflower was going to Baseline Junior High and she asked if I could tell them her

name was Sunny.

But it’s kind of interesting because a few years ago Sunflower, who now has a degree in

early childhood education, went for a job interview at Sunflower Preschool. And when

she walked in for the job interview they were studying Mars, so there were like pictures

and mobiles of Mars everywhere. And of course Sunflower Mars got the job at

Sunflower Preschool. And, Rainbeau, she got called “Rainbow Brite,” who was a little

cartoon character back then. And, she kind of used her name to move herself forward.

She, started modeling at about age 15 or 16 years old, and Rainbeau Mars was a name

that got noticed and when she was, I think, 19 years old she got a part in an Oliver Stone

movie “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” And, you know, in the competitive world of acting,

having a name that is unique—

And I think my kids also got asked a lot so your names are Rainbeau and Sunflower,

were your parents hippies, and they would always say “Were?” but— I’d kind of like to

rephrase that and say I’m probably more of a zippie, hippies with zip, hippies that have

computers and create businesses and help create social change and don’t just laze around,

but someone with a lot of zippy type energy.

23:35 (When did you begin your herb walks?)

Well, I remember going on an herb walk with someone else, maybe in 19—, I’m going to

say —79, or something like that. And there were so many herbs that she did

inaccurately, you know, confused things. And I just said, and I was trying to be polite

and not overshadow the teacher, so I said I’m going to start doing herb walks because I

think I know a lot about these. And, again, the two years that I lived in the teepee and ate

nothing but wild edible plants, and not once went to a store, gave me the sense of how

important it is to get reacquainted with your herbal allies. People walk around and they

think, oh it’s just a bunch of weeds, and yet, it might be a plant that could stop bleeding,

or be life saving.

And a quote I heard once is that the average American recognizes less than five plants, or

five birds, in their area. And of course here people recognize an herb like dandelion and

they think, gotta get something to mow it down, and so I wanted to help educate people

that the herbs really can be our allies and provide free food and medicine and that we

should learn to respect them and use them. And, another thing that I’m very big on is that

freshness in food is really important and that much of the produce people eat have been

harvested maybe, six weeks ago. And so the idea that you could go in your back yard

and harvest a salad of things that were just growing a few minutes ago imparts into you

an amazing vitality, an amazing spark of health. So I wanted to get people to know that

you could do that.

25:22 (In your teepee days how did you know which plants were edible and what you

could survive on?)

Well, as I said I went to an all-girls boarding school, Miss Hull’s School for Young

Ladies, and soon after that I found myself living on a commune in Reynolds, Missouri,

and there weren’t a lot of books back then. I remember one book, STALKING THE

WILD ASPARAGUS, by Euell Gibbons and I read that book and I would go to the

library, you know, are there any other books? And there were a few books. But most of

the books would identify the plants but not talk about edible uses. But there were

hillbilly people around that area. And I remember this one old hillbilly woman, Mrs.

Glore, and she was such a kind, generous spirit. I would go and help her with whatever

work in the garden and she taught me that almost all of the so-called weeds were actually

edible plants. So I would go out and, work in my garden later on and have a colander

with me. And rather than just like weeding I’d say but I’m pulling purslane for tonight’s

soup, I’m pulling lambs quarters for tonight’s salad. And I learned that you could have

two to three times the yield of your garden, and I really think that this is such big news

that people should wake up and with rising costs of food, I think we should all be

supplementing our food as well as our health with free, wild, delicious, and the most

nourishing plants on the planet are some of the wild things. So, I will I give thanks to old

Mrs. Glore for teaching me about wild weeds in the Ozarks. And then of course in more

recent years there have been many books.

27:06 (And, any other old-timer, mentors in this area that have helped you out with

that?)

Well, when I came to Boulder even though I was going to massage school and a nursing

mother and a mother of a preschool child, I was tired. But there was a wonderful teacher

in Boulder at the time named William Lassacie and so in the early, early time in Boulder,

Green Mountain Granary was the happening store on Arapahoe, which is now Boulder

Senior Center is there. But William Lassacie taught classes somewhere out east, and I

would go to school in the daytime and at night I would go sit at William Lassacie feet and

he ended up being an incredible teacher and I would just like, Oh someday I want to be

like him. And we ended up becoming very good friends and staying in touch, and he

would come through town and visit often, and I love William Lassacie because he had a

wonderful integration of Western herbalism and Asian herbalism. And he had a

wonderful of skill of diagnosing people. And he was somewhat dyslexic so he would

read people more than he would read books. So I am very grateful for his wisdom.

28:25 (When did you start taking others on the herb walks?)

I’d say probably around the time I started working at Alfalfa’s. I would meet people and

they would want to come on walks, and I loved doing it because even in my life you

know it’s hard for me like, not to walk down the street and notice plants. So, I would

take small groups, and I would make up flyers and I pretty much did the herb walks at

Mt. Sanitas. There was a time where I did them at Chautauqua Park, but I found that Mt.

Sanitas was a nice easy walk, and that there were plenty of available plants and kind of

several different terrains there to choose from. And to this day I still do herb walks and I

remember someone saying, "Did someone come and plant all this stuff here?" And I

said, "No, this is what happens when you just leave it alone." Another thing that

exemplifies the strength of the herbs is that no one came here and watered it, no one came

here and put fertilizer down. This is what happens when you just leave nature to do its

own thing. It’s incredibly rich.

29:34 (You spoke in an article in the DAILY CAMERA in 1984 about how you would

examine 50 to 75 different varieties of plants or herbs, in a typical herb walk. Are those

varieties still existing, and do new varieties ever develop, and how does that all work?)

Well, plants do seem to come and go for a period of time and a lot of the herbs that are

considered noxious weeds, even on the Boulder County noxious weed list, well I think

we need to reexamine that because St. John's Wort is one of those so called noxious

weeds, and yet why should it be legal to go buy a bottle of St. John's Wort and yet you

really aren’t supposed to plant it in your garden and you’re supposed to eradicate it if you

see it growing. But of course in recent years St. John's Wort has become the, you know,

one of the best herbs for helping mild to moderate depression.

Thistle is another noxious weed, and there’s quite an invasion of thistles, a wide variety

of thistles, but I see that plants like thistles, which are kind of spiny and unpleasant to

step on, I feel that they’re here to help heal the earth and very often when an area has

been clear cut or mowed down or altered in some way, like a creek path change, that

prickly or dangerous plants will grow for a period of time to give the earth time to rest. I

do believe I’ve seen an increase in poison ivy and as another one of my friends and

teachers likes to say Poison ivy tends to grow where the earth has been cut by metal. So,

it may be that some of these plants are growing for a period of time to give the earth time

to rest and recover from some assault on it.

But, there certainly are endangered species and with this growing interest in herbs I you

know don’t collect things on the herb walks. I try to educate people that these things are

in your own back yard, you should plant them if they are not, these are plants that will

grow easily here. Visit the local farmer’s market, and ask what will grow in your area.

You know if you live at ten thousand feet and you have nothing but shade or nothing but

full sun talk to some of the people that offer seedlings at the farmer’s market that they’re

great to inform you of what is going to thrive well in this environment. I have a little

personal agenda. I’m trying to get the herb stinging nettles very well established. And

every spring I give hundreds of nettle cuttings out to people that are already rooted and I

tell people please plant nettles. I think everyone should have a stinging nettle patch in

their yard. And I know you think, well that’s really horrible, they sting you. But the

sting will help to treat arthritis and fibromyalgia and nettle tea is good for your bones,

your teeth, your hair It’s one of the most mineral rich herbs and so I’m seeing little

patches of nettles but I think that I’m helping that along a little bit.

32:47 (Who was determining what plants were noxious in those days?)

Well, you know, I’m sure there’s some sort of weed control board. And I do want to say

that Boulder is a county that really has looked towards alternatives. We’re doing a lot

less spraying in areas, but we need to do even less. Spraying school grounds, I mean

what’s wrong with a few dandelions growing on a school ground. It’s much more

dangerous to have herbicides and children being together, and what about having public

parks sprayed? So I know that there’s one person in particular, Randy Weiner who’s a

lawyer who’s done a lot to raise help raise awareness about the dangers of herbicides,

and, I feel like I’ve tried to help him however I can, but, there is some kind of board that

determines this. And I can see why poison ivy is on the noxious weed list but thistles are

actually wild artichokes and if you were in a survival situation you should, dig up a

thistle and eat the roots or peel the stem.

I actually think it would be a great thing for homeless people to learn more about wild

edible plants because if I could live for two and a half years without ever going to a store

I really feel that one doesn’t need to go hungry. And almost everything has a purpose.

There’s a few poisonous plants, yes, but it’s a lot easier to learn what those are, like

poison hemlock we have in this area, poison ivy, death cammas. But most of the plants

are really quite beneficial.

34:23 (The Mt. Sanitas trail had, has developed into one of our most popular ones, and,

do you think that the population growth and the amount of traffic that that trail gets has

changed the nature of the trail in the last 27 years?)

Well, I do see a lot of people keeping to the trails, which I think is wonderful. And I

know it’s a place where people like to go and walk their dogs, and I would just please ask

people, clean up after your dogs. It’s very unpleasant to lead an herb walk when people

don’t clean up after their dogs. So, you know, just take it from me that it’s nice when the

trails are kept clean, and yes I think it’s great that the dogs can run free there.

But, I still see a lot of the same plants blooming in the same place. And I think that’s

really good news and I think that one of the things that makes us love Boulder is that

people tend to more environmentally conscious. And we’ve had recycling a lot longer

than many other communities and a lot more people that follow through and do it.

35:29 (For the record, do dog feces, how do they impact the plants that are growing?)

I think it’s more just a aesthetic thing. I think that in general, you know, any type of fecal

matter can be used as fertilizer. But, you know, if the dogs are eating a diet that’s not

really a healthy diet— Although I was walking on Mt. Sanitas, just a few weeks ago and

saw a big pile of purple feces, and I said to my husband, "Bear poop! Let’s get up, let’s

move!" Because it was, we were kind of on an off trail, and so dogs don’t eat all the

chokecherries and berries that the bear do. So it was an obvious sign that the bears had

been there.

36:21 (How did you develop the idea for doing the herb camps for kids?)

Well, my daughter Sunflower felt that one of the best parts of her childhood was that we

did a lot of herbal crafts. So even though I was a working mother I came home and I

made healthy food and, I always tried to do some kind of crafts with my kids. We’d

make our own cosmetics, we’d make hairspray and facial scrub. We made our own

holiday presents, dream pillows, and bath salts, and sleep pillows, and, lavender wands.

And Sunflower said, "I don’t want to stop doing this because I’m grown up; let’s teach it

to other kids." And so, when she had gone to herb school and a lot of her focus was

even on children’s health, back then. So, it was really her idea. And for the past five

years we’ve done herb camp for kids and had maybe 20 to 25 kids for three days; it's a

day camp. And we make wild salad, and we make all healthy food, and really teach the

kids survival skills, first aid, and, a lot of kids have come back every year. I don’t believe

we’ll do it this year because Sunflower has a newborn baby, named Solwyn, so I think

she needs a little time just to get accustomed to all that. But, hopefully, we’ll start it up

again soon.

37:47 (So, you were teaching at the Center for Botanical Studies, you were doing the

herb walks, and herb camp, and also other workshops in the area?)

Yes, I’ve long taught a ten-week workshop at my home, right here in this living room. I

also teach at Naropa. I teach a whole semester every fall there, and I love my students at

Naropa.

(How long have you been teaching at Naropa?)

Probably about ten years. I’ve had some little breaks in between, but the students there

are such creative people, and it’s just wonderful. And I now teach at a place called

Esalen in northern California, which I’ve always wanted to teach there. So that’s, you

know how you have goals in life, like, “Someday I want to teach at Esalen!” So yes—

(The old Esalen institute? From long ago?)

Yes, Big Sur, California. It’s still happening. Yeah, it really is. And I teach in other

places where they ask me to. I sometimes am a guest teacher at CU. But those are some

of the most frequent things that I do. And I still have my radio program on KGNU.

38:58 (Your radio program started when?)

Well, Tammy Simon, who is the founder of Sounds True, the wonderful recording studio

that tapes the voices of all kinds of wonderful movers and shakers on the planet,

suggested that I start a radio show. And I think it’s been more than 20 years ago. So it

might have been like 2001, 2002. (?) And she helped me pick out a theme song, which

we still use. And, back then KGNU was on Broadway and— Spruce or Pine?

(Spruce.)

Spruce Street, upstairs of the Aristocrat Restaurant. And so I would run over from

Alfalfa’s and do the show live, and now I record my shows usually six weeks in advance

and Sam, helps me to do all the technical stuff. So, yeah I’ve done the show and I’m so

grateful because KGNU is really a voice for the people of Boulder. And they were

giving me the space to talk about Echinacea, or medical marijuana, or any of that stuff

long before those were really issues that were in the public eye.

40:12 (Did you get a lot of people calling in, to give feedback on your shows?)

We definitely have gotten calls on the pledge drives and you know one of the reasons

why I keep doing the show, because I’m a volunteer like so many KGNU volunteers, is

when nice people say “I love your show, I learned something. Yeah, I tried an herb or I

changed my diet some way, and I took something to heart.” So thank you, KGNU, for

being there. And now they're broadcasting in Denver, which is great.

40:44 (I want to talk about your own tea company and I want to take just a little time to

get to get the tea canisters so that the viewers can take a look.)

(Ed. Note: At this point there is a pause in the recording and Brigitte's husband, Tom,

joins the interview. Due to a change in the microphone pickup, Brigitte and Tom's voices

are softer than the interviewer's voice from here on out, so listeners may have to adjust

the volume.)

40:54 (OK. We are back with Brigitte and her husband Tom. Brigitte, how did you

two hook up?)

This is Tom Pfeiffer and he’s from Pensacola, Florida, and 27 years ago he gave me a

ride home from this rock concert—

Tom: Never dropped her off yet!

—and we’ve been married 25 years. We just had our 25th wedding anniversary, and he is

such my hero because as I told you all before, I came here as a single mother with a six-

month old and a five-year old and Tom has been an extraordinary father and husband and

partner, and I’m just so grateful. I feel like the universe gave me another chance and

there should be more like him in the world.

41:44 (And how did the tea company come about and how did you two begin and run

the tea company and when did that start?)

Well, it was—

Tom: ’86?

—1986, and Tom was hanging wallpaper and he was painting and—

Tom: construction trade

—and the chemicals were making him sick. And one day Alfalfa’s market was having a

brainstorming session and I wanted to do everything to be sharp for this meeting so I

remember drinking some gingko tea and taking some amino acid stimulants, and wearing

yellow which is the color of sweetness stimulus (?) and putting rosemary essential oil in

my hair ‘cause rosemary is for remembrance. And I sat there in this meeting and had this

brainstorm where I said, “Oh, I’ve got it! Mental ClariTea, ImmuniTea, SereniTea. You

know, Mental ClariTea, ImmuniTea, SereniTea, PuriTea, DigestibiliTea, SensualiTea,

MaterniTea.” And, Tom came to pick me up at the end of the day and I said, “Honey,

we’re gonna start a tea company.” And we did it on very little financing, but we had the

tea company for 16 years, Unitea Herbs, and Tom pretty much ran it because I kept my

job at Alfalfa’s so it was really Tom that made it grow, and…

Tom: Well Brigitte’s definitely the idea machine. She comes up with all kind of ideas,

and I’m the nuts and bolts guy and I’m the guy that’s gotta put those ideas into the world

and manifest them. She had this idea and I thought “Well, it’s very intriguing,” so I said,

“We’ll make up a couple of pounds of it and take it to the store and see how it goes.”

Well, it was gone in an hour. And so we’ll make a few more pounds and then we’ll take

it to the store, and it was gone in the same hour. So you know it didn’t take too many

lights to go off so I said, “Well, you know there’s some potential here." So when we

started on a shoestring and we were wearing sandals at the time and, we just started

making it happen. And the market place was pulling what we were making as fast as we

could make it. So we just kept making it. We started in the living room in a house over

on 18th Street that we lived in for a number of years. And, it grew, outgrew the living

room rather quickly, and then we went into a place down at the west end of the mall and

were there for 16 years in the market place. We had an amazingly good time doing it,

provided what we thought was a very good product for people nationwide. And, in some

regards I have no idea how we pulled it off. We never really had the budget to do it, but

blood, sweat, and tears, hope, desire, truth, belief, and we did it.

44:35 (And you never had fears about it being a go, and being successful and you just

kept plugging away at it and it just grew and grew?)

Tom: It just kept growing and it became a way to support our family, which was a

wonderful thing for me. I was looking for something to do anyway. I was at the tail end

of one career that had been very good to me for 15, 16 years before, but, in order to

continue there we had to move about the country and once we found Boulder we didn’t

want to move about the country anymore. We were very happy to be here. We’ve been

here now how long? 20? 25 years? 26 years? something like that? I think Brigitte is the

closest thing to a living, walking monument as Boulder has and she definitely represents

Boulder. I think she’s everything Boulder’s ever been about and, why would we want to

leave here?

45:24 (When you say that you put together a batch of tea and brought it to the store, do

you mean Alfalfa’s?)

Tom: Yes.

(And did you have it in bulk?)

In bulk, in big gallon jars.

(And people bought it…)

People bought it and, yup they did. And we created other teas and we sold the tea

company five years ago. So it’s not something that, you know stayed in our control. The

health food industry, as you probably know, has changed. Many little mom and pop

companies have been bought up by big corporate giants. So it was time, and, the people

that bought it didn’t really do well with it. They put energy into other products that they

were creating. Although we hoped soon that someone else might take it over.

Tom: …hoped to be able to revitalize the company.

So that might happen.

Tom: And speaking of the historical aspect of it, we were in that Boulder Historical

muse some time back. I think it was a couple of years ago and we were looking at things

in that museum and ran ______ a tin of tea called Purity from some company of 70, 80

years ago. So, it just seems like these ideas recycle themselves from time to time and we

thought that was kinda interesting.

(What was the time frame between when you brought gallon jars of the tea over to

Alfalfa’s and you actually started packaging it and selling it in these tins?)

(Tom: That was, we’d been involved for about the first 12 years I think. We were only a

bulk herb company for 12 years. Amazing that we ever got in the market place, amazing

that we were able to stay in the market place, and that’s a testament to two things in my

view. And one is that the product was good, but once again Brigitte could sell icicles to

Eskimos. I mean, people loved Brigitte, she was an herbalist here in town. There’s a lot

of awareness about herbal medicine here in town, and people were coming to her and

they said, “Well, how much of this do I use?” and “How do I put it together?” and

“Which ingredients?” And that’s what really stimulated her to come up with a very

simple way for people to make use of herb teas on a medicinal and therapeutic level.

And it was just a matter of once the idea was there and once the demand was there well,

start making it. And that’s what we did.)

47:45 (Who designed the canisters?)

A local artist named George Tuffy, who lives up in Wall Street, and—

Tom: He did the art.

He did the art, although we gave him the ideas. But he really would take the ideas and do

something beautiful.

Tom: Quite a remarkable artist, a friend of ours from Australia and we would go to him

with the concept, with an idea, and we’d go back up there three or four days later and

there it was and of the 15 or 16 paintings that we asked him to do we only had to redo, I

think, one. He would take the idea, put it on canvas and there it was. We were just

astonished. We’d go to him with a concept and he’d come out with art.

48:28 (Did Unitea ever go national?)

Tom: Unitea did go national. We were in all 50 states and in Canada and there were

inquiries to Europe but it’s very difficult to do business in Europe when we were a small

company and it was hard to get in with all the import-export that’s necessary to go

beyond Canada. But in all 50 states and Canada.

(And how did you experience being a small business owner in Boulder?)

Tom: As a small business owner in Boulder does experience small business in Boulder.

Boulder’s a very difficult and tough business environment. But at the same time, Boulder

wasn’t really the controlling factor, aside from rent and places, things such as that, I mean

it was more the marketplace. It was the, we had entered into an industry that was hungry

for products. So, we were in a very friendly environment to produce products for

retailers across the nation, so we had one-on-one conversations with all of the people and

retailers. It wasn’t about distributors, it wasn’t about corporation, it wasn’t about slotting

fees. It was a very friendly kind of business environment at that time. as you know now

it’s more corporatized, it’s, not nearly as personal. But we’ve had sixteen hundred

accounts and we could generally know the person by first name that we were speaking to.

So Boulder didn’t have a huge effect upon— it was more the national pull of the

marketplace.)

(And did the increasing move towards a more corporate flavor influence your decision to

sell the tea company?)

Tom: Absolutely That was the problem of the corporatization and the homogenization

of small businesses just ran a lot of small business people out of town. You may recall

there were a lot of small health food store, mom and pop shop, kind of businesses in that

environment and the handy grocery store who were some of the other—

Tom: Crystal Market, y’know, all these kind of little independently owned places have

all been replaced by conglomerates now and so for every one of those conglomerates that

opened a store, three, four, five, six of those small stores went out of business. Well,

those were our customers. So, y’know, the corporatization and the homogenization of

business put a lot of small business people out. And it was just impossible to compete.

We couldn’t afford the slotting fees that the new conglomerates were charging where you

had to pay for the right to be on the shelf, and this that and the other. So it was a little

difficult in the sense that y’know the people who actually created the industry, they

created the marketplace based upon making the products and making the industry viable

were eventually shoved out. But I think that’s just the way every industry works at some

point.)

(So, is Unitea still in existence?)

Tom: Unitea, the intellectual property is still in existence. We are currently having some

conversations with a few parties to perhaps bring them back into the marketplace, but in

the marketplace they are nonexistent at this point.

51:44 (Brigitte, what prompted you to write your first book and which was your first

book?)

(Ed. Note: At this point the microphone is readjusted and both Brigitte and the

interviewer's voices resume equal volume.)

My first book was actually a book on elder, elder trees. And it was interesting I had just

come back from picking elder berries, which Tom and I love to do in the fall, and I had a

phone call from Keith’s Publishing saying would you like to write a book on the healing

powers of elder berries and elder flowers. And so, that was my first book.

(And did you, what was your response when you got this phone call? Did you

immediately jump right into it?)

Yes, and we made elder flower champagne and elder berry chutney, and it was so fun

creating all these recipes and becoming somewhat of an expert on this one particular

plant. And then I wrote a little book HERBS FOR HEALTHY SKIN, HAIR, AND

NAILS, and both of those books have gone out of print because the publishing companies

that published them were bought out by bigger publishing companies that had other

targets. But, three books that I have out right now that are all in print and doing quite

well: ADDICTION FREE NATURALLY. I was asked to write that one, and I was really

glad for that opportunity because I’ve often felt that when someone has a health condition

and you recommend some herbs or some dietary changes that they’re still addicted to

tobacco, alcohol, coffee, sugar. That might really get in the way of them achieving true

health. So I wrote ADDICTION FREE NATURALLY and that came out, I’m going to

say like, 1999 and then SEX, LOVE, AND HEALTH was a joy to write because being

married for so long I wanted to learn more about the arts of love from other cultures and

Tom and I took a number of Tantric workshops. And I wanted to write a book that not

only talked about the art of love, but holistic gynecology that would include natural ways

for dealing with menopause, and prostate health, and endometriosis. And, that was a real

joyous book to write. I believe that came out in 2001. And my latest book is

RAWSOME. That just came out in 2004. And it’s already in its third printing, even

though it’s only been out for about six months. And the raw foods movement is really

growing, and I’m so glad I wrote this book because I love being part of this movement.

54:19 (How did you become involved in the raw foods movement?)

Well I thought about raw foods a little bit in the Seventies when I lived in Miami and had

a vegetarian restaurant there. And when I moved to Colorado and I talked about raw

foods everyone said, “You can’t eat raw foods, you’re crazy, it’s too cold here.” So I

quickly gave up the whole idea of eating raw foods, and I studied macrobiotics with

Aveline and Michio Kushi and Rebecca Wood and enjoyed macrobiotics which is, you

know, brown rice and beans and seaweeds and all kinds of great grains and vegetables.

But, a few years ago my daughter, Rainbeau, I’m actually looking for a picture of her,

Rainbeau Mars, my daughter Rainbeau, when she went to Hollywood after making her

first movie and became quite adept a doing yoga called and said, “Mom, I’ve gone raw!”

And I thought oh no, this is some sort of anorexic thing that these young kids do out

there, God help her! And, we went out there to talk some sense into her. And when we

saw her we said, “Well, she looks really good!” And my husband had already, always

had digestive problems and, we were worried about the raw diet. But after trying her

roommate’s meals – her roommate was Juliano (Brotman) a raw chef, and author of

RAW, and owner of a restaurant called “Raw” in L.A.—she said, “Don’t worry, my

roommate is a raw chef and he knows all about it.” So, I decided that I was going to try it

for a year just to be supportive of my daughter. And after about a month I felt so good

that I just wanted to keep on going with it.

So, sorry, I’m looking (noise in background) since I showed you a picture of Rainbeau I

wanted to put my daughter Sunflower Sparkle’s picture here as well, bless her heart. I’m

so grateful, and I get to be a grandmother. It’s the greatest thing now.

So, I decided that I was going to try raw foods for a year, and after a month I just said, “I

feel younger, I feel like I can dance like I did when I was 17, I feel like I sing better.”

My vision is better, and my husband has actually had his eyeglass prescription reduced

three times in the past three years. So, I’m really convinced that it’s a great thing to do

and people who think that they’ve tried everything to improve their health should try raw

foods. Because it saves time, it saves energy, it saves money, and you can have

absolutely wonderful, delicious food. So, I just want to talk about it all the time these

days.

57:06 (Being in Boulder for the last 28 years myself I have seen the comings and goings

of so many vegetarian restaurants, The Little Kitchen and The Carnival Café, and The

Heartland Café, and probably some others I can’t think of. Why can’t a community like

Boulder, support a vegetarian restaurant?)

I think that when people go out to dinner you might have a couple of vegetarians and then

a couple people who want non-vegetarian meals. So we do have Sunflower, which will

offer many vegetarian entrees, and, you know, there’s more and more restaurants that do

offer vegetarian entrees, so I think it’s the dynamics of, you know, when you have a party

of six, you know, the two vegetarians end up going to where everybody else wants to eat

and, just as you have seen Joyce, lots of trends, you know, vegetarianism has been trendy.

And then I ate meat for a number of years because it was available organically and now

I’m back to being a vegan, a raw foods vegan, so it’s interesting to see all the trends.

But, I would love to see a raw foods restaurant open in Boulder, and I hope that someone

does it. People keep asking me, “When are you going to open a restaurant?” and I feel

that for now my path is to teach people how to do it themselves because, you know, I’ve

had two restaurants in the past and, restaurants are an every day kind of deal, and I know

how much work they are. So I’m really grateful to the people that are doing it, a great

job with the restaurants, and, I’m also happy about the little cart, Sally's on the Raw, on

Pearl Street Mall, that’s closed down for the fall and winter season, but hopefully will

reopen in the spring. Sally Taylor has a little raw Volkswagen van on Pearl Street mall.

But, yes, maybe it’ll happen.

(For listeners who might not know the connection, Sally Taylor is James Taylor, the

famous musician, singer, songwriter’s daughter.)

Yup, and Carly Simon’s daughter as well. And she, Sally Taylor, is a wonderful

musician in her own right.

59:17 (I understand that you don’t drive a car. How has that been in Boulder where

people are, seem very attached to their autos?)

You know, I really just never learned to drive. When most _______ (brief gap in

recording) having driver's ed I went to an all-girls boarding school and they didn’t have

driver’s ed there, and then I lived in the Virgin Islands and there were very few cars there

back then, mostly, mopeds. And, when I lived on the commune in Missouri, the four-

wheel drive roads were so treacherous only the brave would attempt to drive something

like that. And when I lived in Boulder people always assumed because I’m an herbalist I

live in the mountains, but, you know, I don’t drive, so I don’t want to live in the

mountains. I love to go up to the mountains. My husband likes to say I don’t need to

drive because I’m driven. I’m self-motivated. Where I live, right downtown, is such a

great location. I love that Boulder Co-op is right across the street, I love that I can walk

to Naropa, that I can walk to Pharmaca. I work in both Pharmacas these days. And, most

of what I need is right in town. If I need to go to the airport I walk to 14th and Walnut

and take the bus. And people say to me, “You know, how can you stand not driving? It

would take so much longer?” If I need to go teach at the massage school in Gunbarrel I’ll

go take the bus, if I don’t have a ride. People say it takes so much longer to take the bus,

and I say how many more hours a week do you need to work to pay for your car, to pay

for your gas, your insurance, your car repairs? My guess is I save time by not driving

than you do by driving.

61:04 (End of Tape A.)

[B].

00:00 (Brigitte, how many years did you end up spending at Alfalfa’s?)

I think it might have been like 13 years

(And now you’re at Pharmaca?)

Yes, I after we sold the tea company, I, we sold the tea company and after the Rocky

Mountain Center for Botanical Studies closed, I thought, you know, I should probably

have a regular job and Pharmaca just seemed like a great match. They had, you know,

herbs from a lot of companies that I was familiar with, and I know a lot about vitamins as

well, and I run the book section at both stores so I get to sell my books, I get to sell my

daughter’s videos, and I love the whole concept of Pharmaca preserving the family

neighborhood pharmacy so that we don’t have a big corporate chain moving into the

neighborhood. And, yeah, it’s really nice. I can walk to both stores and I love the people

that work there and I really love seeing all the people from Boulder that I knew years ago

and I get to see them again and, you know, some of them were, you know, kids back then

and now they’re in there getting prenatal vitamins for their upcoming, new babies, and so

I love being out there in the world. Otherwise I end up spending a lot of time in front of

the computer writing, which is where I’ve been for 10 years, those of you who wondered

where I went to. So it’s just great to reconnect and be part of the community. So I love

what Pharmaca’s doing. They are opening stores around the country but I don’t get the

feel that they’re a corporate giant. I feel that they’re a company with a lot of heart.

01:42 (In terms of natural foods and herbal supplements and the stores that we have in

Boulder currently they’re kind of out of the price range for a substantial segment of the

Boulder community that maybe isn’t as visible as the more affluent. What’s your

impression of how, what we can do in Boulder to make that type of nutrition and

supplementation more available to people who maybe currently can’t afford to shop at

some of the big health food stores.)

Well, keep in mind that produce is still a good buy and buying things in bulk, you know,

grains and beans. When you get into buying package food like, you know, organic rice

pizza with a soy cheese topping and sun dried tomatoes, you’re going to pay for

processed foods. So I’d encourage people to do more to buy food from the raw material

and make it themselves. And for people who think that they don’t really have time to do

that, again, keep in mind what you’re really paying, and so, if you shop in the bulk aisles

and you shop in the produce aisles I still think that there’s a lot of value there. Now, one

of the things I've learned about raw food is it’s such a great value. My husband and I

were eating a big spinach salad and it was so delicious and I had this wonderful pine nut

ranch dressing, and I said, “You know, if we’d cook this spinach we’d have like this

much.” (gestures) So remember that when you eat your food raw you really get to eat a

lot more of it without cooking it. And I think we also cook the nutrients out of our food.

So I do see that there’s a great potential.

I would encourage people to grow a garden rather than, if you can have a flowerbed or if

you can have an herb garden you can grow a few edible things. Learn to wildcraft

maybe, even if it’s in your back yard. I thought there’s no way I’m going to be able to

garden living in a condominium but we grow a lot of different herbs and vegetables in

our little condominium. I really just started going to condominium meetings and

everyone pretty much agreed “Sure, ya know, who says you can’t grow raspberries; go

for it; raspberries are great.” We all enjoy that we’ve made this place really ours. So for

those people who live in apartments I’d say see if you can't get a petition going to have a

community garden. And learn to identify some of the weeds, ‘cause as you’re gardening

you could be eating that lambs quarter and purslane, they really are very delicious. And,

yeah, make things from scratch. And avoid the fancy prepackaged food. Markup is

lowest on produce than any other item in a natural food store.

And of course it’s great that, you know, even commercial grocery stores are carrying

more produce because in the end it’s going to be a more mainstream thing. It shouldn’t

be that difficult. This is something that should be available to everybody, everywhere,

and we vote with our dollars. So, rather than saying I really want the world to be

healthier and more organic, it’s really a social choice to say, “So I’m going to buy

organic apples ‘cause I want the world to be a better place for my grandchildren.” You

have to put your money where your mouth is.

05:07 (In addition to working at Pharmaca, what’s on the horizon for you?)

Well, I have two new books coming out, one that I’m hoping gets called FLORAL

PHARMACY that will be an herbal material medica. I also have a book out called

HEALING HERBAL TEAS. And I really would like to write sort of a novel-memoir

book about the Sixties and Seventies, the wild years, and it’ll be pretty true too but I’d

like to do that. I’m a grandmother now, and so that’s a very important part of my life.

I’ve applied to be on the show SURVIVOR (chuckles), so we’ll see.

(When will you find out about that?)

Oh, I don’t know; they’ve called, so we’ll see if that comes to fruit.

(Speaking of TV, I understand that you had a segment on DATELINE.)

Yes.

(Tell us a little bit about that.)

Well DATELINE contacted me and they flew a crew out here and we filmed it right here

and the subject was Herbal Alternatives to Viagra. And, I talked about herbs and of

course, you know, we talked for three hours and they took a little, like, you know, minute

segment from all we talked about and I think they took a lot of things out of context, and

I would talk about these herbs and then they would have this doctor come on and say

“It’s not proven, it’s not scientific,” and then they had this old guy who was having good

success using herbs and saying, “My wife and I don’t need a scientific study to know that

it really works.” And, you know that when people say that herbs haven’t really been

scientifically studied, I like to say they’ve been used by millions of people for thousands

of years. And that’s a lot more valid than a two-year rat study, thank you. (chuckles)

06:50 (Anything else you’d like to add?)

Oh, I just love Boulder and I’m honored you would think to include me as a historical

member of Boulder and, it’s not over yet. So stay tuned and I hope to see many of you

come by and see me at Pharmaca, and I’m in the phonebook. So I’m always offering

classes in some form, still doing herb walks, and I want to wish you all many blessings

and just stay on the path and know that in honoring yourself and taking better care of

your own health that we also take better care of the planet. Thank you.

(Thanks you so much for your generous donation of your time and the great story. Thank

you.)

07:31 (End of Tape B. End of Interview.)