Episode 22 — Alexandra LittleJohn | I'm the Table

Alexandra LittleJohn — ALJ to nearly everyone in specialty coffee — runs U.S. marketing for Eversys out of Denver, after years at Portola Coffee Lab, Verve, Equator and OZO and a long stretch of volunteer leadership with the Barista Guild of America. Joshua first met her at a Coffee Fest latte art competition, where she showed up in a lab coat, goggles and rubber gloves. Her love of live music came out of loss. Her mother died when she was eleven, and her mother's best friend's family carried her and her brothers to shows through those years. A concert is still one of the few places she can turn her head off and just be present. Instagram took its time letting ALJ into the room, so Trevor Corlett jumped on to hold it, and Joshua ended up saying out loud how much of his identity he has tied to getting things right. The conversation that follows is a quiet answer to that. ALJ and Joshua talk about concerts as a rare place where strangers become a community for two hours, learning from people by watching what they have and asking how they got it, meeting people on their level, and remembering that most people are too busy thinking about themselves to judge you. Then Joshua describes the table he wants to set, one where everybody eats, and she turns it around: "I'm the table," and whoever shows up for dinner is meant to be there. She can't feed anyone if she hasn't fed herself first. It ends with the titanium rods in her back, two years of Pilates and weight training, and a show last weekend she stood through from start to finish. Her verdict on all that work: "It's totally worth it."