Biography
Some time ago, Michael Lissner became the third born child to his loving parents David and Katharine Lissner. He lived happily, if ignorantly, for many years under his parents care in a fine Tudor house in one of the nicer suburbs of Los Angeles. He played with his older brother, James, and his older sister Jessica, and quickly learned the varied advantages and disadvantages of being the youngest child. For many years during his infancy, his father, David worked from their house, struggling to start his own successful business, and after many years of working out of the house, eventually purchased a warehouse near Pasadena, where he began selling secretarial chairs that he had made himself. As time passed, the business did become successful, branching out to make chairs for all types of environments.
Unfortunately though, with the newfound success of the business came hounds that wanted to take its money. Frivolous lawsuits began pouring in against the business for all variety of reasons, creating a plague that could not be cured. It was at this time that
Michael began seeing less of his father, as it became necessary to move the business a few hundred miles to the south, in Mexico, where such lawsuits were simply not a problem.
He was thus brought up largely by his mother, who doted on him, and gave him more than most children could dream of. She scolded and punished as well, but with the older two siblings already having flexed and broken the rules, by the time he came to break them, they were already wilted and dead, and the fun in hearing them snap was nowhere to be found. Thus, he was largely a well behaved child, and his parents’ greatest concern was that receive the best education that they could find.
As time passed, the Lissner family eventually moved to San Diego in order to be closer to the business’s new location in Mexico. The family moved to one of the richer towns near
San Diego, Coronado, where the public schooling system was purported to be one of the best in the nation, and the caliber of the students was said to be the highest. By this time,
Michael’s older brother, James had earned a full scholarship at the University of
California at Santa Barbara, and had begun his classes there, and as such, Michael lived with his older sister, Jessica, and his two parents for the next several years, until he entered high school, and his sister graduated from it, going to the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Once in high school, Michael’s focus began to steadily increase. During freshman year, he was an average student, more concerned with learning than with getting good grades, but as time passed, he learned the value of good grades as well, and began studying hard for all his tests, eventually becoming one of the top students in all of his classes, with his favorite subjects being calculus, chemistry and woodworking.
After his fourth year at Coronado High School, Michael had one summer off before heading to Pitzer College, in Claremont, California, where he was to eventually study
English and World Literature. No records remain of what he did during this final summer

before his undergraduate studies, but we can rest assured that he spent much of his time with his then girlfriend, and that little of much relevance came to pass.
Upon entering Pitzer College, he was unsure of which direction he wanted to go. The school was renowned for its strong liberal arts curriculum, but he was more interested in mathematics and sciences upon entering. For the first few years at Pitzer, he continued woodworking by getting a job at a cabinetry shop, and spent the rest of his time studying subjects as diverse as neuroscience and feminist interpretations of the bible. When all was said and done, and he had to decide a major, he chose English and World Literature because it was the subject that he had spent the most time studying up to that point.
Several times throughout his adolescence, Michael had traveled to Spanish speaking countries, and in the spring of his third year at Pitzer, he traveled to San Sebastian, Spain, where he spent a semester studying Spanish literature and language, thereby gaining fluency in the Spanish language.
Upon his return to his home at Pitzer, he became interested most in the political workings of the school, and joined as many committees and focus groups as his time would allow.
He had several meetings that he had to attend every week, and he found that to his surprise he actually began to enjoy attending the meetings and expressing his views on the college, no matter the subject. After graduating from Pitzer in 2004, these meetings were one of the things he was said to miss most.
In the early summer of 2004, he graduated from Pitzer with his English degree, and a minor in Spanish Language, and was forced, rather reluctantly to get a job. After searching for some time, he was offered a job by his father working for the family business, which at this point was selling industrial workbenches. He worked from home at this job for about a year until in April of 2005, he undertook a backpacking trip from
Mexico to Canada via the Pacific Crest Trail.
For five months, he and his college friend backpacked north from the Mexico border, covering dozens of miles each day, until on the 12 th
of September, 2005 he completed his stepped forth into Canada, thus completing his journey.