There She Is...Miss America!

I don't know if little girls still get giddy about meeting Miss America, but they did when I was little. When I was about six years old we had an old TV where you used the rotary dial to change the channel. Actually, it was probably new at the time. My mom told me we were going to fudge bed time and watch Miss America. She spun that rotary dial through all the snowy channels (my child will never know about snowy channels since everything is digital now) until we heard the theme song. I don't know who won, but there's something magical about little girls and crowns. I ran to my dress up chest and fished out a white stretchy headband that Santa had brought adorned with pearls and sparkly pink and purple flowers. I'm sure I wore it proudly long after I fell asleep that night, which was probably about the time the talent competition started.

Two years ago as a full-fledged, income earning, adult I was invited to a Miss America party with other full-fledged, income earning adults. It was impeccably planned and themed by state. Every girl was supposed to choose a state candidate to root for and wear something symbolizing that state. Did I go? You better believe I did!

Then, three weeks ago I got a Monday afternoon invitation to have dinner with royalty! Miss American 2011, Theresa Scanlan, was in town to meet with stakeholders in an agriculture movement.

Doesn't she look like she's fun to hang out with? She is.

The Hand that Feeds U.S. is a commodity-neutral effort to inform urban media about the real world of agriculture. Editorial boards at the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and beyond often don’t realize that less than 2,500 family owned and operated farms feed our nation and export to the world.

These aren’t gigantic industries run by guys in suits in a corporate office. These are small, family businesses, often maintained through thick and thin for several generations. Their “CEOs” rise before the sun each day in an average house decorated with their grandmothers’ doilies and cross stitch. They live an hour from the nearest grocery store of size and their kids go to school with only 15 or 20 other classmates. Each morning they put on heavy work boots and head out to tend a crop that will fill a variety of uses from bread to plastics to fuel to clothing. They fight the wind, rain, snow, hail and heat to protect tiny seedlings that will eventually make it to your grocery store shelves or into your jeans. They tend calving cows and make sure the new offspring are healthy, warm and safe from predators. At night they step through the front door long after sunset and sit down to keep books, study accounts and pay bills at the same desk where their grandfather kept books, studied accounts and paid bills. It’s a tough, dirty, stressful and difficult life but farmers and ranchers do it because they love it and they serve a greater good as stewards of the land and providers for the American people.

I digress. At any rate, The Hand that Feeds U.S. goes out to editorial boards and the general public across the nation to provide them real facts about agriculture and simultaneously serves as a resource for reporters to get both sides of agriculture’s story.

So, Miss Theresa Scanlan has made American farmers and ranchers her platform this year. And I could not be more thrilled with the new spokeswoman we have for this industry.

I had dinner with Theresa then was graciously invited to join her and Mr. and Mrs. Combest, former Lubbock Congressman and chair of the House Agriculture Committee, on a late evening tour of the U.S. Capitol. Although I’ve been on tours before, seeing our nation’s Capitol from the inside out when it’s empty  is an even more awe-inspiring experience. I remembered something Brandon was told when he was an intern in D.C.: “The day you cease to be in awe of the place you work is the day you need to find another job.”

Here we are bashing around the Capitol late at night. I couldn't resist. How do you not snap a photo with someone who carries a crown around with her in a shiny black box? :)

Theresa is bright, articulate, beautiful, wholesome, intelligent and just a lot of fun to be around! She doesn’t demonstrate for a second that she is the youngest woman ever to wear the Miss America crown or that the crown has gone to her head, no pun intended. In our travels through the Capitol she was friendly and popular, stopping to chat and take pictures with the late night Capitol maintenance staff, guards and straggling visitors.

Here she is rolling out the partnership last Friday on Fox and Friends. This is the entire interview, but the mention of The Hand that Feeds U.S. is around the three minute mark.

If you’re interested, also take a look at her short OpEd on why she chose to make agriculture part of her platform.