“For Amber Waves of Grain”

Jay Elkin, who farms near Taylor, N.D. and a director on the board of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association, was featured during this year’s spring wheat harvest in a story produced by NBC’s “Today Show.”  The seven-minute feature – lengthy for national TV – was part of Today’s ‘America The Beautiful’ series highlighting areas that are unique and majestic throughout the 50 states. 

The Today Show contacted the NDGGA in search of a scene that would illustrate the first two lines of “America the Beautiful” - O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. According to the Library of Congress, the song actually started as a poem, written by Katherine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College near Boston, inspired by the sites she saw after a train trip through the Midwest in 1893.  The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, a weekly newspaper, to commemorate the Fourth of July.

The melody to which the poem was put to music was written in 1882 by Samuel Augustus Ward, a New Jersey church organist and choirmaster. Wikipedia points out that Ward died in 1903, not knowing the national stature his music would attain. Bates was more fortunate, as the song’s popularity was well established by her death in 1929.

“America the Beautiful” has been called “an expression of patriotism at its finest.” It conveys an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the nation’s extraordinary physical beauty and abundance, without triumphalism. There have been efforts through the years to give “America the Beautiful” legal status either as a national hymn, or as a national anthem equal to, or in place of, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which some criticize as being too war-oriented and too difficult to sing.

The Today Show found the perfect setting for “amber waves of grain” just south of Taylor in a vast field of spring wheat field farmed by Elkin. “I really felt at ease during the live interview,” Elkin notes.  “I had many conversations with Meredith the producer, and spent ten hours with the crew while they were here filming footage for the reveal lead up, so I really felt comfortable when we went live.

“I think it’s a privilege and an honor that they came to my farm and wanted to interview me,” Elkin continues, “but the real purpose was to showcase North Dakota and my farm was just a small piece of that.” 

Today’s travel editor Peter Greenberg wrote the following in a commentary about the country’s great fields:  “Most of us have never been there. Most of us never will go there. And yet, every one of us benefits from the amber waves of grain. And in particular, the family farms of North Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska and the Great Plains states.  As we celebrate “America the Beautiful,” we also celebrate these “fly-over” states and the great American farm. Ask American kids where food comes from, and you could easily hear “the market.”

Video from the Today segment can be watched online at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19709843 - or go to www.msnbc.msn.com and search for “America the Beautiful” or “Amber Waves of Grain”. – Tracy Sayler, Sheena Johnson