Ag TALES
Congresswoman Celeste Malloy Shares Her American Roots and Path to Congressional Service
From rural Nevada to the bustling corridors of Capitol Hill, Celeste Malloy's story is nothing short of inspirational. Her tale begins in Hiko, where a childhood filled with outdoor adventures and family resilience laid the groundwork for her fierce dedication to public service. As Celeste recounts her formative years spent participating in FFA, working at a local truck stop, and absorbing the work ethic of her parents, you'll feel the depth of her American roots and understand the experiences that molded her commitment to represent Utah's second congressional district.
As she shares the emotion of being sworn in, surrounded by loved ones, listeners are transported to that exhilarating moment. With the same earnestness, Celeste peels back the curtain on the day-to-day whirlwind of congressional duties. Her homage to the mentorship of Congressman Chris Stewart weaves into a promise of impactful service, reminding us that behind politics, lies the heart of human connection and the drive to amplify the voice of the people. Engage with her stories of late-night reflections on the betterment of Utah's communities, and her push to bring continued improvement the political arena. Join in as Celeste Malloy lends insight to her journey and current work.
From rural Nevada to the bustling corridors of Capitol Hill, Celeste Malloy's story is nothing short of inspirational. Her tale begins in Hiko, where a childhood filled with outdoor adventures and family resilience laid the groundwork for her fierce dedication to public service. As Celeste recounts her formative years spent participating in FFA, working at a local truck stop, and absorbing the work ethic of her parents, you'll feel the depth of her American roots and understand the experiences that molded her commitment to represent Utah's second congressional district.
As she shares the emotion of being sworn in, surrounded by loved ones, listeners are transported to that exhilarating moment. With the same earnestness, Celeste peels back the curtain on the day-to-day whirlwind of congressional duties. Her homage to the mentorship of Congressman Chris Stewart weaves into a promise of impactful service, reminding us that behind politics, lies the heart of human connection and the drive to amplify the voice of the people. Engage with her stories of late-night reflections on the betterment of Utah's communities, and her push to bring continued improvement the political arena. Join in as Celeste Malloy lends insight to her journey and current work.
Listen in everybody. We're interviewing Celeste Malloy, our new congresswoman for Utah's second congressional district. Hope you like it. Like where do you come from?
Speaker 2:I am the fourth of six kids. I was born in cedar city but I grew up in a little teeny, tiny town in nevada called heiko, um it's. It was small then. It's even smaller now. My parents still live there and I grew up, you know, probably a little bit feral.
Speaker 2:There were six of us kids and we lived in a single wide trailer, which means we spent a lot of our time outside and I, you know, was involved in the things that rural kids are involved in. I tell people all the time there were only three things to do in my hometown shoot things, burn things and swim in the hot springs, and I did all three. So I I didn't grow up on a farm. My dad moved there to work on someone else's ranch, so so I grew up on an acre and ran around digging holes and riding bikes and just being outside, yeah, but I didn't raise livestock. I did 4-H and FFA as a kid, but I didn't do the livestock stuff. I did soil judging, I did range judging, I did the 4-H, like sewing classes and cooking classes, those kinds of things, the 4-H, like sewing classes and cooking classes, those kind of things.
Speaker 2:And I was really involved in the high school and the things that go on there, like you are, when you go to a really small school. I did FFA. I tried my hand at sports. It turns out I'm really unathletic. It took me a long time to accept that reality. But I am not athletic. I got cut from my high school volleyball team to accept that reality. But I am not athletic. I got cut from my high school volleyball team and so then I worked a lot. In high school I went to work at a local truck stop. So I was working and going to school and running around with my friends, kind of the typical rural kid things. That didn't seem that interesting or that unique to me when I was doing them because everybody around me was living the same way. But now I realize that that is not how most people live.
Speaker 1:So your dad was a like, a like, a like a hand, like a cow hand on a ranch, or what did he do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what he moved out there for. Then he ended up going to work in a mine. He worked in a tungsten mine when I was a kid and the mine closed down. He stayed on for a while as security at the mine and then you know the way it happens in rural towns you kind of do whatever job. So he worked for the State Road Department for a while, he worked at the bank for a while and now he's working on a ranch again, a youth ranch. So he's doing ranch work but also helping kids learn to be responsible adults, which he loves.
Speaker 2:How about your mom? My mom's wonderful? She was a stay-at-home mom, but she was also the Avon lady the whole time. I was. But she sold makeup, which for me as a little girl was really fun. I would, I would spend hours sometimes looking through the Avon catalog at all the things in there and smelling the perfume samples. I just thought it was so glamorous. But I didn't realize as a kid that that meant my mom was a small business owner. I just thought of her as a mom, but she had her thing that she did that empowered her and gave her a sense of autonomy. She was also a substitute teacher and she substituted at the HICO post office, which was just about a couple hundred yards from where I grew up. So that was really cool. We had the coolest post office I've ever seen. It was in our neighbor's house and we didn't have post office boxes. We had cloth bags that hung on the wall in the post office so we could have stolen anyone's mail, but nobody did, because Bonnie kept an eye on things in the post office.
Speaker 1:So you just called your neighbor, like hey, what's in my mail today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I remember when my brothers got their mission calls, bonnie would call and say, hey, it just came in the mail so that my mom could run down and get it. That's awesome, yeah. So how many siblings did you have? Five, I have four brothers, one sister.
Speaker 1:Four brothers one sister. Apparently. You've done all the jobs in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they just they hustled all the time and I didn't know that wasn't normal either. But my parents worked hard to make sure that we could have the kind of childhood they wanted us to have, where we could grow up in a rural area and have opportunities. In a small school you get to do a little bit of everything, you don't get pigeonholed too early, and they were really involved in the activities we did. My dad was a scoutmaster, my brothers were all in scouts and my mom and my sister and I all clogged together Cool, that's way cool. Yeah, it was a little iconic Americana kind of childhood.
Speaker 1:So how did you get involved in 4-H then? What sparked that?
Speaker 2:It's just what kids did during the summer. I don't really remember how I got involved. I think they asked my mom to teach the sewing class, and so I did that, but I remember taking it from other people too. I don't know. I just I just went along with things. I don't remember being overly ambitious as a kid. I just did what I did. When the book mobile showed up, I and got a book. When it was time to go to 4-H, I went to 4-H.
Speaker 1:So how big was the town when you were there? What was the size?
Speaker 2:I think there were about a hundred people there when I was growing up. My sister and I were trying to count. We would make spud nuts for all of our neighbors at Christmas and it seems like we made a hundred dozen spud nuts and took a dozen to most of the families. So I don't know whatever that comes out to in in our little tiny trailer house kitchen. Yeah, oh yeah, that's a child.
Speaker 1:Yeah and that's that just like brings back. I thought I came from a small town. My hometown was like 2 000 people and I was like, oh man, your hometown is so tiny and, yeah, graduated with 60 but 100 people in it, yeah, and I just assumed that's the same way I would live as an adult, right?
Speaker 2:You only know what your childhood is like as a child, and so you think it's normal, and I couldn't have imagined the things I'm actually doing as an adult. I had no frame of reference for that. I assumed that I would, you know, get married, have a bunch of kids and be doing the same kind of things my mom did.
Speaker 1:So then, so you went from, so you went from 4-H and you got in. I'm trying to remember what you went to Southern Utah, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I did FFA in high school and I learned soil judging and range judging in FFA. My senior year I went to the FFA state contest at SUU and won the soil judging contest, actually tied with my high school best friend, and we had similar GPAs, similar scores on the contest. So one of the professors at SUU went and got a company in Cedar to double the scholarship, because whoever won that contest got a full ride scholarship to suu as long as they majored in agriculture, and he got us both the scholarship so we both got to go so you had full right through ffa based through judging yes yes, amazing, I know.
Speaker 2:So I show up at every ffa event I can and tell the kids like these, the things you're doing right now don't seem like they're huge things, but they can be. In fact I'm wearing I'm wearing my FFA bracelet right now. I went to their state convention in Logan last week and they gave me a Taylor Swift bead bracelet that says Utah, ffa, and I'm wearing it everywhere because when I was a kid, I mean I knew I wanted to go to college. I knew I needed to go to college and I knew I needed to pay for it myself. I didn't know how to do that really, and FFA gave me a direction. It gave me a way to do it. But when I joined FFA, I think I only did it so I could meet boys from other schools and it didn't seem like I was doing anything then. That would have ripple effects through my whole life. Now I'm a middle-aged woman and I can look back and see a direct line between that and where I am now. But it just didn't seem remarkable then. So I try to give as much back to FFA as I can.
Speaker 2:In fact, the night I got sworn into Congress they said you have about one or two minutes on the floor to speak when you get sworn in. And my chief of staff kept saying, do you want to write a speech? And I was like no, I kind of know what I want to say and it was making him really nervous. But what I did was quote part of the FFA creed. I said I believe in the promise of better days through better ways, even as the better things we now enjoy have come to us through the struggles of former years.
Speaker 2:And that's how I feel about being in Congress. I'm looking forward to having better days in the future because we can do things better than we're doing them now. But I want to pay homage to the struggles of former years. We're standing on the shoulders of giants in this country and I want to be respectful of that. But I learned that from FFA and the fun thing about bringing that up the night I got sworn in that I didn't anticipate is now every member of Congress who was involved in FFA in high school has come and talked to me about it and recited part of the creed and talked about their experiences. I think there are four members of Congress who are state FFA presidents and so they asked me if I was a state president. I was not a state officer, I was barely a chapter officer. I was never the president of my own chapter, but I was involved in the club.
Speaker 1:So now you can say at Congress, like all those who are in the Congress FFA club, we're going to go have lunch, you know whatever.
Speaker 2:So we actually do have an FFA caucus and I did join it yeah.
Speaker 1:So talking about then what? So just for listeners, what do you do now? Like, what are you doing now for people who don't know?
Speaker 2:I am a member of Congress. I represent Utah's second congressional district.
Speaker 1:And did you? Jumping to the third question then, and you kind of already mentioned this, you go from a town of 100 to FFA, right To college on an ag scholarship. Yes, Did you see yourself sitting in Congress?
Speaker 2:Not even a little bit. When I was a student, I got an internship with the NRCS, so I was a soil conservationist trainee with USDA and part of that program was they were going to offer me a full-time job when I graduated. And I graduated, they offered me a job in Beaver. I moved 50 miles up the freeway and settled in. I had a federal retirement plan and I liked the work and I kind of thought that I would do that until I retired or got married and started having babies, whatever. There were a couple of different ways I could see this going, but never this direction. This all sort of happened slowly, one step at a time, over the course of a lot of years.
Speaker 1:But I think when you end up places where you're meant to be or want to be, or have a passion about, it feels kind of surreal, right, yeah, oh, absolutely, and it's like wow, I'm like this is where I need to be, or you're really happy. Is that how you feel now about Congress, or how are you doing in Congress right now?
Speaker 2:Well, I have been in office for almost four months so I don't know if I have any idea what's normal yet, and I'm already running for reelection. So most of the time I'm tired. I'm working a lot of long hours, but it is surreal. That night I got sworn in, was one of those rare moments in life that is just perfect. I mean, it felt like something out of a Disney movie. I had 200 friends and family members up in the gallery cheering for me. My parents were there, all of my siblings were there. Yeah, it was really cool. And John Curtis hosted a reception for all of my guests right afterward in Statuary Hall in the Capitol. So my nieces and nephews were running around the United States Capitol eating pizza and it was just unbelievable.
Speaker 2:But it's also a lot of work. So I came in in the middle of a Congress and I was immediately in the middle of a stream of work, and it's a lot of work, and I had to hire an entire new staff and train them and then file to run again and run a campaign while we were still setting up the office. And it's been the most work I've ever done in my life and I'm a bit of a workaholic, but this is more work than I've ever done and it's been the most work I've ever done in my life. And I'm a bit of a workaholic, but this is more work than I've ever done and it's really enjoyable work most of the time. But there are still moments when I think how in the world did I get here and how am I going to make the most of this opportunity?
Speaker 2:Whatever time I'm in Congress, I want to make a mark, I want to make things better than they were before I got here. And how am I going to do that? And I don't get a lot of time to stop and reflect on the big picture like that, because there's always a list of tasks in front of me that have to be done quickly. So just to fill in some of the holes in my story since we started with that so I worked in Beaver for about 10 years for NRCS and then I decided to go to law school. I went to law school at BYU and when I graduated I got a job in St George doing natural resources law work. So I was working for Washington County on their public lands issues and water issues and it was the stuff that I liked, the stuff that kind of spurred me to go to law school in the first place. I wanted to be able to change policy.
Speaker 2:There were policies that were just stupid, that I didn't like and I was tired of explaining them and instead of explaining policies, I wanted to make policies better and I thought law school was probably a good way to do it. I didn't really know how I was going to do it and I've been really fortunate several times in my life to just land in the right place at the right time, and that was one of those examples. So I got to work on land policy and water policy and continue helping farmers and ranchers. That's what I liked doing at NRCS. That's what I got to do again at Washington County. I went to work for the Utah Association of Counties doing public lands policy for all of the counties in the state. I left both of those jobs to go to work for the Water Conservancy District in Washington County and I'd been there about five months when Chris Stewart, my congressman, called and offered me a job. He needed an attorney, he needed somebody to do natural resources, and so I went to work as his legal counsel handling his natural resources issues. And that was one of those pinch me kind of experiences where I thought I can't believe he was the first congressman I ever met and then I was working for him and I was working on policy. That's what I had wanted to do and I thought this is the honor of a lifetime to be able to work on federal policy.
Speaker 2:I'm just a little girl from Hico, Nevada, who assumed I'd settle down in a small town with a farm boy and raise a bunch of kids. And here I am, walking the halls of Congress. It was hard to believe I got that opportunity. Congressman Stewart was resigning. He encouraged me to run and I thought he was crazy at first, but he said I think you'd be surprised how people would respond to you if you'd get out there and start talking to them, Tell them what you've been doing and how much you know and how much you care. And I wouldn't have done it without his encouragement and I really appreciate him for that.
Speaker 2:I heard a quote from Abraham Lincoln that he said any success I have is because I have a dear friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down. And I feel like that's my story too. I had a dear friend my boss who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down. So I went and ran and ran really hard and ran a really good grassroots campaign talking to the people that I've been working with for years and years, talking to local elected officials and farmers and ranchers and people who don't always feel like they have a voice in Congress, people who feel like policy happens to them, yeah, and so now I feel a huge responsibility to make sure that I spend my time in Congress really representing those people, people who don't always feel like Congress is listening to them, people who feel like they don't have a way to change policy, people who are just like me and what I was yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, historically, that's why we have every breakfast shop in the nation is full on Saturday morning, because that's where farmers get their anger out, right, yeah. Next question, and I think when someone is really busy, they have. Actually, I want to backtrack just a little bit. You said how you're working to get things done. Right, like, you got to check those boxes off. You got to get things done. Something that I've become kind of a fan of saying to people, because of the opportunity that just agriculture gives you and the nature of your job gives you, is you can go from a person who checks off boxes and like eight to five, to a person who is in charge of creating the boxes. Right, and I mean, do you feel that way in your job? Like like, I think it's like this higher calling right, like, like everyone says, like the Spider-Man quote right Like, now you have this greater responsibility but, I, think in that it's kind of like you're going into the deep water.
Speaker 1:You're like, ah, I don't know Am.
Speaker 2:I doing the right thing.
Speaker 1:What am I doing here? But now, all of a sudden, you have the opportunity to make those boxes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get to make boxes. I also still have to check boxes. So there are certain things I have to do. I have to be in Washington DC when Congress is in session. I have to vote when there's a vote on the floor. But in between the things I have to do, there are the things I get to do, and that's where it really matters who represents you. No matter who was in that seat, they would be voting and in Utah we're a pretty red state They'd probably be voting pretty conservative.
Speaker 2:But what really separates a really good representative from someone who's just putting in their time is that box creating that you just talked about. It's the showing up here in Utah and talking to the people who shower after work about what they need to be able to be successful. It's being part of the local community and being plugged in enough to know what people in Utah need from their representatives. So I talk all the time about supporting local elected officials and I'm a big believer in federalism.
Speaker 2:I'm a big believer in separation of powers and I don't think Congress should get involved in telling local governments how to do their job. But because we have so much federal regulation and because we have so much federal land in Utah. Our local governments are dealing with federal processes all the time and a big part of my job is being there to help them get through those processes. But it'd be really easy to do the job of a congresswoman without spending so much time on that. So it's one of the things I've really focused on. My staff knows I'm really focused on it because those are the boxes I can create.
Speaker 1:I kind of sit at home and I hope like and I hope like you're talking about your FFA group. Yeah, man, I hope those people are intermingling up there in Washington. I hope they're talking about just where they come from and what they do. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, the good news is we do, yeah, interests together, so that you're building relationships In a legislative body. You can't do anything on your own. You have to convince a majority of people to vote for whatever you're doing, and the best way to be able to do that is to have relationships with people so that you can go sit down and talk to them and have a level of trust where you can explain. This is why this is important to my constituents. This is why this thing that matters in Utah that doesn't really happen in your state is important enough for you to go vote on it and help us with a problem we have. And you're not going to get there by being a jerk. You're not going to get there by treating other people badly, yeah, or by giving a really good, persuasive speech.
Speaker 2:It is a relationship driven town and you've got to be willing to put in the time to build relationships with your peers, and your staff has to be willing to build relationships with the people around them. It is the stuff you learned in kindergarten Don't push people, don't call names, yeah, and I know that isn't how people view Congress. I know we look like the kids who probably didn't do well in kindergarten because all you see is the yelling and the name calling and the pushing. But in order to get things done you've got to get past that. The people who are most notorious for being difficult to work with don't get much done for their constituents because nobody wants to help them with anything then in a person, in a person who's in a position like you are, or really anybody.
Speaker 1:We have so much going on and so much to do, and all these things that we work out family and personal life besides all that.
Speaker 2:Yep. Well, you might have a family and a personal life. I am a workaholic and that works out well for my constituents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's well. My wife would disagree with you because she said I she's like you know, a 40 hour week is a thing, but I like this in 80 hours.
Speaker 2:but I like my job. Yeah well, you're not on drugs, right?
Speaker 1:you don't have time to do that same yeah, um, I firmly believe myself, uh, that there is something that everyone has that is still like that last thing that you're thinking about at night. Yeah, do you have something like that where?
Speaker 2:you're like this is my thing right now. Yeah, my thing is did I do anything today to make Utah's lives better? And it's really easy to get caught up all day on the to-do list, and sometimes the things on the to-do list are necessary, and sometimes it's just busy work and when I'm crawling into bed at night I think did I do anything today that makes my constituents' lives better? Because if I'm busy with a to-do list but my to-do list isn't getting me there, then I've got to change how I'm spending my time. What am I doing? I don't know how long I'm going to be in Congress. I'm running for re-election now by when. I'm running for re-election again in two years, and so there's no guarantee that I have a long runway on this. So I've got to make sure that I'm spending time every day representing the people in Utah's second congressional district, while trying to put things in place that, even after I'm gone, will keep making Utah's lives better.
Speaker 2:That's my last thing. That's the thing that keeps me up at night. It's the thing that wakes me up in a cold sweat in the morning. It's the thing that motivates me on the days where I'm tired and I think I can't do. Nine events today. That's what keeps me going. They've put their trust in me. They've asked me to go represent them and make their lives better and make the federal government work better, and and to to clear some of these hurdles, to get things back in balance. And that's what I've got to spend my time and my energy on.
Speaker 1:That's a that's a big job and it was just like you were talking about, like a half hour ago, the people, um, when, when president Trump Trump changed the boundaries on that national monument. Two of them, two of them, yeah, and then they get changed back again, yeah, and those are the kind of things where you're like me as a person, as a citizen. I'm just going like dude why.
Speaker 2:What are we doing here?
Speaker 1:And it doesn't seem like a lasting change and really, from my perspective, it doesn't seem like important things are happening. It feels like and I don't mean to make it sound like it's not important it's just like this is getting tossed around like a softball and we have real issues that you know our ag people need and our people in the city limits need and you know we want to see the lasting change, whatever the change is. We want to see passion there. Yeah, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Presidents shouldn't do that and it should be a decision that Congress makes. Congress moves slowly. Congress represents the people and so having those decisions go through Congress means they'll happen slower, they'll have more buy-in and you won't get the back and forth back and forth. So while the ping-ponging is frustrating honestly for everybody, nobody really loves that Hopefully, what we can get out of it is a realization that there's a better way to do things, and that's what I mean when I talk about better days. Through better ways, we can identify some of the things that aren't working and get to work on systemic changes that make it so that long-term, we're not making the same mistakes over and over. We're looking at the mistakes, identifying why we're making them and then changing the system to address those mistakes.
Speaker 1:I think the concern, or the thing that it makes me think about, is like that's the purpose of Congress, that should things like that belong in Congress? Because it's. It's a. You know, it takes some arguing, it takes some like to really get a good solution. It takes time. But my concern is, like man, that's every time we're going back and forth on that. That's president's time. We all we'd forth on that. That's president's time. We all talk about how busy we are, our schedules, and we're wasting time doing this back and forth thing where your position, Congress serves a great purpose and that's the kind of thing that belongs in Congress, right?
Speaker 2:Well, and disagreement is a really good thing and it's part of the process. And in Congress we don't agree on things very often. So somebody has an idea and somebody else comes in and disagrees with that idea. And then somebody else comes in and they agree with part of it, but they want to see it amended in this way and pretty soon you've been through. It's like a rock going through a tumbler right and you end up with a smoother rock, a better rock.
Speaker 2:But when one person can just say this is the idea and that's the way we have to do it, you don't have that chance for people to disagree. You don't have that chance to talk about what's wrong with the original idea and how it could be made better. And not every idea needs to be implemented. So one of the things that happens in a deliberative body like Congress is somebody comes up with an idea and other people disagree with it and they just can't convince enough people. It's a good idea to get it done, that's a good thing, that's part of the process. But sometimes the kernel of a good idea is there, but it's kind of wrapped in a lot of bad idea and through that process you knock a lot of the bad idea off. The bad thing about a deliberative body is usually nobody gets exactly what they want. The good thing is you usually end up with a better product than you would if one person could just impose their will on everybody else. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean and I think that happens in any good process right when you know, in an extension, I work with several other ag agents who you know. I may think something is a really good idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like well, hold on now, Ethan, like you might be jumping the gun here a little bit, and then I'm like, or how are you going to pay for this good idea?
Speaker 2:It's a great idea. But and I mean, history is replete with examples of this right when when one person can impose their will on everybody else, then they start having really bad ideas and nobody can stop them. Uh, we should all have someone in our lives who can stop us from doing really stupid things, someone who can say, ah, that's a bad idea, or you've got the beginnings of a good idea, but let's take it and make it better. And so, as frustrating as it is to be one of 435 voting members of Congress, it's also an opportunity to be one of those polishers in that tumbler that helps knock the edge off of things and refine ideas until they are good for the American people. They are good for the people of Utah.
Speaker 2:But the thing that is beautiful about the United States House of Representatives is that we really do represent a good cross-section of the country. You have farmers and doctors and PhDs and retired military and school teachers and small business owners all sitting on the same committees talking about issues, and you get multiple points of view from multiple parts of the country, from people who have totally different life experiences, and that's a good thing. It's a slow thing, it's a frustrating thing, but it's beautiful in its own way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. Last two questions, last last two questions. So let's see, this is my favorite question. Okay, I'm ready. Are you happy?
Speaker 2:I am happy. I'm tired. If those of you who are listening can't see me, I have dark circles under my eyes, um, but I could not work this hard at something that didn't make me happy. The idea that I can help fix some of these problems lights me up inside and gives me energy that I didn't even know I had, and keeps me going On the hard days when I'm making hard decisions or when we're just not getting anywhere and it's discouraging.
Speaker 2:The thing that keeps me going is that I am so blessed to have the opportunity to be in the room where it happens, so to speak, and that you know, back to your Spider-Man quote I have great power by being in that room, and with that comes a great responsibility, and it's not just some vague sense of responsibility, it's a very particular responsibility. I have a responsibility to make sure the people in Utah's second congressional district are well represented. I have a responsibility to make sure people in Utah's second congressional district are better off now than they were before I got there, that they have the freedom to live their lives, that they can raise their kids, own their homes, retire and be living the American dream, and that makes me happy.
Speaker 1:So I mean and it really you are. I mean you have such a blessing to be able to like. I mean you can look out the window in any one of these cities and be like these are my people. Yeah, these are my chief. My people the flock'm taking care of whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, that is your responsibility, and I think that's such an awesome thing, because there's a lot of people that like, just depend on you. They hope you're doing a good job. They really hope that the process works. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And to that end, I have made it a goal to set a whole new standard for what it means to be accountable and transparent with my constituents. I go on local radio as often as I can. I put out a newsletter. I show up at as many events as I can. I talk to the local papers whenever I can, because I want people to know what I'm doing with my time, how I'm handling that responsibility. There are days that that responsibility is sort of crushing, but one thing I always try to do is make sure that my constituents know what I'm doing, how I'm doing it and how it impacts them. Even when I know they disagree with me, even when I know they're not going to like everything I'm doing, I know it's my responsibility to make sure they know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:The other thing I appreciate about your podcast is that it's a chance for people to get to know who I am. A lot of the communication I have with people is in a really short form, where I'm talking about a specific issue and they hear where I am on the issue. But I like that whoever listens to this podcast will get to know a little bit of who I am, what motivates me, where I come from, and I think that's important too. If I'm going to represent people, then it helps if they kind of have a sense of who I am, what my brand is, so to speak. Yeah, so thank you for giving me an opportunity to share that, and I just want to say I talked at the beginning about how I grew up and had this happy childhood, and I didn't know how unique my childhood was. I was surrounded by other people who were like me, and so I thought that was more normal than it was, and I suspect that's true of most people who are involved in agriculture. They're around other people involved in agriculture and they think that their perspective and their lifestyle is more common than it is.
Speaker 2:It's unique, and we need those voices involved in public discourse. People who are producing food, feed, fiber for a living, people who are involved in blue-collar trades, people who are working with their hands and involved in their communities and living a rural lifestyle, have a really unique perspective on our nation and the role of government and what policy should be. And I just want to end with a plea to get involved. Get involved in politics, get involved in the schools, get involved in your communities at whatever level you feel comfortable, because your voice is more unique than you think it is and people need to hear from you. They need, as part of that refining process, we need unique voices to get involved, because when we disagree, when we have multiple points of view, we end up with a better product. We end up with a better policy. We end up better off as a people. So don't be hesitant to get involved. Don't think that everyone around you is just like you. Go out there and use your voice and your platform to advocate for the things that are important to you.
Speaker 1:And that's that's thank you. And I want to take a sec just tip my hat to, I mean, your mom and your dad, but especially your mom, because you said something at the beginning that I caught, where you said I didn't realize my mom was a business owner.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That is so. I don't know, I don't even know how to say it, but I can see when you talk about it. I can see, when you mentioned that, that that's important to you. That's something I'm proud about. Your mom and you're proud of your parents yeah, and they did such a wonderful job in just giving you the opportunities that you needed, yes, to be where you are today.
Speaker 2:And giving me the confidence that was required to take some of the risks I've taken. My parents are wonderful. I'm really grateful for them, and I probably don't tell them that as often as I should, so I'm going to say it here, and then I'll let them listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes, now this is the break the ice question, so we'll spray the splices somewhere.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:My wife said, Ethan, when you're talking to her, you need to break the ice. You need to ask her something that no one else will ask her. Okay, my wife has two very awesome questions that she asks everyone. She means the first one is and you can pick one or do both.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:If you could go back to any event in time, where would you go to witness any event? Some people pick a lot of the same ones. If it was some event where you were like man, I wish I could have just been a fly on the wall. And then the other one is you could pick anyone to have a dinner with, living or not. Who would you want to have dinner?
Speaker 2:with. Okay, I'm going to answer the question of if I could pick anyone to have dinner with. Who would it be? And it's probably a boring answer to anyone who's not me. I would go back and have dinner with my own grandma.
Speaker 2:My maternal grandma lived with us when I was in high school. She and I were roommates. We shared bunk beds and we actually even worked at the same truck stop. We spent quite a bit of time together, yeah, but I was a teenager and I wasn't as curious about her life as I wish I had been, and she passed away not too long after I graduated from college and now I have so many questions.
Speaker 2:She lived a really unique life and I think she didn't have an easy life. She was an orphan by the time she was 11. And she had my dad when she was really young and she had a lot of hardship to overcome in her life and I knew her as a grandma and I wish I had been more curious about things that happened to her when she was younger. And so if I could have dinner with anybody, it would be my grandma and ask her all the questions that I didn't ask. Now my other grandma is still alive and one of my best friends, and because of that I've asked my living grandma, my maternal grandma, all kinds of questions that sometimes she gets tired of having to answer for me. But I know now that there's a time clock on the opportunity to ask those questions, that I don't want to regret later that I wasn't curious enough about my own grandma, so that's the person I would have dinner with if I could have dinner with anybody Wow.
Speaker 1:Well, keep your journal, because someone's going to want that from you too.
Speaker 2:You know, congressman Stewart has been telling me to keep a journal. I did for a while in junior high and I went back and read it and I was so embarrassed by the things I wrote that I burned it. So I've struggled my whole life to keep a journal, and I should have. There've been so many things that I would like to go back and read about now. But what I am doing is keeping a gratitude journal, so every night I write down one thing I'm thankful for, and even that is a little bit of a record of what's happening in my life without having to invest a ton of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my wife busy mom. She had a journal that her mother gave her. That was the. It was called the one line a day. Yeah, she just wrote down one thing a day. That happened after she became, after we had our first child, and she loved that Such a great idea. I will tell you this. So my, my great grandma passed um last summer, on the 4th of July. She was 107 years old.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's remarkable.
Speaker 1:And she kept a journal, and I'm not kidding you, she kept a journal for probably 80 years and we have them and they are so magnificent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what a precious gift.
Speaker 1:Wow, when my dad called her, or my brother was born and he was sick and he, he called my great grandma, you know, and it's stuff that I just don't know. Yeah, so yeah, that that history. I mean that's the purpose of this podcast, right when you come from, and keep that alive so other people can, like you said, have the perspective of like man. I'm growing up in the middle of Kenosh, Utah, but I'm a valuable asset and I am being shaped for a reason and I don't know where I'm going to end up, but I have a perspective that no one else has.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting to look back and see what you thought you were going to do versus what you did. And I know I'm a total hypocrite on this one, because when I was in high school I used to go over and read to my neighbor across the street. She had macular degeneration and was nearing 90 years old and had kept a journal her whole life and thought that when she was an old lady she would go back and read her journals. But she couldn't read and so I would go read them aloud to her and I was absolutely fascinated by the things in her journal. She was on a mission in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor got bombed. She remembered the Hoover Dam being built. She lived in a tent house. She lived in a house they ordered from Sears Roebuck, and just the details she wrote about her day-to-day life were so fascinating to me several decades later, and yet I don't keep a journal.
Speaker 1:So then you said also we were standing on the shoulders of giants built this country. And I can look back in I think a lot of us can in our own family history, especially out here in the West where we go. You look out that door and you're like this place must have sucked to look at in 1830.
Speaker 2:How did they see the potential in this before air conditioning?
Speaker 1:They did it before these nice gas vehicles yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you. So, dear listener, don't be like me Keep a journal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, exactly, we are teaching Celeste right now. She needs to keep a record for all of us. You're right, you're right, anyway. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, you're right, you're right, anyway. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, and please, people listen to this and apply it, because a lot of us in ag don't give ourselves enough credit to think that we can make a difference or be somewhere where we can have a strong opinion, and Celeste is our living opportunity to witness that right now. So, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you you.