No, I’m not abandoning the newsletter. I just didn’t have the time to work on it. You know why. Anything caucus-shaped made it into the work product, and there was nothing else in my notebook.
So you get one very late update before an on-time newsletter for week three. What happened in Iowa? I witnessed most of the silly things you heard about. When this happened, for example, I was right behind the cameras. It’s important for print reporters not to stand in the way with the people who have the sort of lenses you get insurance for.
Other experiences I will treasure:
Stopping a fight between a reporter (not me) who accidentally grabbed the wrong jacket at a bar and an Iowan who potentially would have died had he been forced to enter -18 degree weather without a jacket.
Catching up with Asa Hutchinson at what turned out to be his last event, in a Jethro’s BBQ with two party rooms. He got the small one, and Nikki Haley got the big one. As he wrapped up, you could hear the clatter from her stage setup and the beginnings of her extremely loud, 80s rock radio playlist. When I went to wash my hands, a contractor was thawing out the device he needed to fluff and straighten the American flag for Haley, so he could fill it again with sink water. Asa dropped out 48 hours later. Very nice guy.
Making, for once, a good travel decision, and switching out the handsome but useless sedan I’d been rented for one of those SUVs whose high grill puts children at risk. No children were harmed; no one was outside unless waiting to see a candidate.
Wearing a sweatshirt and shorts down to hotel breakfast, and being shamed by a well-dressed woman astounded that I could wear this in cold weather. “I saw John Fetterman do it on TV,” I joked. “You want to be like JOHN FETTERMAN?” she said, nearly gasping. Joke’s on her, anyway: When I gassed up the Casey’s down the street, I walked past a man wearing gym shorts and a light jacket.
There is less driving in New Hampshire than Iowa, and fewer candidates, so I should be able to return to weekly diaries. I apologize for putting such a brief update in your inbox, but the rhythm can’t be broken.
The Best Thing I Read: Just one book, on the way into Iowa, on my two delayed flights: Kurt Vonnegut’s “Galapagos.” Grabbed this from the stack because I’ve been on a run with extremely long-term human evolution stories, all of them rippers — “First and Last Men,” and “A Canticle for Leibowitz” were the standouts. Vonnegut, one of the sci-fi authors that serious people still read, gives away the ending immediately and builds vivid, flawed characters with lengthy backstories. I won’t forget Mary Hepburn’s husband, brain wracked a tumor, asking her to find a Bible (and finding it next to Darwin on the shelf), or the long digression into Huntington's chorea, and how the future man — furry, seal-like, smaller-brained — lucked out of it.
The Best Thing I Watched: Almost nothing! Remember, I decided to hit pause on movies for a while and see what that did to my attention span. But I did enjoy this.
The Best Thing I Heard: I listened to Who? Weekly’s end-of-year episode again. Nothing made me laugh harder than Bobby and Lindsey reading a compilation of incomprehensible Rita Ora headlines over the score from “The Zone of Interest.” Skip to 57 minutes.
Done, need to head out again, see you soon.