"Cold as the moon" on Caucus week

Hell didn't freeze over in Iowa, but it sure was chilly

It turns out that “In The Bleak Midwinter” is not just a song many of us used to sing in church, but a state of mind inhabited by millions of Americans this week, as record-breaking temperatures are plunging a broad swath of the country into frigid cold. Luckily, I’ve got a poem for this kind of January morning, and the frosty feelings they can provoke in us—even those of us hardened by childhoods up north.

January
by Baron Wormser

"Cold as the moon," he'd mutter
In the January of 5 A.M. and 15 below
As he tried to tease the old Chev into greeting
One more misanthropic morning.

It was an art (though he never
Used that curious word) as he thumped
The gas pedal and turned the key
So carefully while he held his breath
And waited for the sharp jounce
And roar of an engaged engine.

"Shoulda brought in the battery last night."
"Shoulda got up around midnight
And turned it over once."

It was always early rising as he'd worked
A lifetime "in every damn sort
Of damn factory." Machines were
As natural to him as dogs and flowers.
A machine, as he put it, "was sensible."

I was so stupid about valves and intakes
He thought I was some religious type.
How had I lived as long as I had
And remained so out of it?
And why had I moved of my own free will
To a place that prided itself
On the blunt misery of January?

"No way to live," he'd say as he poked
A finger into the frozen throat
Of an unwilling carburetor.
His breath hung in the air
Like a white balloon.

Later on the way to the town where
We worked while the heater
Wheezed fitfully and the windshield
Showed indifference to the defroster
He'd turn to me and say that
The two best things in this world
Were hot coffee and winter sunrises.
The icy road beckoned to no one,
Snow began to drift down sleepily,
The peace of servitude sighed and dreamed

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The poet Baron Wormser is, like me, a native New Englander. From my upbringing, I can confirm that this is an area of the country “that pride[s] itself/On the blunt misery of January.” In capturing this state of mind, Wormser’s poem is narrow in its subject: the unique experience of existing in a place so persistently freezing that (for example) it requires the foresight to take the battery out of your car and bring it inside overnight so it’ll have a hope of turning on the next morning. It also requires a kind of hardiness and stubborn acceptance of the fact that most would not choose this kind of frostbitten hell. “No way to live,” the man mumbles as he continues to do just that.

And yet, there’s beauty in this state of being that even the cantankerous driver in the poem acknowledges — “hot coffee and winter sunrises” — and I’d have to agree with him on both counts.

Bradford, Vermont; December 2017. Photo by the author.

Originally from Maine, Wormser later moved to Vermont, where I myself spent a fair bit of time in the winter of 2017-2018. Though the fifteen-below-zero that his poem’s subjects face would have been horrifying enough, it’s here in Wormser’s Vermont where I woke up to the most frigid temperatures I’m likely ever to witness. I learned later that January 2, 2018 was close to a record low for that part of the state, the evidence for which can be found in the window-frosted sunrise I captured that morning (above), and the terrifying phone screenshot that accompanied it (below):

This is a different kind of cold. I can’t even really tell you how cold it feels, since I recall only opening the door long enough so that my dog — not being an Alaskan sled-racing husky — could pee, then promptly scamper back inside into the warm until our balmy 8-degree hike later that day. All I really remember about that morning is that it hurt simply to breathe, to let air that cold bite its way deep into my lungs. “No way to live.”

But, was it “cold as the moon” on that early January day in Vermont? Not even close.

According to NASA, the temperature on the moon can be pretty frosty indeed, as low as -424° Fahrenheit at its poles. That said, the temperature skyrockets to a blistering 250°F during the day at the moon’s equator. The temperature on the moon the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked upon it for the first time in 1969 was about 200 degrees—it’s why, according to Armstrong, they weren’t able to actually walk very far on the surface. This is because the moon has no atmosphere, and thus no way to insulate or deflect heat from the sun. So even though this has been a rough week for thermostats and “old Chevs” across the country, just remember it could always be worse. Thanks, atmosphere!

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It’s too early to say whether the results of yesterday’s Republican Caucuses in Iowa were affected by the extreme cold. “Weather changes election outcomes” sounds on its face like a myth waiting to be busted. Do voters really look at the thermometer and decide it’s not worth it?

A 2007 Journal of Politics article by Dr. Brad Gomez and co-authors pulled decades of presidential election results and place-specific weather station data to test the claim. They found that “when compared to normal conditions, rain significantly reduces voter participation by a rate of just less than 1% per inch, while an inch of snowfall decreases turnout by almost .5%.”

A not-as-cold moment in Menlo, Iowa, August 2019. Photo by the author.

It may not sound like a big effect, but this stuff can matter in a close election. It might have mattered even more in Iowa yesterday, where caucusing required a commitment of several hours to whittle down the candidates (rather than just casting a ballot and getting the hell home). You can practically picture the Desantis-supporting Iowan opting to hunker down, rather than trying “to tease the old Chev into greeting/One more misanthropic morning” for the sake of electing some awkward governor from the Sunshine State.

Probably they should have just awarded the delegates to whichever one of them could drive most competently in the snow. Maybe next time!

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Let’s round out with a couple of on-theme place picks for your listening pleasure.

Podcasts: “2023: A Turning Point for the Climate?” from Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes.

In this week’s edition of Chris Hayes’s excellent question-asking podcast (is there any other kind?), he interviews Robinson Meyer, founding executive editor of Heatmap News. The conversation takes a look back at 2023 as a kind of inflection point for both climate change’s impacts, and for the climate movement generally. There’s a fair amount of good news and bad news in this review, but the bottom line is that I learned a ton, particularly about the massive market transition the auto industry is undergoing right now—mostly for the better.

Music: “IOWA”, by Aoife O’Donovan and Donovan Woods (Apple Music / Spotify).

I realize that I just featured Donovan Woods a couple weeks ago, but I couldn’t not use this fabulous Iowa-set folk song from Aoife O’Donovan that happens to also feature Woods. Close listening attention isn’t required to be able to tell that their voices blend magnificently; or that the 1-minute outro is sublime, in which O’Donovan’s Celtic roots shine through.¹ You also might assume that this is a song written by an Iowan, but it is not. The song is about both artists’ life on the road, passing through places as a touring outsider, and reaching—usually fruitlessly—for a sense of belonging wherever they go.

“I wrote the first verse thinking about driving through new places on tour and dreaming about what my life would be like if I lived there,” Woods said about the song. “I pride myself on my blue-collar raising. I feel like I fit in anywhere. In America, I’m often swiftly reminded that I don’t.” The mournful second verse crystallizes this reality:

I can imagine my whole life
Sweet and never-ending
In every house I float by
But they'd never let me blend in

I called a taxi in Des Moines
I met him at the corner
When I asked about his army coat
He said he would not tell a foreigner

Donovan Woods actually is a “foreigner” of the Canadian variety. But the song reflects a common duality of place: the fierce local pride many Americans feel about their homeplaces, and the nativism etched on the other, darker side of that coin. Pit this combination against the onslaught of outsider candidates, consultants, and national media outlets descending on Iowa every four years, and you’ve got yourself a hell of a show. I wonder if Iowa is glad it’s over (for now).

1. Her father, Brian O’Donovan, was an ambassador for Irish and Celtic music in the Boston area; his Celtic Christmas Sojourn is a public radio show I remember fondly growing up.