I decided to catch the Tom Vilsack roadshow yesterday. Vilsack was an emcee of sorts for the DNC’s daily roast of the republican convention.

I walked to W40th and 7th Avenue, where I met up with Iowa-based AP reporter Amy Lorenzen. We continued down 7th Avenue past Madison Square Garden to 26th. We entered an unassuming building, climbed aboard an elevator and once we exited at the 16th floor, we were entering the DNC spin zone.

Entry was easy. There was no check of our credentials (I could have been a REPUBLICAN, you know). The DNC folks made the assumption I was from CBS News because my briefcase has the words “CBS News” stitched on the side. (It’s a very swank freebee briefcase given to RTNDA members attending the group’s convention in Minneapolis, and it weighed 26 pounds with the laptop and all the other equipment inside. By Thursday, that equipment was spread out on my hotel room desk and the case was much lighter, in case you were worried about my back.)

Then, a DNC person approached and we told this person we wanted to talk to Iowa’s Governor. This person left, another came moments later and said “So you want to talk to the Ohio Governor?”

Uh, no. The Iowa Governor.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You want to talk to the Iowa Governor?”

Yes, the guy standing up there behind the lectern.

She departed and yet another DNC staffer came by. “Who do you want to talk to?”

Iowa’s Governor.

“CBS wants to talk with Iowa’s Governor?”

No, I’m with Radio Iowa. That’s just the briefcase I carry. Yes, we want to talk to Iowa’s Governor. The person who came by before thought he was Ohio’s Governor.

“That wasn’t me. I didn’t make that mistake. Who are you?”

The rest of this scintillating conversation was overheard by Mark Daley, who I had called because Matt Paul’s cell phone number, according to the pre-recorded Verizon voice, is no longer assigned. (Mark works for the Iowa Dems. Matt is the IOWA Governor’s press sec.)

“She doesn’t know who you are?” Mark said, laughing.

Anyway, we finally did get to talk to Tom Vilsack. (Matt Paul says he dropped his phone upon arriving in NYC, and it’s not working. Aside from the news items, I asked Vilsack if he’d gone running in Central Park. He says he hasn’t had the time. Riding down in the elevator together, Vilsack revealed he did get to go to the Billy Joel musical and liked it.

It wasn’t Hello, Dolly, but Hello, Deli that Rod Boshart and I visited yesterday. It’s the deli run by Rupert, made infamous by the Letterman show. It is TINY. The statehouse press room is twice its size. And disorganized, partly because Rupert has to pose for pictures with tourists. After soaking up the atmosphere, Rod & I walked to new favorite deli around the corner and that’s where I ordered the turkey on rye. The woman who took my order shouted it down the line to the sandwich makers.

“A turkey and whiskey,” she said. And I can attest, the sandwich had just the right kick.

So, by now you know the Iowa delegate who had his chicken trophy shipped to NYC by the Letterman show for a possible appearance on Letterman’s “show and tell” segment didn’t get the call to be on the show. The producers decided at the last minute they wanted to do “Know your current events” instead. Oh, well. (You can read his story on the site.)

Now, about the Blackberry. It has allowed me to “talk” with people inside Madison Square Garden this week. Calling on the cell phone in such a loud environment isn’t the best (despite yelling on both ends of the conversation, it’s still almost like using cans and string). Via email from my laptop to their Blackberry, the party people inside have given me the sense of the crowd and passed along all sorts of tidbits.

Which reminds me of a conversation I had with a colleague on Monday. When I started doing this convention coverage in 1988, I used alligator clips (a not very high-tech way of sending audio from a tape recorder down a phone line). This year, I’ve been using a laptop to email mp3s back to DSM. It’s a new world, my friends.

One of the most interesting things about this convention is that there hasn’t been a GOP-orchestrated trip to Ground Zero. Even though the rhetoric inside Madison Square Garden has invoked and evoked 9/11 over and over,  convention planners perhaps didn’t want to endure the kind of criticism some 9/11 families lobbed at Bush when he ran those campaign ads with the 9/11 images.

The Iowa hotel is a long way away from Ground Zero, so it would be a long walk. A few of the Iowa delegates, earlier in the week, made their own pilgrimages. This morning, a group of about 20 got on the subway and went to the site with a tour guide, a person from or near the fire department, I’m told.

I didn’t go (I had to file a story and then interview Tom Vilsack at that time), and the delegate I’d asked to call me down to the hotel lobby when the group returned didn’t call, so I don’t know their impressions. I can share mine.

I’ve been to Ground Zero. It was last October. The space was a vast nothingness. All the debris was gone. Nothing had been erected yet to replace the Towers. A fence had been built around the site, to keep people out.

As I stood there, I couldn’t help comparing it to the bombing site in Oklahoma City. I was there on a business trip, and a friend who was news director of the Oklahoma News Network gave a guided tour. My trip to Oklahoma City came a couple of years after the bombing, but family & friends of the many who died there were still going to the site, placing teddy bears, beads and pictures on the fence — treating it both as shrine and burial ground. It was a sacred site.

When I visited Ground Zero last October, there was nothing on the fence — the fence that kept people out, a fence that was perhaps patroled by folks who removed those remembrances. I stood at the fence in silence, to offer my own remembrances. I thought of my friend Marti who had gone to New York after 9/11 as part of the corps of crisis counselors the government sent in to help the victims. I thought about the Havilands of Ames, who lost a son that day. I thought of the Newton man who went on a business trip to New York and didn’t come home.

Not far away from Ground Zero is a spherical sculpture that used to be at the World Trade Center. It survived, but bears scars. My friend Susan told us it was a sculpture named “Peace” Its new, dented and gnarled form speaks of all the complexities of that day. It’s the image and the message of that small sphere that remains my touchstone memory of Ground Zero.

The dilemma for every big business trying to curry favor with a powerful member of Congress: what to get the US Senator who has everthing?

Aegon today paid for a big breakfast for Chuck Grassley & the Iowans who’re here at the RNC in NYC. The Iowans were giddy. After a no-food-served morning delegate meeting on Monday and a “continental breakfast” buffet on Tuesday morning, the Iowans walked into a different dimension this Wednesday morning. Made to order omelets. Freshly-brewed espresso. An array of other hearty fare, including fruit, breakfast meats and stick-to-your-ribs porridge (or it may have been oatmeal, I couldn’t really tell and didn’t think it polite to get too close to a delegate’s bowl — probably not wise to get in the way of such good food, either).

A company man at one point presented Grassley with his gift: a Wheaties box with the Senator’s picture on it.
“In keeping with the theme, a breakfast of champions, we decided to give something, I mean, when someone has the tenure and the experience that Senator Grassley has, what can you give him that he has not ever gotten before?” Pat Baird, an Aegon executive, asked the crowd. “And we have something. And I’m sure Senator Grassley does not have this in his office.”

(At this point, the Wheaties box is revealed to Grassley & the crowd)

“Thank you,” Grassley said, amidst applause and a few oohs and ahs from the crowd. “Thank you.”

“The first question I asked, just so you know, is ‘Are we violating any copyright or anything else? I think I’ve got four- or five-hundred lawsuits against Aegon right now. Is this going to be another?’ And I was assured that Wheaties is pleased and proud to have Senator Grassley on their Wheaties box, and just as pleased and proud as I am to introduce you this morning, Senator Grassley,” Baird said.

I have no way of measuring that on my own “pleased and proud” scale, but I did express pleasure today over my own lunch, served to me and paid for by me at the Planet Hollywood in Times Square. (The southwest chicken salad was quite good.) An AP photographer who’s based in Des Moines, Charlie Niebergal, called me late this morning to see if I wanted to get together for lunch. I said yes. Charlie’s married to one of my college chums, and he is one of the quickest wits I know. Charlie’s working in Madison Square Garden for AP. You might see him on t.v. (if you’re watching at home) as he is stationed on stage, to the side, along with seven other photographers in a very small area. It was Charlie, from that vantage point, who snapped Monday night’s picture of Michael Moore making the “L” sign for loser as the repubs booed him.

Iowa Republicans might have booed Jim Leach, the Congressman, today if they had spied the newspaper he had tucked under his arm as he strolled into a news conference Senator Grassley was having with Iowa reporters today. When I asked Leach if he was a New York Times reader, he replied that it was the only free paper he could find. Now that’s an answer that might get him out of the caning conservatives might have meted out had he been caught with that “liberal rag” (although it might not be a bad campaign tactic in Iowa City). As one Iowan complained as they waited for the elevator and saw the front page of the Times “Of course they don’t have Arnould’s picture on the front.” Today’s front page pic in the Times is from a bombing in Israel. Every morning, there are piles of New York Times in the elevator bay on each floor, and I know this won’t shock you, but few of the Iowa repubs are taking their free copy.

The other incongruity of the day: a cup of espresso sitting right in front of Grassley.

“Is that your espresso, Senator?” I asked.

“No, no, no,” Grassley replied. “I’m drinking this water.” The general consensus among reporters and the Grassley aide sitting around the coffee table was that the espresso belonged to someone else.

Ray Hoffman, a restaurant owner and stock broker from Sioux City, was invited to open the NASDAQ this morning. He came back with a pretty cool picture. The NASDAQers had snapped a photo on his way in, did some computer editing and as he left, Hoffman was presented with a finished product that showed his torso on the Jumbotron in Times Square. I can think of a lot of places I’d want my torso superimposed. I’ll be makin’ a list and checkin’ it twice, just to find out…

OH, and I did find out what CRANDIC stands for. You’ll recall the goodie bag Paul Pate gave to delegates included a railroad engineer’s cap with the phrase CRANDIC on it. Mayor Pate says that stands for Cedar Rapids and Iowa City railway. So CR AND IC or CRANDIC. I’m not going to say another word.

Before I write another line about the delegates here, I must spend some time talking about my fellow Iowa reporters in New York City. The first thing you need to know is Rod Boshart of the Cedar Rapids Gazette saved my life. We were walking to the Broadway show “Bombay Dreams” and I, of course, was decked out in a fashionable dress and some very attractive, just purchased in Chicago, Nine West black sandals. As Rod walked alongside on the sidewalk, one of the heels of my shoe got caught in the steam grate, and I started tipping forward. My head turned to the THREE cops who were standing a mere foot away, as I said something like “I’m going to fall.” Not one of “New York’s Finest” moved a muscle. Rod, though, jumped to my rescue. Not only did he steady me on my feet, he tugged the shoe out of the grate and helped reshod my foot. If it had been raining, I’m sure he would have thrown his cape on the street so I wouldn’t get my feet wet in a puddle (and there’s nothing worse than wet feet when you’re wearing sandals, friends).

You must also hear about the work respite of today, a one and a half hour mid-day detour to a paradise called a restaurant. It’s where you get to sit down at a table, look at a menu, have food served to you on china and get your water glass refilled repeatedly. Anyway, this paradise was reached after a half hour cab ride to Greenwich Village. This oasis of hot food and linen table cloths was the Villa Mosconi Restaurant. Mr. Peter Mosconi joined me and Charlotte Eby of the Waterloo Courier as we sat in the restaurant’s garden area, eating our salad. Mosconi came to the US when he was a teenager, with his father on a steam boat owned and operated by the Italian government. We asked Mosconi about Guiliani, and he was effusive. He recounted his own experience of 9/11; he could see the flaming towers from the garden area where we were eating. His reverence for Guiliani was apparent, but Mosconi expressed doubts that an Italian American could become president “although he was born here.” Mosconi briefly left us to attend to a phone call, then returned to tell of his boyhood home in northern Italy, at the foot of the alps, and he was fascinated with our own stories of the Floods of ’93.

Then, back to work for us. Senator Charles Grassley held a news conference to complain about some of those 527s. You can read the news elsewhere on the website. What was interesting to me was how animated Grassley got. So I asked him why he was getting so animated, pounding the lectern and raising his voice. “Don’t read too much into antics, just take me at my words, not necessarily at my gestures,” Grassley said, then he took a sip of water. “I suppose it’s fair to say that I’m a little incensed.”

President Bush was in Alleman, Iowa, today, and the only news to reach me here is another verbal mis-step Bush made. He referred to Iowa as the “hinterlands” before correcting himself and calling it the “heartland.” Bush made a verbal mis-step of a different sort earlier this week when he said something about the war on terror, and it all reminds me of one of my favorite Bush events ever. It was a “right choices” event in northwest Iowa, and I think I was standing in the Orance City high school gymnasium when one of the students asked then-candidate George Bush to talk about a wrong choice he’d made and what he learned from it. Bush explained that when he was in college, he tried to “liberate” a Christmas wreath from a bank with some college chums and got caught by the cops. He said his mistake was drinking too much and thinking he was “invisible” — I think he meant invincible, but I was never sure. Perhaps they had drinks at Yale that make one feel invisible. I’d like to order the drink that makes me feel 20 pounds lighter.

And speaking of the perfect Cosmo, did you hear Barbara Bush, the twin, say this of her grandmother, Barbara Bush, the former First Lady: “She thinks ‘Sex in the City’ is something married people do but never talk about.”

Tomorrow, I shall tell you about finding the “Hello, Deli” near our hotel, as well as brief you on the other people on my hotel floor.

Before I start telling you about the protests, the Broadway show and my next door deli, I must tell you about the Naked Cowboy. He’s a nearly-naked guy who stands in the middle of Times Square (in the island in the midst of the street), plays his guitar and sings. He wears a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and white briefs with the words “naked cowboy” on the rear which kind of reminds me of the sorority girls at college who would have their sorority’s greek letters plastered to the back of their shorts or sweats. Not a good idea to call attention to that area. Unless you are the naked cowboy.

I saw the street performer as I was out walking this morning. My hope is that Leon Moseley, the Iowa GOP co-chair, gets his picture taken with the naked cowboy. If you’re unfamiliar with Leon, he’s a very tall black man with a nice accent who’s lived in Waterloo for years and often wears a white cowboy hat.

Which he was wearing this morning when I, Rod Boshart of the Cedar Rapids Gazette and Charlotte Eby of the Lee Ne4wspapers walked back into the hotel lobby after our 7:45 a.m. breakfast at the deli a block away. (We like it. I ate lunch there; Rod got dinner there.) I asked Leon if anybody had given him any guff about the hat, but as you might suspect from someone wearing a black marine t-shirt that read “Bad to the Bone” — he said no one was giving him guff. Leon said he’d spread the message that Iowa is all about God & country and service if challenged by any of the protestors.

Then, another Iowa delegate walked up and asked Leon if he knew what time church was. “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no church,” Leon replied. Leon allowed as how he hadn’t seen a cathedral anywhere near the hotel. I advised Leon that Dave Roederer, the former aide to Governor Branstad who is now Bush/Cheney campaign chair in Iowa, was going to the nearby cathedral’s 10:15 mass, hoping to catch the American priest who could be in line to be Pope if/when John Paul dies. Oh, and a report back from Roederer was that the cardinal did not do the homily this a.m.

Roederer & his wife, Paula Dierenfeld, both ran in Central Park this a.m. Paula says she accidentally ran six miles, as she decided to run against a group of racers rather than run in the pack without a number on. The route ended up being circular, but a bit longer than she’d anticipated.

Larry McKibben, a state Senator from Marshalltown, went down to the area around Madison Square Garden to watch the protestors for about an hour and a half today. He went through two of those throw-away cameras, snapping pix of all the police units — cavalry, foot patrols, even moped fleets were mobilized and the protestors. McKibben says he’ll give the pix to his next-door-neighbor, who is the police chief in M-town. McKibben and his wife left the area when they talked with a clerk in a convenience store who was rattled about the size of the crowd and worried it could turn ugly.

At 4:15 today, the phone in my hotel room rang, just as I was finishing up the story Radio Iowa listeners will hear Monday morning. (It’s a delightful piece about an Iowa delegate who is making her first trip to NYC and her first convention; click on the link on the webpage here to read and hear it.)

Anyway, Rod called and announced he had two tickets to the Broadway show the Iowa delegation was going to tonight. I asked what time I needed to meet him in the lobby, and he said 4:30. That gave me 15 minutes to shower, dry & style my hair, put on make-up and don my glad rags. I made it by 4:30, friends.

So, we sat amidst some of the Iowans, and saw “Bombay Dreams” — a romp about an “untouchable” who dreams of becoming a star in India’s film industry. One of the main characters in the play is a eunuch. In case you’re not familiar, I’ll use a down on the farm reference. A eunuch is to a man like a steer is to a bull. Get the drift? Anyway, some called the character a cross-dresser, and a few of the Iowa delegates walked out. One man from Sumner says he escorted three ladies back to the hotel. (The theater in which this play is staged is a block away from the Ed Sullivan Theater where Letterman does his show. It’s just around the block from the Iowa delegation’s hotel.) Anyway, another told me he was offended and would have preferred seeing “The Lion King” or “Fiddler on the Roof.” State Senator Larry Miller said it was no “Hello Dolly” but it had a nice story line and he said most republicans are more open-minded than they get credit for (see story on page).

After the curtain call, an announcement was made. The Iowa delegates and delegates from 10 other states and four US territories who were in the theater were asked to stay inside “until it’s safe to leave.” Seems the protestors were outside. The powers that be either wanted the throng to make its way past the theater, or they wanted to wait ’til enough cops arrived to keep things sane.

Anyway, the cooped up delegates started chanting “Four more years,” to those outside, which they couldn’t see or really hear for that matter. But once everyone was released from the theater, the verbal melee started. Lots of profanity from the young protestors outside. “Just go home” was a popular protest cheer. “You should be ashamed,” was another, but the chanters had a hard time with the cadence of that. Then the delegates started yelling back.

Leon Moseley called the whole scenario an “appetizer” of what’s to come this week, but he said the protestors won’t deter repubs from their main goal of defeating John Kerry. “You gotta understand something about the devil,” Moseley told Boshart and I. “The devil will try to throw you off. The devil will try to keeps you busy. We’re not going to chase rabbits. Okay? You don’t take a high-powered rifle and go shoot rabbits. We are going to get the big one.”

I am going to get some sleep now. Chuck Hagel, the NE Senator, is to speak to IA delegates tomorrow morning.

At approximately 11 o’clock on Friday night, I found myself curb-side, amidst a crowd chanting “Go on strike” to the cops decked out in riot gear. (BTW, I was observing, not chanting and as background, the cops are working without a contract.) Seems a bunch of protestors on bicycles had completely shut down 2nd Avenue here in the city, causing chaos, providing entertainment, and making people miss dinner reservations.

I was in the East Village for a meet-up with former DM Register reporters Jeff Zeleny & Kirsten Scharnberg (Everly, IA native, BTW). Both work for the Chicago Trib now. Kirsten lives in NYC, so we’ve in her town. Z is the Trib’s chief political reporter. Anyway, Z picked this nice, laid back Italian restaurant. And for those keeping scroe, I passed on the salmon and had the lasagna, which will come as a shock to everyone who has dined with me in the past, or should I say shared a repast in the past. But enough of the crafty wordsmithy. After cappucinos and gellato, we adjourned to the street which was devoid of traffic. At the intersection to the north were the protestors, bicyclists who apparently were anarchists or something. The three news hounds jumped into our reporter mode and started assessing the scene. News helicopters hovered above, casting their lights on the scene. We passed a WABC news van, poised to go live for 11 o’clock news. Z snapped pictures, capturing the three of us in reporter-mode with, for examle, a squad car behind us. I overheard (or perhaps eavesdropped is a better description) a woman on a cell phone doing an interview with some reporter. She mentioned imagine04.com or org as the protestors website. THey are just a loose-knit group of folks who came together over the Internet, they don’t have a real phone line, and they just wanted to spread their message. That message wasn’t exactly clear to me from listening to the one-sided conversation, but my guess is they’re not Bush backers. Oh, and they have the mainstream media.

Second Ave. was shut down for at least 15 blocks by the protestors, who employed some anti-abortion protestors’ tactics and meshed themselves together in intersections with duct tape and other materials, making it more difficult for the police to ‘cuff ‘em. Once our little crew of three made it past the last clogged intersections, we bid one another good-bye for the evening, jumped ih separate cabs and headed to our hotels or our home (Kirsten lives in NYC and works in the Trib ‘s NY bureau).

I ended up sleeping 12 hours, which was a good thing because I had not slept on Thursday eve/Friday morning getting my stuff together to come on this biz trip. Pulled one of those college-style all-nighters, without the benefit of youth so by the time I got to the DSM airport $4 a day parking lot at 5:04 a.m. on Friday morning I was uncoordinated and goofy. It didn’t appear others were fully-functioning either, so I didn’t feel that alone in my clumsiness. My plane continued on to LaGuardia from O’Hare, so I stayed in the seat at the gate in Chicago and slept. At one point, a flight attendant did shake me awake and tell me they had delayed seating for the NY leg by about 20 minutes, so if I wanted to go see my husband in the terminal, I might want to do that. As you may know, I don’t have a husband, so I guessed she thought Dave Roederer, the Bush/Cheney IA camnpaign chair, was that person. Dave was on the same flight and stopped to chat before getting off in Chicago to “stretch my legs” so that’s probably why she thought I had a hubby. I quickly explained Dave & I are business acquaintances on the same flight, she blushed and apologized. I immediately dropped back into lala land.

So, back to the 12-hours-of-sleep thing on Friday night/Sat morning. I got up Saturday, then and made my way down to the Hotel Pennsylvania, which is right across the street from Madison Square Garden where this convention shindig is to be staged. The walk down there is about a mile and a half from the IA delegation hotel, straight down 7th Avenue. That’s the route IA delegates will probably be hoofing the next few days because it’s going to be nearly impossible to get there via taxi or other mass transit. They started issuing press credentials on Saturday, a day early, because Sunday protests will take 250,000 expected chanters, sign-wavers and cheer-uttering people right through the crush down by Madison Square Garden. I was the very first in line, walked right in, picked up my stuff, and walked back out. This varies significantly from the 2 hour wait in line in Boston for my convention credentials.

I made my way back to rhe hotel with one quick detour through Macy’s, where my friend Susan would have gone nuts over the big purse sale. Oh, and for the others in the gal posse who I traveled to NY with last October, a quick but important side note. On Friday as I was riding in a taxi to dinner, I rode down the street where I was when I discovered the heel on my purple suede shoe was broken. For those of you unfamiliar with this story, I fell down three stairs as we exited the third-story bar where we saw the Irish rock band Black 47 play, and a few blocks later discovered the fall was probably because the heel of my very fashionable purple suede shoe had broken. Yes, it took me that long to realize it.

So, back to the present and this convention stuff (although that purple suede shoe & its mate are probably here in Manhattan somewhere since they were thrown in the trash bin at the hotel that night). Met up with some of the Iowans who’re here in the hotel bar area last night. State Representative Jamie Van Fossen, son of a cop, said he was a bit wary of sitting with his back to the door but he got over that phobia. Nick Ryan, Jim Nussle’s campaign manager, stopped by. He’s a “whip” at this convention, a sort of on-the-floor choreographer who’ll make sure the cheers are cheered and the signs waved. He’s getting a special cap to wear, and only 70 of them have been made, so it could bring top dollar on EBay (or not). He will not reveal the color, for security reasons. It would be wrong to let an infiltrator mess up the cheers (oh, and there’s also the terrorists to think about).

And speaking of, there are about eight cops stationed on the sidewalk in front of the Iowa delegation’s hotel. Cops with AK47s at the airporth, cops all over. And there apeared to be a cop convention yesterday afternoon in our hotel lobby, as 18 were milling around. And then I rode in the elevator yesterday with a Secret Service agent (a talkative one, which was shocking). The agent’s staying here in the hotel. And I’ve seen the cops in riot gear, too, with their special plastic cuffs hanging from their belt loops. Ain’t America sweet?

The city hasn’t exactly put out the welcome mat for these republicans. There’s the protestors, and then the billboards in Times Square. One reads: “Democracy is best spread by example, not by war.” Another is a new “clock” which is counting the cost of the Iraq war by the second. And the God-hawkers in Times Square reminding me and the rest of the throng on the street on Saturday that we’re “going to burn in Hell.” Although that message may not be directed specifically at the repubs.

More on the bar chit chat from Saturday, and a bit about “I don’t know nothin’ about no church” when I blog again this evening. Plus, those protestors are going to march right by the hotel in a few minutes, so I’ve gotta see that. Ta ta.