Things I’ve considered:

1. Whoever addressed the card switched from normal casing to ALL CAPS for the NPR address. What gives?

2. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is a 19th century women’s rights leader. Could this have been sent by a third-wave feminist friend of mine, or just by someone who happened to visit this place and decided to send me a postcard?

3. Stanton’s house is in Seneca Falls, New York. My friend Reeve, whose handwriting could be on this postcard, was recently visiting New York. But it seems the Elizabeth Cady Stanton house wouldn’t be one of his top destinations. I think Reeve prefers Susan B. Anthony.

4. I have ruled out both friends who consistently send me postcards: Sudeep “Man of Honor” Reddy, and Dave “I Love The North Pole” Levinthal. It’s not from Dave based on handwriting and because he only vacations in places with subzero temperatures, and I ruled out Sudeep because he never addresses postcards to me, he sends them to my beagle, Saidee Hu.

Help me solve this mystery.

UPDATE: Reeve has texted to say “That postcard did not come from me.” He adds that this mystery is “creepy.”

You can recognize that back-of-head from miles away. (Photo by Brad Horn)

Big night for Newt Gingrich, as voters in South Carolina (who have correctly chosen the eventual GOP nominee since 1980) picked him by a large margin. The win has upended and extended this race, making for some fun new drama and unpredictability. He’s certainly a force of nature, the kind that gets me backin’ into walls.

I met teenagers Rob and Marshall — and their pal Jeff Brown — in their last year of high school and my first full year in Spartanburg, SC, their home town. I was doing a story on the minor musical resurgence of Spartanburg, and the boys, who were 17-year-olds playing old Americana tunes as The DesChamps Band, were abuzz. They performed for the photog and me on Marshall’s parents back deck, and I turned a quick story, below. (This is embarrassing, as I was age 23 and sounded like a 12-year-old.)

A year later, I started my new TV job in Austin and the boys had disbanded to attend college, but never stopped playing music. Marshall had moved to Austin, too. That’s where he met Phoebe Hunt, an Austin native and one of the most talented young fiddlers around. A few months later, Rob and his buddies from college in New Orleans joined up with Marshall and Phoebe to jam, and through circumstance and serendipity (a spot opened up at MerleFest), they became The Belleville Outfit. The boys took a break from college, converged in Austin and followed their musical journey. (Spoiler alert: It worked out for them. The band was not a flop.)

Because I found them for that story when they were so young, I feel a real familial kind of relationship with some of those guys. I got to know Uncle Seth and Cousin Warren and moms and dads. Rob and I reminisced about the fall night in 2007 when the band came over to Casa Hu-Stiles at 3am after a “meh” gig to help finish off the beer and food from a party we threw earlier that evening. Queso-blurred memories.

So I’ve been a Belleville Outfit evangelist for many years, introducing dozens, if not hundreds of my pals to the group. I focused specifically on making sure friends from out of Austin got a chance to see their shows. Loved ones from New York, Washington, various places in the Midwest… they’ve all been taken to a Belleville show if they came to visit and the band was in town. (Sudeep became an instant fan and even bought some sweatbands. Lawmaker pal Mark wanted to get them to play some political events.)

Belleville is also partly responsible for my current job at NPR, and the fact we live here in Washington at all right now. I met one of my great friends and one of the biggest influencers on my journalism thinking, Matt Thompson, at a Belleville Outfit show during SXSW 2009. In one of my evangelism efforts, I had invited out-of-town pal Jen to come see the live music, and she brought her buddy Matt. It was months before the existence of The Texas Tribune (which Matt Thompson also influenced) and way before he was working at NPR. But he enjoyed the show, we remained friends, and he remembered me NPR was looking for someone, years later.

The band announced it was breaking up early last year, a few weeks after I decided I was leaving Austin for DC. After touring all over the country playing to fans old and new, two acclaimed albums, an Americana Awards nomination for Best Emerging Artists, and all signs pointing up, the group members split after Phoebe decided she wanted to go solo. The breakup news marked an end to my time in Austin in a way that was maybe more significant than actually moving away from Austin. (See/hear the goodbye show.)

Phoebe appeared at a Tiny Desk last May.

NPR holds Tiny Desk Concerts, in which artists big and small come and play acoustic by a desk at the skinny end of the fifth floor. I can only make it to a handful of them, and sometimes it’s to see artists I’ve never heard of, based on recommendations from coworkers. One day last April, my office pal said a guy named Ben Sollee was playing and that he was supposed to be good. So I went to the Tiny Desk and who was accompanying Ben? Phoebe, of the Belleville Outfit. We had a big holy shit reunion hug in front of the gathered group, which seemed quite confused.

RESERVED!?!? Oh, the outrage! (w/ young Rob)

Rob and I have kept in touch via Twitter, and this past weekend, since he didn’t have firm plans for his DC visit and I never have plans more than a day in advance, we got to spend back-to-back-to-back evenings out together in Washington. Nights filled with randomness, booze, bad music, good music, new inside jokes (Meow versus Meow has a meaning now), fake outrage over “Reserved” placards,  and a debate over whether Tim Tebow is actually in fact a virgin.

And that’s one of the reasons I love my new place, Washington. Because people happen to come visit a lot, for various reasons. And it means millions of new moments with old friends.

It’s also the place the campaign trail could come to a halt for my former governor, Rick Perry. So I contacted one of my fave television photogs, Steve, flew down on Sunday morning and we joined forces, just like the old days, to shoot a political event — Perry’s return to the Palmetto State for a 21 day tour/likely last stand. (See earlier post.)

Grabbed a few behind-the-scenes snapshots from the event, and I want to test out my new slideshow plugin (more on that to come, eventually), so here goes:

Speaking of ketchup, Perry spoke at The Beacon, a South Carolina drive-in-that-doesn’t-have-a-drive-in-anymore and a standby for visiting politicians. Here’s how my colleague Don Gonyea described it:

There’s no paper or computer here — J.C. takes your order, then hollers instructions to cooks in The Beacon’s unique lingo. For instance, a chili-cheeseburger a-plenty means your plate is going to be covered with french fries and onion rings.

The place goes through 300 pounds of chili on a Friday night. Just the kind of crowd a campaign is looking for.

“If you want to be elected for president, you better come to The Beacon,” Stroble says with a chuckle.

It goes without question that all the food here is predictably greasy — cheeseburgers, onion rings, chili cheese. The Texas governor ordered something which I believe was the go-to order, Chili Cheese A Plenty (double or single patty available). But he gave it a name of his own:

“These mussels are either going to go in our faces, or in the trash can,” Jimmy said. “So we’re gonna get as many in our faces as possible.” (This is after we had already collectively feasted for the previous two hours. But we didn’t want the mussels to go to waste.)

You can hear someone in the background saying, “I love mussels as much as the next person, but that’s sick.”

1. Send More Handwritten Cards and Letters
What happened in 2011? I am so into stationery, pens and paper* but I couldn’t even pull it together to send our customary batch of Christmas cards this year. Get ready, cause I am going to overcompensate for my dereliction by sending you a note for whatever reason I can think of in the coming year.

2. Organize Photos Immediately After A Set Is Taken
Who knows how many photos have been lost to the cyberwilderness due to the too-many-photos, too-little-time problem? It’s time I try to be more like the wizard/best damn photographer I know, Channing Johnson, and download, sort and edit photos as soon as an event is over.

3. Become Conversant in Spanish
In recent months I have traded in my usual happy hours for twice a week, 90-minute sessions with my private Spanish tutor, Hilda. After being away from Espanol for more than a decade, I decided to get serious again, and Hilda is helping me. Here’s hoping I can be conversant by the end of 2012.

4. Visit Seven New Countries and/or Territories
I’m feeling wanderlusty again. Seven is a good prime number, so that’s how I landed on it. Sudeep wants to hit Iceland, Mom’s basically already signed me up for Morocco, and Beam is planning some Southeast Asian adventure. This resolution will cost me money I don’t have since we’re about to buy a DC house, but like my parents always told me, exploration is invaluable.

*Karl Rove is, too. We go to the same paper place in Austin. He’s really into Moleskin notebooks, Crane paper and Pilot “Varsity” pens, the ladies tell me.

The one time I met Chuck Klosterman I totally whiffed my pickup line.

For Christmas, Matty got me a set of Chuck Klosterman Hypothetical Cards. (If this sounds lame, he did get me other stuff, too, like a TripIt PRO account! I was most excited about that and promptly started updating my TripIt on Christmas morning.)

Anyway. There is one hypothetical on each card, and they involve situations like what you’d do if you came home to a trashed house and Shaquille O’Neal was in your shower, or whether you’d own up to the fact you accidentally got selected to be saved from a meteor crashing to earth. Stuff like that. Every time we’ve been in the car since I got the cards, we have chosen one hypothetical to talk through or argue about.

But the reason I enjoy Chuck Klosterman hypotheticals so much in the first place is because of this one — the one about cheating on your girlfriend:

“This question raises a larger point about everything we pretend to understand about relationships, and particularly what we assume we understand about monogamy (and when infidelity technically begins). So while your answer to this question might seem unambiguous, the criteria you use to reach the conclusion are generally more important than the answer itself.”

If you haven’t considered this one, read it through. Once you’re done, we can have a conversation about it sometime over food and beverages. Regarding whose side I’m on, I’ve consistently held my position and am happy to defend it. Then again, if you’re a friend of mine that goes drinking with me, you probably already know whose side I’m on.