I don’t have any specific qualm with the magazine, nor the city for which it is named. Every now and then, particularly last summer, when I was transitioning between incarnations of my life, I’d actually read an article or two in the magazine (don’t ask me which — my apologies to the authors, but they just didn’t leave very lasting impressions). Usually, the magazine would just get filed away, stacked toward the middle of my pile of magazines and books to read.

Thankfully, my subscription is finally nearing its end and I can give away my last copies on Freecycle. If there’s nothing else I’ve learned in life recently it’s that there are people in this life who want and can make use of just about anything in this world.

Today, I got yet another copy, oddly enough, since I received the previous issue on Tuesday (There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to New York’s circulation). As I climbed the stairs to my apartment I found my thumbs skipping across the pages, but I didn’t really glance at what they said.

Then, this evening, my not quite as old as it sometimes acts laptop overheated right as I was in the middle of watching an episode of Lost. While I waited for the computer to reboot I went about my apartment, shuffling papers and washing a few dishes and generally pretending to be busy. I got to the front door adjacent bookshelf upon which mail gets stacked for innumerable weeks and grabbed the New York i received this week. Flipping through, I landed on a page listing a few restaurant openings and closings.

Then I saw it. What would appear to my wondering eyes but none other than the home of “Crispy Chickenjoy” and “Juicy Yumburgers.” Jollibee.

Oh the joys of coincidence. Since the day I moved to L.A. and passed the giant, gleeful bee scultpure outside a drive through fast food joint, Jollibee has pervaded my consciousness. In the following months, friends and family have all discussed the joint, yet I haven’t had any crispy poultry or tasty beef patties. Just last night I mentioned to a friend how curious I am about Jollibee and was reminded, as I learned a few months ago, that the restaurant is actually a popular Filipino fast food chain.

Somehow I feel cheated that it made it to New York’s openings list before it even got a mention in L@L. It’s not so much that I’m protective of my L.A. gems, but that it seems a latent instance of the somewhat annoying  irony fad that so infected  late 90′s and early 00′s Western culture, often fueled by inaccurate understanding of the term’s definition.  Perhaps, perhaps not. Whatever the case, I still keep picturing New York‘s food editors thinking how recession-chic it might be to list a new fast food outlet among the openings.

Yes, my computer is fine. And yes Lost was great. I’m a sucker.

In other news. Did anyone hear about the Octopus at the Santa Monica Aquarium? Crazy.

Another typewriter sat on a table across the room. A portable Corona, its curved black shell was decorated with a gold-colored paint, although the decoration was muted somewhat by the years passed since the  machine was owned by the journalist Melville Jacoby, a cousin of my grandmother’s who died in an accident in the Pacific as he covered World War II. Better known as Mel Jacks, I hope to share his story another time — I only invoke him now because I can’t help thinking about those machines, about what it feels to squeeze words onto those pages and what it feels like at this moment to string words across this screen.

As I typed on my dad’s typewriter, it felt as if the keys shook off the years, stretching after a long slumber. They began moving with ever more ease, every more confidence. With them, my words arrived more readily and honestly.

So as I launch this publication I felt these thoughts come first in fits and starts. I distracted myself. I procrastinated until eventually I found my rhythm. Thinking less and feeling more, I found the words coming more quickly. Like the keys on the typewriter eventually had, my fingers moved more readily, more confidently. They found their pace as I found my groove.

I stopped worrying about design elements and readership and who my audience was, what they thought and why it mattered. I stopped worrying and pressed my fingers to the keys. I stopped worrying and felt. I stopped worrying and observed. I stopped worrying and wrote.

Launching this publication I think about these machines. So many people in my field — loosely, journalism — agonize over what to do next, what to do with this digital age. As we fret and flail we risk forgetting about the words we’re stringing together, the information we’re reflecting upon and sharing, and the stories we’re telling. Whether breath on our lips, ink spread across a page, keys hammering into a ribbon or electrons running through a circuit, I’m concerned with how thoughts are captured, contained, altered and disseminated.

I don’t believe it’s true that journalism is dying. It is simply changing. Yet, too many people are trying too hard, throwing whatever they can at the wall until they see what sticks. This site will have two goals, to provide in depth, unrushed reporting and storytelling, and to serve as a central repository for my past writing and clips.

I want to offer a contemplative web publication. Something pondered and researched and unrushed whenever possible. We can innovate and tweet and network, but none of that means anything if we’re not able to articulate anything, if we’re not able to say why what we’re doing matters.

I’d like to think I’ll be appealing to those who value complete writing combined with an extensive eye. My readers might be those who want perspective on the world wider than a slim glimpse, something more than just a taste. Instead, I hope to offer a deeply connected, reflective banquet of thoughts.

I believe in a world that still values words but doesn’t neglect the power of images and sound. I believe in fierce independence in harmony with strong community bonds. I believe in a sense of place, whether that place is a neighborhood, a city, a nation, a biosphere, a world or a universe, or even whether the place is virtual, physical, mental or emotional.

With that in mind, I hope this site will reflect these perspectives.

So I draw on the past as well as the present for information. I think of Mel Jacks, but more importantly, I think about my father, Edward L. Lascher. I imagine some of those who end up at this site will know his name and the name Lascher at Large well.

Lascher at Large, authored for decades by my father, was more than a popular monthly legal affairs column in the California Bar Journal and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

While this new incarnation doesn’t have a legal focus (despite my experience as a legal affairs columnist for the Pacific Coast Business Times — or the overabundance of J.D.’s surrounding my upbringing), I realize part of the charm of the original Lascher at Large was my father’s weaving of discussions of the legal world with thoughts on current events, reflections on gustatory delights, explorations of new wines, descriptions of foreign travels and even tales of ill-fated encounters with our family dog.

I’ll go more in my own direction on this blog, but I do hope to return from time to time to the original Lascher at Large and ask what has become of some of the topics long ago shelved and filed. What of the new courthouses and charming new wine shops? Where did the skilled lawyers go? How did the aftermath of then surprising decisions play out?