Melville Jacoby, Tinyletter Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby, Tinyletter Bill Lascher

Come for the Book Cover and Release Date, Stay for the Food Poisoning

So, I could tell you a story about food poisoning and crazy rides across the Philippines, but I suspect you want to know what the cover of my book looks like, or what its final title and release date will be, or how you can pre-order it, or read about some fascinating characters from Portland who played both heroic and sinister roles in World War II.

So, I could tell you a story about food poisoning and crazy rides across the Philippines, but I suspect you want to know what the cover of my book looks like, or what its final title and release date will be, or how you can pre-order it, or read about some fascinating characters from Portland who played both heroic and sinister roles in World War II. So let's get to it!

Coming June 21, 2016 from William Morrow & Co:


It was QUITE a long road to get here, but I'm thrilled to say that outside of one last proofread for style and clarity, the manuscript of my book, Eve of a Hundred Midnights, is complete. You can expect to pick it up from your favorite bookseller on June 21, 2016. I'll send out proper pre-order links once a few more booksellers' websites have bene updated, but the intrepid among you may find some on my publisher's web site. 

Meanwhile, while you're waiting to read the book, take a glance at this month's edition of Portland Monthly, which explored the heroes, villains and rogues from Portland's history. I looked at two of these characters. One was Japan's foreign minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, who yanked his country out of the League of Nations and into the arms of the Axis with Germany and Italy, and was also raised by a Portland family and a graduate of the University of Oregon School of Law. The other was Hazel Ying Lee, a heroic pilot born in Portland and the first American woman of Chinese descent to fly for the U.S. military. Lee was one of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, though she died just before finishing her service with the program. 

Both stories were fascinating subjects that I only learned about in working on this book; I've discovered so many in this long process and hope to share more as time and resources allow.

Lapu-Lapu's Revenge

But, hey, you don't care about covers and book titles and magazine articles, right? I bet what you really want to read about is intestinal infortitude. Well, I give readers what they want, so read on!

As I was sprawled on my bathroom floor early this morning after an entirely unwelcome repeat encounter with last night's dinner, it occurred to me that last time I had food poisoning I was in Shanghai. High above the South China Sea, my stomach felt as tumultuous as relations between the country I was leaving, the Philippines, and the one to which I was returning, China. 

This was a rapid turnaround from a few hours earlier, when I'd bought myself lechon to celebrate finding a key location in my book -- an abandoned beach club that was once used as a hideout by Mel, Annalee and their friends as they escaped the Philippines. It was on the island of Cebu, a skinny sliver a few hundred miles southeast of Manila, in a town just outside Cebu City, the island's capital. Aside from its role in my story, Cebu is known for lechon, and I was eager to try it. But because roasting a pig to make lechon, it's only available for a brief window every evening. Given how compressed my time on Cebu was, I had to make book research my priority.

It had been all I could do not to just give it up, get some lechon, skip the research and park myself on some sterile resort beach on the nearby island of Mactan. The night before I reached Cebu, I'd arrived by ferry to the port of Caticlan on the northwest tip of the island of Panay. A gazillion tour operators convinced I was confused, didn't want to go south, but instead wished to visit nearby resort-heavy Boracay descended upon me. I shook them off, insisted I was headed south, and squeezed myself into a packed van bound immediately -- I was assured -- for Iloilo, on the other side of the island.

Two hours after I was told we would leave, I began a frightening ride wedged on a front bench, seatbelt-less, between the driver and another passenger, with my backpack at my feet. We finally left just as it began raining, a condition that paired swimmingly with my driver's speed down the winding, two-lane highway that hugged the edge of Panay. Texting the entire way and apparently quite frustrated by the person on the other end of the line, he weaved around construction sites, slowing only to cross himself whenever we passed a churchyard. All the while he crooned along with to the 80s power-rock ballads burned on CDs that he flipped in and out of the stereo. My only sanity came from joining the driver for renditions of familiar Journey and Bon Jovi tunes I'd absorbed as a child in 1980s America; when you're far from halfway anywhere and it's clear the man behind the wheel is driving on a prayer, belting out "Wh-oa, we're half way there" takes on new significance. When we finally stopped three hours later so my driver could take a pit stop (and call the friend he'd been texting), I decided  not to prolong the ordeal on another ride across Negros, then Cebu, and used the sliver of cell phone reception I had to blow my budget and spend $40 on the next plane ticket I could get from Iloilo to Cebu (yes, by that point, forty unexpected dollars were a big budget excess). Five hours after leaving caticlan, I found the one decrepit hotel in Iloilo still accepting new guests at that late hour, slept in my clothes for two more, took a cold shower, then left for the airport as soon as it was open.

This is all to say that when I reached Cebu, a beach day sounded really nice. But I was determined to find the reporters' temporary hideout. Fortunately, locating it -- a story, perhaps, for another time -- also meant finding a beach, albeit not one with glimmering white sands or an endless supply of cocktails at the ready (though one with stunning views that Annalee and Mel would have shared, and one with amazing, hospitable locals who invited me onto their porches). After sticking through to find the club, lechon seemed like a good reward, and I enlisted a group of boys in the nearby village to help me find the best stand around. Despite their dogged efforts, every place the boys took me was closed (as were other eateries). So I decided instead to save myself some hassle and grab a cab back to Cebu City and the airport on Mactan. On the way, I was happy to see that one of Cebu's most highly-touted lechon restaurants had a location near the airport. I was early for my flight, so I told my driver to stop there so I could get my long-anticipated award.

To be honest, the the smoothie I had there was better than the lechon, though I know understand the error of ordering a smoothie in a place where one is urged not to drink the water. While I'm not sure which dish led to the bacterial infection I'd discover in a few hours on my flight to Shanghai, my lechon stop came with another bonus. I'd already spent my remaining pesos on the cab and didn't want to withdraw more before leaving the Philippines, so I used a credit card to pay. I hadn't been worried about security as the place I was eating was a widely-known, well-appointed business on Cebu. But a week later, after I was back in the United States, the bank that issued that card called me to ask if I'd indeed spent $12,000 on sporting goods from Under Armor. Besides not knowing HOW one spends twelve grand on sporting goods, given how frequently I've hit my head on credit limits this year I couldn't help but be amused by the absurdity of the matter; fortunately my laughing credit card rep could see how absurd the situation was and immediately understood that I hadn't authorized the purchase.

This is all to say that when I woke up at 3:30 this morning with my stomach reeling, I realized that the last time I spent seven hours half-awake and crouched over a toilet was in the stall of a Shanghai hostel's co-ed bathroom, where I voided the last of that lechon. Thankfully, I maintained my composure just long enough to avoid doing so across a Chinese customs inspector's desk. Dodging the international incident that was sure to come just long enough, I instead ejected my meal in an airport bathroom, then gathered my faculties enough to repeatedly shout "búyào" (don't want) at the taxi-scammers who even at 1:30 a.m. swarmed around lǎowài (foreigners) like me, rode to the city, and began my uncomfortable introduction to Shanghai. I took the next three days to recover, but I finally did, and with just enough time to grab one more Chinese meal before I left for my long flight back to the United States. 

I recount all this because I'm also reminded of another fact; as uncomfortable as my food-poisoning was and as harrowing as I may have found my journey across Panay, I experienced it fully aware that Mel and Annalee's own journey to Cebu had been on a boat that had to travel by night, that it they had taken it panicked by Japanese reconnaissance planes that circled over their heads on idyllic Philippines beaches, and that they'd fled again just before an enemy cruiser reached Cebu and shelled the city, only to sail into an ocean filled with threats hoping one day to tell their story. 

I hope I've done justice to that story. You'll be able to decide whether I have done so on June 21.

P.S. If you'd like to help me acquire my own sporting goods, Pepto-Bismol or seatbelt, I'd truly appreciate your contribution.

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Exploding Whales (Also, I Wrote a Book)

My head hurts. My carpal tunnels hurt. My blood is mostly coffee sludge. I've become a master of doctoring up Top Ramen. I know the shame that is ordering pizza from a place three blocks away because I can't be bothered to stand up because this sentence is connecting with that one and this with this one and oh my god I'm actually writing, there are words coming out and they make sense and I actually think I have something here and wow I'm going to win the pulitzer and.

History is complicated. 

Writing about history is even more so. 

That's one reason I haven't written you in six months. Last time I checked in I was busily trying to complete my book...er ... (it has a new title. No, I can't tell you quite yet, but it looks good on the book's cover, which I can't quite show you yet). Well, I did. 

Then I wrote it again.

Then I wrote it again, again. 

Phew. My head hurts. My carpal tunnels hurt. My blood is mostly coffee sludge. I've become a master of doctoring up Top Ramen. I know the shame that is ordering pizza from a place three blocks away because I can't be bothered to stand up because this sentence is connecting with that one and this with this one and oh my god I'm actually writing, there are words coming out and they make sense and I actually think I have something here and wow I'm going to win the pulitzer and...

...crap. This is junk. What am I doing trying to write a book? I couldn't even write a postcard.  

What was I saying?

My brain is fried.

Something about whales? 

Look: 45 years ago today some people thought it would be a good idea to blow up a dead whale on a beach in Oregon. Well, it made for good TV, such good TV that decades later the footage was digitized into one of the first viral videos I ever saw. You should see it and read about it here.

Oh, oh! You should also read this. I wrote it! Did you know the United States used to have a fully-functioning court for U.S. citizens in China (well, fully-functioning is probably not quite the correct descriptor as there weren't juries)? It did! And, because of course this makes sense, most of its rules were based on codes for Washington, D.C., so, as one source noted for this story, you might see a case that said "so and so was brought up for pushing a Chinese into the Huangpu River contrary to the laws of the District of Columbia." It was a fascinating vestige of American colonial and legal history. By the way, Atlas Obscura is quite the wonderland for those interested in random history and geographical quirks. I'm thrilled to be published there and you should definitely explore more of the site.

Speaking of sites, I redesigned my web site since I last wrote. It's pretty. Give it a look! 

That's right, publishing! Wasn't I saying something about a book? 

Oh, yeah, so this one time, China and Japan were at war. Japan had conquered all of China's coastal cities, so China needed to get supplies to its wartime capital, Chongqing, an inland city that a long time ago was the capital of the Bā empire but was hardly known before the war. So China turned to France, or rather, a French colony called Indochina, which was made up of places we know today as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. You see, there was this port city called Hải Phòng, though they wrote it Haiphong because Europeans weren't terribly keen on recognizing local accents and punctuation. Anyhow, there was a railway that would take supplies from Hải Phòng to a place in China called Kunming, a very lovely city next to a large lake where at the time you could buy chocolate. That was notable because you couldn't get chocolate in Chongqing, as one American named Mel Jacoby noted. Then again, he came down with malaria in Kunming, so maybe he wasn't as excited about the place as I'd like to think.

But I digress (shocking, I know). So in this port city in a place that we now call Vietnam, but back then called Indochina because it was under the thumb of the French, was a warehouse that an American company used to store goods it was going to ship up that railway. But, you see, Japan wasn't eager for China to have these goods. At first it bombed the railway. But then, in June 1940, Germany conquered France and a group of collaborators set up a government subservient to the Nazis in Vichy, a town with nice spas and supposedly-healthy water, and those collaborators said "oh, hey, what should we do with these colonies all over Africa and Southeast Asia? Hmm, let's not worry about it right now, especially not that Indochina place." Anyway, Japan's foreign minister at the time was this American-educated lawyer* who really hated Communists and he thought "Gee, these Nazis don't seem too fond of Communists either, maybe we should work with them" (Not a terribly unique sentiment among Japan's leaders), so he negotiated an alliance between Japan and Germany (and Italy, but who's counting?). They signed that alliance that September and lo-and-behold we have the Axis, a term that made coming up with shorthand for anyone American leaders wanted to demonize in the future super easy.

Like I was saying, there was this American cargo at a warehouse in the Vietnamese portion of Indochina, a colony run by the French, and the Japanese were trying to keep the Chinese from having this cargo. The French had been all, like, "Regarde, we don't have a chien in this guerre, we're just doing les affaires," mais non! Now they had business. Those dudes in Vichy were like "hey, the Germans say 'maybe you shouldn't anger these new allies of ours' [I don't know enough German for good, er, Germglish?]," though in a far more complicated, official, historically-accurate, but still quite waffly manner. However they said, the point was that they let Japan into Indochina. Thus allowed into Indochina, the Japanese occupied the warehouse where these shipments were coming, much to the annoyance of the Americans, who were neutral and flying their flag above the warehouse. 

Oh, yeah, at the same time, Thailand -- Aka the Kingdom of Siam -- was like, "hey, the other side of the Mekong River looks mighty nice to us. Maybe we'll just fly a few planes over there. What? Cambodia? We aren't invading Cambodia, which, of course, is part of Indochina, which, of course, is run by the French, who, of course, are under Germany's control, which, of course, is allied with Japan, which, of course, is at war with China." 

Darn. Digression. Sorry.

So, the Japanese are now inspecting U.S. goods at a Hải Phòng cargo terminal and that really didn't sit well with the Americans. That dude Mel had mostly recovered from his malaria and was hanging in a city near Hải Phòng called Hanoi. Mel stayed in a hotel called the Metropole, where all the Japanese and French and Americans and anyone else drank in the bar and talked too much about what they were doing. So of course Mel learned about this mess at the U.S. port and thought "hey, that's a story, right?" I mean, sure, he'd been telling his family and his then girlfriend that he was going to head home after a year in China, but come on, was he actually supposed to not check out what was going on at this warehouse? I mean, what possible harm could come form that?

Hmm... wouldn't you like to know? Good thing I wrote a book! 

I promise it doesn't read like this letter.

-Bill

P.P.S. I'm still stretching my dollars every which way. As you might be able to tell, my mind has been a little off and I forgot to mention: you're still welcome to share a few piastres.

* = Also keep your eyes peeled for the December issue of Portland Monthly for more about this dude, and a woman who was a much, much cooler representative of World War II history.

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Melville Jacoby, Tinyletter Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby, Tinyletter Bill Lascher

The Last Night

A new year looms. As it has since I began unfurling this story, New Year's Eve carries a special meaning. As much as I'm thinking about Mel and Annalee, I'm also thinking about the people who left similar impressions upon them, and upon whom they left their own impressions. They are on my mind as I consider how, 73 years ago tonight, Mel and Annalee made the heartbreaking decision to leave their friends at a Manila hotel, run to the city's burning docks and leap aboard the last boat sailing into a dark, mine-strewn harbor before the Japanese entered the Philippines' capital. It was not an easy decision; the people they left behind were their colleagues, their friends, their fellow "soldiers of the press." They were, as I've addressed before, their tribe.

"This wasn't just Manila's last night of freedom. This was the last night the thirty-two reporters packed into the Bay View would spend together. A group bonded as tightly as any army platoon in the heat of battle -- many of whom had served alongside one another for years in the heat and stink and drama of China's wartime capital, Chongqing (then known as Chungking), where they were once so young, so eager and so ready to take on the world -- would soon fracture.”

Dear friends,

It's been a while. Long enough that I wish I had written many more letters to each of you individually. The other week I received a call from a man who stumbled upon a tweet I'd written about a journalist who crossed Mel Jacoby's path in the Philippines. That man was the caller's godfather. The caller told me about the stories his godfather told, what a wonderful man he had been and all the possessions he left the caller with clues to the fantastic life he lived. We struck an instant rapport and I identified immediately with the caller's fascination with his godfather. This whole process of composing this story has been replete with similar connections.

Just this afternoon I set aside a draft of this letter to chat with a barista at the coffee shop I typically haunt. After I brought up something unrelated to my book I learned that the barista's husband is Filipino. His family, the barista told me, experienced some of the war's most horrific experiences, some of which overlapped with what Mel witnessed or reported. As the barista and I spoke, the woman sitting next to me at the counter took interest. In the ensuing conversation I learned a bit about her own family's history. Though a separate story, the introduction opened a deep, meandering discussion that left me feeling inspired about how crucial spontaneous interpersonal interaction remains in this day of channelized media and "social" media.

Now a new year looms. As it has since I began unfurling this story, New Year's Eve carries a special meaning. As much as I'm thinking about Mel and Annalee, I'm also thinking about the people who left similar impressions upon them, and upon whom they left their own impressions. Just this November, I met one of the families of Mel and Annalee's closest friends and colleagues. As the family provided me with intimate glimpses of their parents and the Jacobys' experiences, we struck up our own friendship, one of a few I've been fortunate enough to begin through my work on this book.

All of these people are on my mind as I consider how, 73 years ago tonight, friends and family were on Mel and Annalee's minds. It was that night when Mel and Annalee made the heartbreaking decision to leave their friends at a Manila hotel, run to the city's burning docks and leap aboard the last boat sailing into a dark, mine-strewn harbor before the Japanese entered the Philippines' capital. It was not an easy decision; the people they left behind were their colleagues, their friends, their fellow "soldiers of the press." They were, as I've addressed before, their tribe.

The passage at the beginning of this email is a small sample of what I've written in my book's opening chapter, and I hope it whets your appetite for what is to come. Later the same night Mel, Annalee, and their friend Clark Lee toasted the new year with a bottle of applejack on the darkened deck of the boat they'd escaped upon. As we celebrate the New Year, I thought I'd share a little bit more from my first chapter, particularly, what I wrote about that toast as 1941 blazed into 1942:

"On New Year's Eve, treacherous waters roiled around a burning city and a nation at war. But the three reporters had finally escaped, and for a moment, for one quiet moment in the darkness of Manila harbor, they were just a newlywed couple celebrating the new year with one of their friends.

"In the 21st Century, we plan for New Year's parties like they mean something. Like they'll change our lives. Like where we decide to go determines the sort of year we'll have. Our decision points will be bars, clubs, house parties, restaurants or quiet nights at home. We wonder whether we will spend the holiday with friends or dates, or if we'll spend it alone.

"We toast with Champagne. We toast with beer. We toast with sparkling cider or we toast with nothing at all. The renewal swept in by the calendar's turn leaves us longing for drama and adventure, so we will brave the cold and try new neighborhoods, new bars, new habits and new loves.

"But as 1942 approached Manila, New Year's Eve meant braving the future and a new war. Nineteen-forty-two might not have been a year to welcome with Champagne, but the simple fact of the reporters' survival so far merited celebration. This would be a year for escapes and near misses. It would be a year for tragedy and loss. With 1942 arriving the way it did, a bottle of applejack passed around the deck of a blacked-out freighter made for as good a toast as anything. All the last minute sabotage and looting throughout Manila provided the fireworks.

"'A ninety-million-dollar send-off,' Mel said of the Hollywood-esque theatrics, before the reporters drifted off to sleep."

I can't wait to share what happened when they woke up, and what led them there. Meanwhile, let's all stay in touch in 2015. Write back to this email. Share this project with your friends. Send me a note some time. Give me a call. Knock on my door. I'll try to do the same.

Happy New Year,
Bill

P.S. I have tickets booked to retrace Mel's steps in China and the Philippines this spring. I'll write more about my trip soon, but I'll welcome any suggestions any of you have for these places, and I welcome any introductions you have to people there (and I'd love to see you if by chance you'll be in either place).

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Writing and Working, Tinyletter Bill Lascher Writing and Working, Tinyletter Bill Lascher

Allowing Sufficient Time

Around the corner from my house, inside the streetside window of a fancy spa, a slogan painted on an interior wall reads "Allow sufficient time." As the spa's clients emerge from their massages and saunas and wraps, the sign reminds them not to rush back into the world. It also reminds passersby like me not to rush through the world. I'm still trying to learn that lesson.

Around the corner from my house, inside the streetside window of a fancy spa, a slogan painted on an interior wall reads "Allow sufficient time." As the spa's clients emerge from their massages and saunas and wraps, the sign reminds them not to rush back into the world. It also reminds passersby like me not to rush through the world. I'm still trying to learn that lesson.

I think I might still be struggling to do so because I'm get concerned that if I don't act I'll miss opportunities, a fate I feel has befallen me in the past. Action seems crucial. Self-styled "King of Partying" Andrew W.K. said it simply in a tweet last month: "PARTY TIP: Don't wait until you're ready."

So what to do? Do I listen to Mr. W.K. and leap at everything I seek, or instead hew closer to the advice of my thoughtful, but high-priced, neighbors? 

"Allow sufficient time" may correlate to the saying "haste makes waste." I was reminded of the latter last month as I finished bottling my first batch of beer. When making beer, one cannot rush fermentation, nor speed through bottling. The former simply doesn't happen without time, and the latter is one of many stages in the brewing process that, if skipped or rushed, can ruin a beer. I'm lucky. My beer turned out tasty. But its flavor wasn't what I intended, and I'm pretty sure I can directly attribute that result to my over-eagerness to start brewing, and points along the way when I may have hastily missed important details. I don't mind, because the beer tastes good, and also because this was my first batch and the learning was almost as valuable as the beer (almost). Still, the experience underscores the fact that disrupting process can disrupt entire systems. Indeed, in many ways, brewing is the most process-driving task I've engaged in for some time, and part of what I'm doing is just learning about process-driven pursuits, period. (Does one write the word "period" if in fact there is a period, the way one one might pronounce it out loud to emphasize a point?)

Working on this book *should* be another, but so far it isn't. And as I am now fully committed to its writing, I realize two somewhat conflicting thoughts: I need to push myself to meet a very clear, ever-more-rapidly approaching deadline, but I must do so without skipping any part of the process, without possibly sabotaging my anticipated end results. I must not rush the final product, lest all the things I've put aside to be able to work on it be sacrificed in vain, lest all your support be met with vapors, let this tremendous story that should have been told decades ago never be told. So how do I allow sufficient time, yet also avoid wasting dwindling opportunities?

To be honest, I sometimes envy the frenetically-paced lives of friends and family who regularly work weeks of forty, fifty or even more hours, some of whom likely envy my seemingly formless, flexible work-life. Today someone asked me if I have a writing schedule. I don't, as much as I have hungered for some sort of constraints to squeeze my work into shape. Without guidelines, how will I ever have a process to carefully follow? Still, I cannot force my writing onto a calendar (I know some writers schedule their work, but that doesn't mean they're writing every second they have scheduled). It's somewhat like beer. It's somewhat like romance. I cannot rush fermentation and I cannot rush love. I cannot rush conditioning and I cannot rush romance. I cannot even rush carbonation and I cannot rush lust. And I certainly cannot rush anyone else's love, romance or lust.

I definitely cannot rush belonging.

When Melville Jacoby was living in Chongqing, China in 1940 and '41, he lived in a place known as the Press Hostel. I think about this place regularly. I sometimes long to be a part of the kind of culture Mel became a part of at the hostel, a ramshackle building in this squalid, sweltering, frequently-bombed capital of China's nationalist government during the war. That desire comes, in part, from the innate motivation I imagine that community provided. I might follow a more distinct process if I knew I was working alongside others working under conditions similar to mine. 

But the Press Hostel was more than some wartime writing retreat. To say so would dismiss its real importance. The Press Hostel became home for an ad-hoc family of reporters who, while competitors, knit themselves tightly into a community of men and women who felt a sense of purpose that others often find in battle, civic service, grassroots activism or religion. They found a sense of belonging and a shared identity in their work to chronicle a conflict and a country often ignored by their own societies. When one of them triumphed, they all celebrated. When tragedy struck one of them, they all mourned. 

I don't want to romanticize war or ignore the hostel's many dangers -- it was destroyed in a 1941 air raid -- and discomforts, but I know that the adrenaline and shared sense of purpose among the correspondents who lived within its walls strongly sealed the reporters' bonds. Mel and Annalee Jacoby were so magnetically attracted to one another in part because they each recognized how engulfed the other was in his or her work. That same recognition also stoked the deep friendships they felt for colleagues like Theodore White and Carl and Shelley Mydans. This was their moment. This was their time. It would only come once.

Yes, I'm fascinated by this place because of its dramatic geographical and historical setting, but also because journalists are not usually joiners. I'm no exception, yet when I am among other journalists I feel at home and at peace, without even really trying. I'll probably never live anywhere like the Press Hostel. Indeed, it's becoming ever more clear that I've passed the point where once this book is done I'm more likely to work on long, involved features independently, rather than report breaking news as part of a news team or staff some bureau in a distant conflict. Yet the sense of belonging-ness I feel among other journalists is powerful. Other journalists speak my language. They are my tribe, even if we'd never join a tribe. 

One of my tribe members died in May. She was way too young. Those things that remind me of her -- a song played while shuffling through Pandora, or photo booth pictures we took together spilling out of a box I'm riffling through -- still stop me in my tracks. She got such a god damn raw deal, and will not have the many opportunities we all still have to live, really live. But those opportunities she had, she savored. She allowed sufficient time, despite how limited her time turned out to be. After she died, among the many memories posted online about her, my friend's father shared her favorite mantra: "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain."

It seems somewhat like Andrew W.K.'s urging not to wait until I am ready.Love will not come knocking. My tribe will not arrive uninvited at my doorstep. My book will not write itself.

I may not be weathering the kind of storm my friend did, but I only have my life to live, my people to love and my work to finish. I only have my dance to do. So maybe what I should work on is allowing sufficient time for the moments I have, and not waste them trying to create others I may or may not have.

There is only so much time for them.

-Bill

P.S. I have a new story out in Portland Monthly about my first year living with a car. Also, if you haven't been to my website lately, I've moved my photo portfolio there so it's easily accessible. I hope to make a few more tweaks, especially to my writing portfolio, in the coming months. 

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Tinyletter, Photo of the Day Bill Lascher Tinyletter, Photo of the Day Bill Lascher

Framing My Travels

As much as I have to corral my writing and my research, I find if I have a camera in my hand instinct takes over. When I travel — whether across the country or across the city — I begin to see potential photographs framed everywhere I look. It's a delicate approach; one doesn't want to miss the moment in the search for memories of the moment. What's more? Some moments are meant to be transitory, to be fully experienced, not boxed by lenses and mirrors. Still, I've been enjoying photography as a counterpoint to my writing, and, since I often travel alone, the chance to share what I see with people I wish could be there with me (by the way, are you following me on Instagram?)

Portland_at_dawn

Dear you,

Good journalists, lawyers and scholars all know that there's a moment at which one must cut off the research process and start writing. There's a reason for this: you can research forever and never put that research to use. Each new discovery prompts new questions about the context of whatever was discovered. You have to constrain your research, or all you'll do is dig.

Still, I've not quite finished wading through the information I'll need to tell Mel's story the way I want (though I'm starting to see the shore). Moreover, when I was at the Library of Congress in March, I only had so much time to work (and I'll have to go back to the National Archives, as I've discussed before). Fortunately, many Library of Congress materials concerning notable figures have been microfilmed and made available for inter-library loan. That means I can request some materials to view at my own library, on my own schedule. That's why yesterday I was in a crowded reading room on the second floor of the central branch of the Multnomah County Library reading a Roosevelt Administration cabinet member's once-secret communications. While I scrolled the microfilm,a man behind me studied old Oregon newspapers, some middle-aged guys at the other end of the table played video games on laptops, and dozens of people with nowhere else to go spent the day studying newspapers, finishing homework and grooming themselves in the building's restrooms. It was a jarring departure from the cloistered, high-security research facilities at which I've spent much of my Spring, but this space is these people's space as much as it is mine.

In any case, it was exciting to do real book work with the added knowledge I now know who's going to publish it. Oh, how I thrive on deadlines, and I'm loving the idea of setting a schedule to finish this book. I bet it will feel much like the training schedules I used to run my first and second marathon last year. Those schedules nourished me because I'm so used to, and tired of, my unconstrained freelance life as it seeps and leaks without form or direction.

Haleakala_hikers

As much as I have to corral my writing and my research, I find if I have a camera in my hand instinct takes over. When I travel — whether across the country or across the city — I begin to see potential photographs framed everywhere I look. It's a delicate approach; one doesn't want to miss the moment in the search for memories of the moment. What's more? Some moments are meant to be transitory, to be fully experienced, not boxed by lenses and mirrors. Still, I've been enjoying photography as a counterpoint to my writing, and, since I often travel alone, the chance to share what I see with people I wish could be there with me (by the way, are you following me on Instagram?). Friends and family who know me as a writer often tell me they're surprised to see how many photos I've taken. I don't pretend to be as great a photographer as many of my friends (check out the work of my Salt Institute collaborator Whitney Fox, or my old friend Jennifer Livia, to see what real pros can do), but photography is an ever-growing, ever-improving pursuit of mine, and I'm proud of what I have done so far. Some of the things I see stick with me, like the above photo, which I took in December, 2011, while dog-sitting for some friends who lived near Portland State University. I think you might enjoy some of what I've shot before, which you can do by clicking the "photography" link in the portfolio section of my main web site.

Okay, enough shameless marketing, but know that I want you to see the photos because I want you to know a little bit about me. I'd love to know a little bit more about you. What passions do you want to share?

Envisioning you,

-Bill

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A (Not So) Tiny Letter

I've been reading a lot of letters. It seems all I do these days is read letters.

But here's a letter for you. I wish I could send it to you on the onion-skin I so often find myself reading, the translucent sheets etched with the black ink of a an old Hermes's or Corona Portable's hammer-strikes, the sheet carefully folded into an envelope covered with bright stamps and decorated with a picture of a DC-3 and bold capitals reading "VIA AIR MAIL." 

Of course, I can't, but I still want to say hello, because it's been a while (probably) and I miss you (certainly) and connecting beyond the superficial digital zones where we encounter one another. You may know where I've been, but perhaps something will settle on this screen. Letters, whatever their substrate, allow thoughts to steep better than ever-flowing streams of information we feel we must address and process now. Right now. Always now.

So feel free to read this and whatever letters follow at your leisure.

Hi,

I've been reading a lot of letters. It seems all I do these days is read letters.

But here's a letter for you. I wish I could send it to you on the onion-skin I so often find myself reading, the translucent sheets etched with the black ink of a an old Hermes's or Corona Portable's hammer-strikes, the sheet carefully folded into an envelope covered with bright stamps and decorated with a picture of a DC-3 and bold capitals reading "VIA AIR MAIL." 

Of course, I can't, but I still want to say hello, because it's been a while (probably) and I miss you (certainly) and connecting beyond the superficial digital zones where we encounter one another. You may know where I've been, but perhaps something will settle on this screen. Letters, whatever their substrate, allow thoughts to steep better than ever-flowing streams of information we feel we must address and process now. Right now. Always now.

So feel free to read this and whatever letters follow at your leisure.

This Spring, while traveling between archives and libraries, first in Washington, D.C. and College Park, Maryland, then in Palo Alto and San Diego, I've had a sort of secondary education on the art of letter-writing. But what I want to discuss isn't what I've read in search of details about Melville Jacoby's life. I want to address what happens after processing so many diplomats' desk calendars, journalists' diaries, essayists' scrawled notes, and of course, the letters, those countless letters. I want to address what happens when I leave the reading rooms and need to unpack myself into whatever crevices of the day remain. Hard as I may work, these trips acquire meaning through what happens in their margins. Even seemingly inconsequential after-hours moments counterbalance days crammed with research and mountains of paper.

After I finished my first day at the Library of Congress, a college friend I hadn't seen since graduation showed off the senate office where she now works. I later met her husband (and adorable dog) while staying as the first overnight guest at the house they just bought. But what I remember from my visit wasn't catching up over what we've done the past dozen years, it was the three of us talking late into the night over meals and music, the kind of meandering conversation one remembers from college dining halls, dorm lounges and walks across the quad. In other words, the moments outside the classroom.

But for the bulk of my nights in D.C., I stayed on the couch of my best friend from grad school. We hadn't seen one another for half a decade. Because of a major event in the D.C. area while I was there, my friend, a TV news producer, was as busy as I. While we could only squeeze in a few hours of socializing, our familiarity with one another ran so deep that we didn't need to do anything to resume our patter after five years apart, and being busy together was our normal. Back at her apartment on the last night of my trip, we collapsed on the couch with wine, take-out and mindless TV. Both depleted by our work, the moment felt like the endless hours we'd spent agonizing over our Master's projects, commiserating over breakups and wondering what the hell we would do next with our lives. It was the comfort of familiarity balanced against a week working ourselves sick (Literally; I went home with a cold).

Pain and Gain

Two weeks later, I was at it again in California. There, I met friends' boyfriends at ballgames and high school classmates' babies at coffee shops. One night in L.A., after mingling with Tyrannosaurs and dancing among the imagined landscapes of a prehistoric Golden State, one of my oldest friends and I stretched the night deep into the morning, remembering youthful exploits on late nights long past.

On my second day in San Diego, after exhausting the collection I'd come to scrutinize, I visited the studio of an aunt literally working herself raw finishing a glass art installation. With my uncle explaining the painstaking preparations they were making to hang the work, my aunt stepped away from shaping a sea-green sheet of glass. She explained how, despite torn-up hands and her exhaustion, she was fulfilled by the work and grateful for the chance to involve the man she loved with its preparation. Toil doesn't only happen from nine-to-five, and it doesn't only happen in offices or construction sites.

Just the previous night, I met a high school friend I hadn't seen since 2001. Over cocktails and a late-night tea, we dissected the writing life, its sharp edges, and the truth of just how brutal our passions can be.

"Because I love making art, and I love being alive, I am trying to be brave, to be honest, and to listen carefully,"  she confided the next day in a North American Review essay. She felt like I sometimes do, like she was failing. "And so far this year, interestingly, it’s been the perfect fail. All pain, no gain."

Candid admissions were the order of the week. After my visit to my aunt's studio I met one more person, an old colleague who became a close friend years after we worked together. At a coffee shop near her childhood home we discussed "light" topics: books, TV shows, our families, etc.; but we also talked about her pancreatic endocrine cancer — and its often debilitating treatment. That afternoon, Huffington Post ran a piece she wrote originally for Reimagine.me about fighting to stay afloat financially. Years into her diagnosis, she hasn't even reached her 29th birthday. As she details in the piece, she didn't choose the expense of having cancer the way we make other informed choices about our major financial commitments, but she must bear it. I know her to be an artist as well, and I know that she is brave, and I know that she is honest about when she cannot be brave, and I know she listens carefully, and I even know much of what she loves about being alive. And I also know about her pain — though it's a real pain whose dimensions I can't fathom — pain that, by contrast with what art has brought my high school friend and I, didn't result from any of her choices.

Seventy-Two Years

Fortunately, pain isn't the only experience that catches us off guard. The previous night, I stayed late at UCSD's Theodore Geisel Library. On the bus to meet my high school friend, a woman who works at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies sat down next to me. We started talking about her research into genomics, as well as mine into history and wartime news coverage, and our mutual bliss throwing ourselves into work we love. It was one of those serene moments of connection, where as draining as our day had been, we regretted when the bus reached my stop, because it meant we couldn't continue this unexpected conversation.

But I learned one thing: Her name was Shelley. Shelley's name was easy to remember. My aunt with the glass-torn fingers is named Shelley. One of Mel's best friends was named Shelley. That day, I'd spent much of my time reading letters written between that Shelley (along with her husband, Carl) and the couple whose papers I was studying. 

It's a coincidence, to be sure, but it was enough of one to get my attention. And it's on my mind again tonight. 

When Japan invaded the Philippines, Mel and his wife, Annalee, escaped. But Japanese troops captured Shelley and Carl and imprisoned them with other American civilians. A few months after Mel's escape, he radioed Washington D.C. and urged U.S. officials to arrange a prisoner exchange, hoping his friends could be released. The government couldn't make the exchange happen, at least not then, but in a letter acknowledging Mel's request, his contact expressed relief at his and Annalee's safety.

"One of these days we shall hope to see you again," read one line of the letter, dated April 28, 1942.

I realize not only that this letter was sent exactly 72 years ago, but also that its hope would never be realized. Just a few hours later — indeed, nearly at the exact hour I finished the last edits on this letter — halfway around the world, an airfield accident would change everything, and kill Mel.

I hadn't intended to write this note to mark the anniversary of Mel's death, but I can't ignore that timing.

There's something else I can't ignore. Mel didn't choose his pain, either. He didn't have a chance to reconnect over the decades with old friends for drinks or dinners or candid admissions. Mel didn't have hours or days, let alone years, to recover from exhausting work. He only had his short life.

While I was working at the Hoover Institution, I went to an evening forum at Stanford's School of Journalism sponsored by Rowland and Pat Rebele. There was a reception after the talk, and I spent a long time there chatting with Rowland, whose curiosity about Mel's story deepened with each question I answered. That was exciting enough, but my biggest memory of the night was when I stood up from the panel discussion and noticed glass-encased shelves lined with cardinal-red, bound volumes. The spine of a book on the shelf closest to me read "An Analysis of Far Eastern News in Representative California Newspapers, 1934-38." It was a masters thesis authored by Charles L. Leong and Melville J. Jacoby. Of course I knew about its existence already, but seeing it there, moments before meeting Rebele, reminded me that I am doing the work I need to be doing, when I need to be doing it.

It's not news that writing is a solitary existence. Since I am single, and I work from home, and I don't have roommates, I sometimes feel even more isolated. All these moments of connection these past months, however, make this work feel far less lonesome. Indeed, they reminded me that there are people who understand the work I'm doing, even if miles, years and conditions separate us.

That's part of the reason I'm writing you; in the past, you've shown an interest, and I want to carry on whatever conversations we've already started, or begin ones that might last into the future. I'll write occasionally to this list; sometimes once a week, sometimes a little more or a little less frequently; sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Yes, I want to keep you interested in my book, but I also want to experiment with a simple but elusive concept: getting and remaining in touch. If this isn't the place for you to do that, or you don't want to remain in touch, please don't feel obligated to do so and please don't feel like you'll offend me if you unsubscribe.

But that's why I'm writing you today, and if you can, and if you want, write back when you can, about this, about your passions, about anything. And share this note widely with people who'd want to read it, and who'd want to be part of the conversation.

-Bill

P.S. If you want to keep track of what I have to say but don't want to subscribe, please consider a visit to my blog, follow me on TwitterTumblr or Instagram.

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