Appreciation

Last night, April 24th, 2017, the Oregon Book Awards took place in Portland. Eve of a Hundred Midnights was nominated for the Frances Fuller Victor award for general nonfiction. While the book didn't win, it was such an honor to be chosen a finalist. Moreover, being asked to write some remarks in case I did win proved to be a wonderful opportunity to reflect on all of the people I appreciated for making this book possible. Here's what I would have said, because it's all still true:

Today marks the 75th anniversary of what could have been the last time my grandmother, her parents, and the rest of her family heard the voice of Melville Jacoby, my grandma's beloved oldest cousin and the subject of my book. That night three quarters of a century ago, everyone gathered around their radio listening to the March of Time, hoping to hear from Mel, a reporter who, with his wife, the journalist and former MGM screenwriter Annalee Whitmore Jacoby, had just survived a month-long escape from the Philippines, and six weeks of reporting from the front lines of Bataan and Corregidor.

Mel's broadcast failed and his family didn't get to hear his voice again. However, three quarters of a century later, thanks to my grandmother, Peggy, and her sister, Jackee, I've been able to give voice to his story. This award honors not just them, or Mel, but the people whose voices were only heard because Mel sacrificed so much as a foreign correspondent.

It's an honor to be nominated among this wonderful group of fellow writers, in part because many of them have produced work that amplifies the voices and subjects too often overlooked, marginalized or forgotten.

I would not have been able to tell this story were it not for others in my family as well, especially my mother, Wendy — my first and often shrewdest editor — her siblings, and my own siblings. Likewise, my partner, Andrea, has helped me survive every stage of this book's production and championed me even when I second-guess myself

Over the course of seven and a half years, more than half of which I spent on this book, Oregon has become my home. While today, too many ominous signs remind me of the dark world in which Mel and Annalee worked as reporters, the community I've found here in Oregon and what I like to call its "pot luck" culture are key reasons why I'm hopeful we'll all be able to survive whatever comes next. Many of those I've met here, whether writers or not, have contributed something that helped me make this book possible, and in turn, ensured that I have been able to get Mel's voice heard once again.

When a Press Hostel is a Press Hotel

So, most of the journalists who worked in Chongqing during the war lived in the city's government-run "Press Hostel." When I was in Chongqing this spring I spent a great deal of time looking for the site of the hostel, and for years I have been researching everything I can about the place as I work on my book. Only just now -- as I make the last revisions on my book about Melville and Annalee Jacoby, who lived in the hostel -- did I think to type "Press Hotel" into google instead of “Press Hostel.” Oy...

The Best Freelancing Advice I've Seen

I just received read the best piece of advice I've ever ever seen for freelance writers and their careers. It's too bad that I read it today and not five and a half years ago when I finished graduate school. 

If you're just starting out as a freelance writer -- hell, if you're well-established as a freelancer -- I strongly urge you to read this piece by Scott Carney, a Colorado-based investigative journalist and anthropologist. In the piece Carney suggests freelancers abandon the long-held practice of "silo" pitching, wherein writers pitch articles to one outlet at a time and rather take their publications out to multiple editors simultaneously. The advice itself isn't new to me, but Carney makes the best case I've seen for so-called "market pitching." As an example, Carney points to Hollywood, where studios often have to pay writers significantly for the opportunity to exclusively consider their work. There's no reason journalists shouldn't value their work just as much and not worry they'll upset their editors.

"But any editor that doesn’t understand the pressures that freelancers face is probably not worth working with anyway," Carney writes. "Risking the ire of one person is not a reason to submit yourself to a life of poverty."

Indeed, I'll add that there may be a moral imperative: if we truly believe it's important to bring the public's attention to stories that might otherwise go unnoticed, then we should be doing everything we can to get those stories read, and that often means publishing quickly while the story we cover is still relevant.

After I completed my master's program at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication, I thought it made the most sense to carve my own path into a freelance career. At the beginning, I shopped around my master's project, a magazine-style longform piece about Los Angeles's rapidly evolving transportation system. So I queried a few publications I thought would like the piece and kept it off of my web site. At the time, Mother Jones was interested in putting an issue together about transportation and senior editor Dave Gilson expressed an interest in the piece, but it ultimately never ran. A month after I pitched him Gilson, to his credit, told me he wouldn't be bothered if I continued to shop it around. Ultimately, though, I never found a home for the piece -- in part because other publications were bothered when I told them Gilson was considering it. By December, 2009, Gilson had stopped responding to my monthly follow-ups on the pitch and no one else bit. What had once been one of the first in-depth explorations of L.A.'s reinvention of its transportation identity amid a historic vote to increase sales taxes and raise $30 billion for transportation infrastructure was now stale. Still, it was interesting enough that I decided to post it myself on my web site. Other articles I'd worked on similarly floundered. Over the five and a half years that followed my graduation from USC, rather than aggressively try to market my work, I slowly pitched pieces from publication to publication, piecing together a career from a few successes and spending much of my time waiting, endlessly waiting, for responses. Even the pieces I did place took months to see the light of day. Over the past few years not only have I struggled to make ends meet because I have irrationally allowed myself to be so fearful of editors -- I say irrational because editors cannot exist without good content; even content aggregators need content to aggregate -- but I have also felt like a fraud among my peers who'd hear about the stories I was constantly working on but never see them in completion. 

Fortunately, I survived, and perhaps I wouldn't be working on a book under contract -- at least not this particular one -- had my career taken a different trajectory. Nevertheless, I wish I'd read something as cogently written as Carney's piece when I finished school.

Even better, I wished an essay like his had been required reading. 

Hitting the (Silk) Road

Humidity suffocated Chongqing. Mosquitos infested Chongqing. Exhaust from charcoal-burning-buses choked Chongqing. At Chongqing parties flowing with roast duck, scallion pancakes and rice wine, Japanese rebels, German communists and American military attachés mingled with adventure-seekers, mercenaries and bohemians from the world's farthest corners. Outside these bacchanals, Chongqing's cacophonous streets crawled with beggars peddling broken tools and decrepit clothing and stinking of unwashed mothers trying to feed children defecating in the gutters. 

Even in the middle of the night the heat enveloped Chongqing. The city's stink hung across every inhabitant's skin, a blanket as sticky as the countless steps from the shore of the Yangtze were slimy. Noise was as ever-present as the leaden air. Silence was a concept so foreign in this pop-up capital that the word could be cut from dictionary pages and never missed. Clear days meant wailing sirens, and that distant drone that climbed into a roar, a brief, eerie, quiet, then a deceptively distant thud of blasts heard beneath hundreds of feet of stone, "like suction cups plopping against water."

Any other moment meant the noise of teeming masses, conversations and lovemaking unhidden by paper-thin walls, the chatter of work and the constant rattle of typewriters. Countless dialects pooled from China's four corners to this polyglot bastion, as Cantonese and Mandarin and Sichuanese swirled from storefront to storefront. Measured voices of news announcers read morning briefings in the headquarters of XGOY. 

Chongqing was hot. It was loud. It was squalid. It was crowded.

It was home. Chongqing was home.

"You get to like it,” Mel wrote.

***

Will I like it? Five weeks from today I will wake to my first morning in Beijing on the first leg of a trip through China and the Philippines. In the weeks to follow I hope to visit Guangzhou and Manila, to see Shanghai and Cebu, to ride trains through Guangxi, and to sail through the Visayas. Most importantly, perhaps, I hope to climb from the Yangtze through the exploding megalopolis of Chongqing and, I hope, to find this place Mel and Annalee and so many others once called home. 

But I'm nervous. As I mentioned in a postscript on New Year's Day, I've never been to either place. As I prepare, my excitement is beginning to overwhelm me. I feel awakened by the possibilities this trip will present, yet I know I will have hardly enough time to truly discover the place that Mel and Annalee came to love over many years.

And, might I find something else? A new perspective on Melville and Annalee Jacoby and the world that brought them together? Some understanding of two lands whose present selves would be as foreign to the China and the Philippines the Jacobys knew as they will be to my American eyes? Some unquantifiable understanding of myself? What will I find beneath the surface?

Whatever I might find and however limited my time to find it, I must go. How could I not? But I could use your help.

I've asked for money before, so instead I'm asking whether you have non-monetary support in any form you can offer (though I continue to welcome donations or purchases from my store new Amazon wishlist if they're more your style). Do you have words of encouragement? Or might you offer something more concrete? Perhaps you have networks in Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Manila and Cebu or some of the other Chinese and Filipino cities I plan to visit. What about recommendations of places to stay, suggestions for meals, offers of couches, extra frequent flier miles or hotel credits, or thoughts on travel equipment or services? Maybe you can't help me in Asia, but you can on trips late this spring for last-minute archival research in the U.S. I'd certainly welcome any leads or help in New York, Washington, New Haven, Boston, and Columbia, South Carolina.

Again, maybe you just have a nice thing to say. I could really use a random hello or two and an update on your life. The effort I put into this book comes at the cost of a stable job with a predictable routine and consistent income, let alone the community that forms at workplaces. Jobs and schedules can be constrictive, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not nervous and I don't want to be ashamed for seeking some sense of comfort, security and camaraderie. It's not an understatement to say that I've ground my way just to even be here. But I also know I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to travel when so many people don't. I have the flexibility to travel. I get to set my own hours. I have a book deal, and, most importantly, I know this book — and I — will succeed. 

Yes, working on this book is a suffocating, cacophonous and chaotic affair. It is vibrant and joyful. It is disgusting and frightful. It is thriving and it is the confluence of many threads and many thoughts. It is all of these things and it is also home. Now, as an identifiable form emerges from something that seemed so mercurial, I'm getting to like it. 

It's now late in the Portland night, almost exactly one a.m., and as I finish this letter I'm thinking about Mel during his own first trip to China, when he attended school in Canton, the city now known as Guangzhou. Sitting in a dorm room window late one night, he finished a letter to his mother and step-father, which he opened as follows:

"The clatter of wooden shoes and the high pitched jabber of foreign voices has finally ceased. Even the village drums have quit their mighty rattle — in a word, it is now exactly one a.m. and the most glorious Oriental moon imaginable is rising. Its light makes visible the aged salt junks and square rigged whalers on the sluggish river. All this I can see from the window as I sit and write you tonight."

Mel Jacoby, December, 1936, Canton [Guangzhou]

I want to find that window — or whatever has taken its place — and write you words like this, telling you what I see and what I hear.

-Bill

P.S. Do you have a treasured travel trip? Have you ever been to China or the Philippines? What would you want to see if you went there? 

The Last Night

"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).

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.

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. 

A (Not So) Tiny Letter

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 Twitter, Tumblr or Instagram.

Paying the Price for a Smoking Gun

By the time I had the confidential State Department documents in my hands, I was five days into my research trip to Washington, D.C., I'd flipped through hundreds, maybe thousands of pages of dusty, sometimes crumbling government documents, private letters from publishing luminaries, and even water-stained diaries from hungry, stranded soldiers unaware of a coming death march through mosquito-infested, sweltering jungles.

All of it was fascinating, but more than halfway through my trip, little of what I'd found was of use to me. I'd spent nearly every dollar I had to travel to the National Archives and the manuscript division of the Library of Congress, and I still hadn't found a smoking gun. I needed something that would allow me to triangulate Melville Jacoby's position amid all the myths and memories of World War II that have bled into our consciousness over three quarters of a century.

I'd ended the previous week sifting through a slender box containing thousands of typed index cards. They mapped the paper trails of countless other lives who'd crossed paths with U.S. diplomatic officials at the height of World War II. As the day drew to a close and I began to crumble — I'd barely slept for a week, rushing first thing every morning to the repositories and staying until librarians forced patrons to leave — I saw Mel's name.

Detail of decorative books above the entrance to the Library of Congress's Madison Building in Washington D.C. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

I pulled the card, somewhat surprised to learn it led to a "confidential file" from 1942. I'd fantasized about discovering once-secret documents related to Mel, but knew I could have been over-romanticizing his life. It wasn't the only card I found. There was another, more somber file indexed. Beneath a bureaucracy of typed decimal reference numbers read the title  "Death in Australia of Melville J. Jacoby, American Citizen."

It would be three more weeks — indeed, yesterday morning — until I received a copy of that file, but in truth, I already know perhaps more than I want to know about Mel's death. What I sought at the archives that week was more of his life. That Monday morning, the stack of telegrams that began with a blaring all-caps "CONFIDENTIAL FOR TIME, INC., WITH MY APPROVAL, FROM JACOBY," sent by Francis B. Sayre, the U.S. High Commisisoner for the Philippines, was a treasure.

In time I'll unveil why what was within mattered, but I'm bringing it up now to explain that the find didn't come easily, nor cheaply, nor does it mean I'm done working. Today I leave for California and visits to two university special collections, and I need your help more than ever. Can you spare a few dollars so I can keep searching for history?  

Click to Fund My Research

Here's a breakdown of what I'm spending and why I need your help:

• $836.56 — Amount spent for a round-trip flight from Portland to Washington, eight days of food and Metro fares, but mercifully excluding lodging, thanks to three terrific hosts.
• Emptied — The Amtrak Guest Rewards balance and Southwest travel credits I used for travel between Portland, San Diego and Palo Alto for a second, 15-day-long trip beginning today. 
• $720 — Approximate combined total of expected food, transportation and other research-related expenses over the next 15 days.
• [Redacted] — Current abysmal balance of my savings account, especially following today's rent.
• $380 — Total amount I've received in contributions to support research travel this Spring.
• None — Outside income expected from freelance writing and editing clients during my trip.
• $1177.56 — Amount I still need just to break even for this trip.
• Priceless — The generosity of six households inviting me to stay during portions of each trip, thus saving me from paying for three weeks of lodging.

When I wrap up this second trip, I will have spent the better part of five weeks searching for Mel's story in the haystacks of archives and special collections libraries. That also means five weeks travelling, pulling documents, sifting and reading them, taking notes, processing what I've found, all on top of time I've been spending drafting new chapters of my book, revising my proposal and further developing my platform (That's also five weeks without time to report or research other paying stories, apply for outside jobs, or seeking alternative funding).

Why This Matters

A pencil from  the National Archives and Records Administration. (Photo by Bill Lascher).

Writing nonfiction is as much an archaeological dig as it is a creative endeavor. Sure, if I want to bash my keys into the form of a story, I can assemble a thin skeleton resembling Melville Jacoby's experience. As that comparison implies, such an outline would lack life.

It turns out that aside from my trip to California I'll have to go back some day to the National Archives. Five days split between there and the Library of Congress were too few to process the hundreds of files that contain relevant documents. Now I know where to target my next search, but I'll need to return to the archives to conduct it.

In the past three weeks I've also confirmed that there once existed a film of Melville and Annalee Jacoby's last kiss. I know who shot the film, though I do not yet know whether it has survived the decades. It may very well rest in an archive somewhere, but I'm going to need your help to find it.

But as much as this dig matters to me, what does it mean for you? What do you care if I find some record detailing the tonnage of the boat Mel rode through the Philippines 72 years ago? Why should you be interested in him, particularly given that it will probably be a while before you read much about him (but don't miss this story in which he makes a guest appearance)? 

Perhaps it's the mythic nature of this story: Given a choice between following his passion straight through danger and uncertainty or a secure, but unchallenging, career move, Mel chose to leap. In doing so, he not only connected with his eventual wife, Annalee, a woman making a similar gamble in pursuit of her passions, but found a job far more promising than the safe opportunity he'd sacrificed. With the world erupting in flames around them, Mel and Annalee's lives intertwined. Together, they braved great danger to chronicle the horrors around them. Finally, after a tremendous escape and much sacrifice, they reached a serene, peaceful refuge, where home beckoned and nothing seemed capable of going wrong ...

This is a grand story of a world teetering on the precipice of historic upheaval, an intimate tale of two young people with the world laid out before them, and a glimpse of moments of tenderness they're able to share amid the harshest circumstances.

Rememberences of Bataan, Corregidor and China — the three places Melville Jacoby reported  — at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

While I find this story compelling, it's possible that's not what will motivate you to offer a few dollars. Might there be other reasons you'll contribute? Have I ever entertained you? Were you ever intrigued by something I've written or said elsewhere? Did you ever laugh at one of my tweets or status updates. Was I the one to introduce you to my neighborhood goats? Has their been a reporting trend you found out about or an under-discussed natural danger you've learned about because of me? Maybe I helped you discover a new way to get around your city. 

I wonder whether there's something more personal that might convince you to support me. Have I ever introduced you to a new friend or helped you find a lover? Perhaps we've cheered for the Dodgers together. Maybe we took a class together, or whiled away a few hours over beers. Did we run miles and miles together? What about traveling; have we crisscrossed the country or explored a foreign city together?

Maybe we've held each other's hands. Maybe we've kissed. Maybe we've fought.

Perhaps we've cooked a meal together or whiled away a Sunday morning at brunch. Perhaps we've stayed up dreaming, regretting or reminiscing. Perhaps I witnessed your wedding or watched your children grow up. Perhaps I celebrated your career and cheered your triumphs.

Maybe you once sat in awe listening to Mel's tale and told me who should play the leads in a movie of this life, wondering why no publisher has picked it up yet, let alone a film studio.  

There's another potentially more likely possibility: we may have never met. It's quite likely we've never shared anything beyond existence in this moment. But maybe you recognize something in these words, some kind of yearning for it all to finally click, for something to come of years of work.

Maybe you don't want to give me anything. So, I wonder, what would you suggest? What should I do to keep these wheels turning? Where do I find work that I can pour myself into while still being able to tell Mel's story? How can I fund that story? What am I missing?

Click to Fund My Research

Picking up where Melville Jacoby left off

It may have taken seven decades, but the book Melville Jacoby never got to finish is finally taking shape. This morning marks one of the most exciting as I continue to pick up where Mel was silenced. In a short while I'll be in an apartment in Alhambra, California, meeting with George T.M. Ching, his wife, and their daughter. George was one of Mel's dear friends during his time as an exchange student at Lingnan University. At ninety-seven-years-old, it's uncertain how able George will be to deeply reflect on Mel's life, but I expect the chance to share some time with someone who Mel cared strongly about, and who cared strongly about him will be valuable.

Already, the past ten days have brought me much deeper into Mel's story. What I've seen is unbelievable: first hand accounts of journalists nervously huddling in a Manila hotel room as they debate whether to escape or face capture by the Japanese, photographs of newlyweds in makeshift clothes making the best of an island refuge while on the run, home movies of bomb-ravaged cities, shocked telegrams spreading the news of a young journalist's death, playful letters home from an eager college student travelling the world, massive cables describing the buildup for war to editors. That's just a sliver of what I found.

I'm excited to have all this raw material to work with because it so enriches what I know not just about Mel, but the world in which he lived. But, of course, raw material is one thing. I need to write it up. From reading Mel's letters I know all too well that all our plans can be so suddenly shattered. From what seemed like safety in Australia, Mel dashed off his last cables to the U.S. They included negotiations with New York publishers about a book deal based on his reporting, as well as early drafts of that book. I may struggle to make ends meet to write and publish Mel's story, the one he was never able to tell, but as many sacrifices as I think I might be making to tell it, I'm not making the sacrifice - ultimately so much nobler - that Mel made to the world and his country as he told that story. As much research as I'm doing, writing is just as important. Mel's story cannot linger another 70 years for some distant relative to pick up.