On Protest and Reporting

Today, Poynter ran a piece titled "Should journalists protest in Trump's America?" This is a question I've been wrestling with as a freelancer. It was mostly focused on newsroom journalists. I posted to Facebook and tweeted, wondering how it applies to freelancers like myself. The piece's author, Katie Hawkins-Gaar, asked me to elaborate. At first I responded in tweets, but then realized I had more to say. Here's what I ended up writing.

Why is it important that I be on top of current affairs? Partially, so as I reach out to editors I can be prepared to jump into my reporting and do it well. I need to have a clear idea of what current issues are to make an effective contribution. On a more selfish level, I need to have a clearer idea of what kind of stories will more easily get an editor’s attention, not to mention that of the public.

In the meantime, I also need to report potential stories, pitch them, and wait on editors understandably harried by current circumstances to reply. How do I survive doing so with such uncertainty? How do I make a living doing that? And how do I do that if the world is changing very rapidly. If a crisis emerges, how does my more evergreen work matter?

That’s reporting. What about protest and politics? Do I let the world go by when people I care about are affected, concerned, scared, etc.? What about when I am affected? Am I affected? Probably not as much, because I’m white, straight, cis-male, college- and graduate school- educated and born in the United States. I am Jewish, but not practicing, and that’s still not (yet) as much a target. My best strength is my dedication to the craft, my skepticism, and my courage to tell stories even if people don’t want to hear them. But, again, I have to be able to survive telling them. It, sadly, often comes to economics, which are often made shakier by political uncertainty. So do I then work on more anodyne material while watching the world go by? Isn’t that just shutting my ears? Wouldn’t that just be isolationism in a different form?

After all, my first book is all about reporters who risked their lives and livelihoods in a troubled time to bring stories to the public that were being inadequately covered. My central subject — Melville Jacoby — was writing about devastating, daily air raids in China that were killing thousands. He was writing about brutal conditions in Shanghai and about the march toward war in what was then French Indochina. His master’s thesis was all about how the U.S. public wasn’t paying attention the war between China and Japan and what that portended for them. He knew what happened there mattered here, and vice versa, so he was driven to tell such stories. Then he reported on the totally under-resourced defense of the Philippines, and sent home the first photos the U.S. saw of the absolutely savage conditions U.S. and Filipino troops endured in Bataan.

I mention all this not because I want to raise heads about my book. I mention it because journalists are still doing this kind of work, still not being listened to, and still often dying because of their work. Seventy-five years later, journalists are telling us about civilians dying in military strikes, about coming conflicts and uncertainty, about corruption, about tone-deaf foreign policy. As a journalist, my form of protest, if I have one, is, in part, amplifying these reporters, and in part, joining them. Not letting the line go quiet.

And I do wonder, in this time, how do I do justice to the subject I spent so much time with? Mel, Annalee, and their friends and colleagues were people who had marks on their heads for their reporting, who fled besieged islands in the dead of night to get the story out. Me? I’m at home reading Twitter, trying to figure out where and how to jump in and contribute when my portfolio is, well, not stale, but, about such specific subjects it seems disconnected from what’s happening. What editor wants to take the risk on that at a time when they need to be very careful about the professionalism of their contributors, to know that they can trust the credibility of their reporting? 

I guess this doesn’t answer the question of what and how I protest as a freelancer, but the thing is, I can’t afford to not think them. I don’t know any other way to operate. How do I contribute now? Lately I’ve thought the ideal is joining a news organization, becoming a stringer for a few publications, or becoming a regular contributor to a few outlets, but with freelancing, even in a time of protest, it still comes back to how do I survive while doing so? I always think I can best help society by reporting well, but where do I turn to be able to do that? Normally, I’d say my community, but if some of my community — those who aren’t reporters — are out in the streets protesting or at home making calls to representatives, and the rest — those who are reporters — are pushed to the max doing their own reporting, what’s left as a backstop or a network for me?

Exploding Whales (Also, I Wrote a Book)

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.

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. 

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.

Notes From The Starting Line

A signed photo from Captain Saunders on the S.S. Melville Jacoby

Today brings a bloom of beginnings from a tangle of endings. Perhaps that's not surprising. I suppose beginnings and endings all occupy coterminous space. And as I write, I'm struck by how my own beginnings and my own endings weave around one another and, often, between two places — Los Angeles and Portland.

But I'm writing today to recognize one simple beginning: the redesigned, relaunched version of my website, upon which, presumably, you're reading these words. I do so hoping to re-introduce the world to my own background as a writer and journalist and as a storyteller, and to re-pique your curiosity about Melville Jacoby, whose adventures, romance and experiences as a journalist in World War II-era China and the Philippines will be the subject of a forthcoming book.

Thinking about Mel, I'm reminded that a year ago today, two friends of mine and I clambered across miles of rocky shoreline beneath the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Despite a cloudless sky, sharp breezes whipped our bodies as we strode along the edge of a continent. In search of history, we found rusted strips of metal that nearly fifty years of waves had torn from a ship once known as the S.S. Melville Jacoby. That day last year when I finally climbed atop one of the oxidized hulks left on the shore, I stared across the Pacific and thought I'd reached the culmination of one of my journeys. I thought I would soon finish a Kickstarter campaign in which I'd hoped to raise $25,000 to fund my effort to tell Mel's story. Unfortunately, my deadline arrived five days later and I hadn't met my goal, even if I did raise more than $13,000 in pledges. Not the ending I'd hoped for, but it turned out not to matter. With many of my backers' support I continued to work on making the book happen. Today, as I'll soon explain, I'm far closer to that goal.

Opening Days

Baseball in tree

But there's a more obvious reason to think about beginnings today. This is Major League Baseball's Opening Day. For baseball fans and players, it's the beginning of a new season full of promise and opportunity. As clichéd as it sounds, for a moment, anything is possible.

I'm a lifelong fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers (and of Vin Scully, their magical announcer of 62 years). Opening Day always brings a sense of renewal to me almost more powerful than does the arrival of Spring in the natural world (though the beautiful weekend that just passed in Portland underscores the marvels of seasonal change). Thus, it seems especially fitting to re-launch my website today.

But it wasn't baseball on my mind when I first started writing this post.

Two weeks ago, I accomplished something that I wouldn't have imagined on that rocky beach last year: I ran the Los Angeles marathon.

This was my first marathon. Despite the sore legs immediately afterward and a certain degree of post-race malaise these past two weeks, the experience was, simply, fantastic. Four hours, 22 minutes and 36 seconds brought me from Dodger Stadium (where else?) to Santa Monica's California Incline. Crossing the finish line brought more than the end of a race. The moment brought the culmination of four long, sometimes painful, occasionally tedious, but often revelatory months of training.

Crowds gather at the starting line of the 2013 Los Angeles Marathon.

Just a week before the race a barista asked me how I felt about this training regime. Without thinking I told her "this has been the best four months of my life." As shocked as I was to hear myself say that, I quickly realized I was speaking honestly.

At first, though, that seemed absurd. Those four months were grueling, even when I felt confident in or energized by my running. Shortly before I began training in earnest, I injured the medial collateral ligament of my left knee. I couldn't run for weeks, but it was early enough that I recovered before my first official training run. My knee protested for some time, but I kept running.

Still, other aspects of my life were far from ideal. The same week I kicked off my training, I got dumped, my apartment flooded into the unit below mine, I froze on stage in the middle of a story for a night of mass transit tales, and I got food poisoning. Meanwhile, rejection letters continued to fill my inbox from agents I'd queried regarding Mel's book.

But I kept running. I kept running through more rejections. I kept running as editors turned down freelance pitches. I kept running as romances fizzled as quickly as they sparked. Through pouring rain, plummeting temperatures, and darkening nights, I kept running.

Then, shortly before Christmas, I twisted my ankle and had to suspend my training again. Home for the holiday, I could barely walk up and down the stairs at my mother's house. For weeks, even a short walk around the block — let alone the miles I needed to start adding to my training regime — left me in tremendous pain. The training had sustained me before the injury, had given me a groove into which I could find solace from personal and financial and professional turmoil, and I was jarred by losing so quickly that rhythm and structure I'd built.

But still, I kept running, and the pain subsided. In its place emerged a renewed focus that spilled over from the running into other areas of my life, perhaps most notably into my writing. Indeed, it already had. All those other changes as I began my training — I'd even sold my car in November — coincided with a new focus on my book. Soon I'd re-written my literary proposal, and by the beginning of February — as my long training runs pushed 16, then 18, then 20 miles — I'd found an agent for my book. After four months of rejections, here was someone who recognized how great Mel's story is, and someone confident I'm the one to tell it.

The Cover Page from the first draft of Melville Jacoby's Book

My race isn't over with the book. My agent and I still need to sell the idea, and I still need to write the book. But as we prepare to submit the project to editors, I realize that while I kept running, I also kept writing. Through the disappointments and heartbreak and injuries (not to mention a horrendous allergic reaction I suffered just over a week before the marathon), I kept writing, first in snippets, then in longer stretches. Perhaps it's no coincidence that I signed my agent just as my training reached its peak. Perhaps the proposal revisions and sample chapter overhauls I've just finished are the long runs in the training cycle of writing a book.

One race has ended. Perhaps another starting line is approaching.

Willing to help nudge me along with a dollar or two?

Buy Me Some Typewriter Ribbon

Journalism of the Unknown Unknowns

It's complicated ... and that's the point. Journalism doesn't have all the answers, and we shouldn't expect it to. We shouldn't expect our stories to solve things for us.

Journalists' primary role is not to answer the challenges that face our society: it's to bring light to those challenges, so that those with the proper tools to solve a given problem will know that the challenge exists. In a sense, we're brokers, we're middle-men, we're matchmakers between problems and solutions. But those problems and solutions still have to get to know one another, find the right match. We can't consummate their relationships, we can just help them find one another.

A couple weeks ago, I pitched a story idea to a magazine whose content I admire. From my perspective, the idea was right up this prospective client's alley. It fit their unique geographic focus and addressed a new angle to a controversy that's beginning to show up in more and more states. In the interest of still pitching this story elsewhere, I'm not going to get into much detail about it.

I'm writing because the outlet's rejection of my pitch centered on the editor's position that there were too many unknowns in the subject I wanted to discuss. I tried to stress that that's the noteworthy aspect of the story: this is an unknown situation. It also happens to be one that involves multiple state governments and economies sailing into uncharted waters. They're trying to develop a strategy for approaching the subject at hand (hint, it involves regulation of an increasingly popular energy resource extraction technique), but don't seem to be able to because they don't yet know how much this issue will impact them.

My potential editor didn't want the story because there are so many questions. Isn't that the point of journalism? Isn't part of our responsibility as journalists shining the light on inadequacies in official government? Are we only supposed to do so when we have tidy answers to present? Am I asking too many questions?

If there was another issue at play – the outlet doesn't like my approach, they don't trust my ability to complete the assignment, they can't afford to pay me, or anything else – they didn't let me know that was the case (and thus, lacking such knowledge or the ability to read minds, I'll go with what they said to me directly, rather than worry what they *might* be thinking, something I spend too much time doing all across my life).

Perhaps I suck as a journalist. It's quite possible, and that might be one reason I'm focusing more on my book than on reporting. Actually, this wasn't my first pitch rejected because there were too many uncertainties. Maybe that says something about my reporting. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough for a story. Maybe I'm giving up too soon before I find an answer. Maybe I don't belong. It's tough not to think such things when these sort of situations repeat themselves.

But I also can't help thinking that one responsibility of journalism is to help identify the “unknown unknowns.” Is it also our responsibility to then make those unknowns known? If it were, I'd suspect we'd get paid a lot more than we are (or I'd hope we are).

It's such a grind to pitch and hustle. Have I really been spending so many years doing all this work, racking my brains for all these answers, only to possibly have a magazine maybe think about publishing something of mine for a few hundred dollars? Is this really any way to survive?

The ground beneath my feet is so incredibly unstable.

A life, a career, a world repurposed

What are you doing this Saturday?

Perhaps you're taking a stand to help slow climate change by participating in one of more than 4,000 actions in 170 countries being organized by 350.org. The number, as the organization will tell you, represents the parts per million of carbon dioxide thought to be the upper limit for avoiding runaway climate change (we are currently at 387 parts per million).

You can come to your own conclusions about whether or not to join these actions. As a journalist, perhaps I shouldn't attempt to sway you to action. However, it is also my responsibility to describe the world in which we live, to clearly present information and to sort through the distractions – both unintended and intended – that obscure the truth.

As my career has evolved, I have found myself increasingly drawn to exploring how society copes with the possibility of a changing environment from a political, scientific, sociological and cultural perspective. Many facets of contemporary life have an environmental component, including politics, the economy, culture and technology.

Much is made about the emergence of green technologies and there are great business stories to pursue revolving around sustainability, but there is so much more. Voters are making green issues a higher priority, cities are incorporating environmental standards and requirements in planning decisions, romantic partners are choosing to hold carbon-neutral weddings and environmental litigation and prosecutions are keeping many lawyers, and law enforcement personnel, busy.

There are many questions to be answered about the intersections of the environment and society. How do we as a society cope with the possibility of a changing climate and shifting availability of resources? How do environmental transitions affect society, politics, family and personal relationships? How do they affect our mythology and our beliefs? Humans tend to progress in crisis, or to change, to be at their best, and I would like to observe and document society's reaction to environmental shifts. How does a slow-moving crisis affect human behavior?

In recent years I've had discussions with my grandmother about her cousin, the journalist Melville Jacoby. Melville served as a correspondent in China and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and early 40s, eventually penning articles for outlets such as Time, Life and the United Press Syndicate at the onset of World War II. Melville was my age at the time — younger actually — yet he was so deeply immersed he reported from the midst of a narrow escape from the Philippines after the Japanese invasion and, earlier during his travels through China, became close to Chiang Kai-Shek. Killed at 25 in an accident in Australia in 1942, he left behind rich accounts of his life in the form of letters, dispatches and photos now in my grandmother's possession.

In exploring these accounts, I realize Melville played a central role telling stories about one small part of another great, global crisis. Perhaps the war was more romantic than the environmental movement's seemingly glacial pace, but both crises are the defining milieus of a particular generation. Like Melville, I want to chronicle my generation's response to its crisis.

When I applied to USC more than a year ago I wrote about how the shifting environment is fast becoming a global story, possibly the only global story, a point similar to one recently argued by Bill McKibben and other journalists. Back in the Spring of 2008 I argued that whether one accepts climate change as a preventable human crisis, or disagrees that it is a threat (or is caused by human activity), the mere discussion of the environment has global and local implications. If a shipping company invests in more efficient cargo jets because it expects to save money by stretching its fuel spending or does so because it perceives a public relations boost, that company is making a decision with tremendous impact on the environment. At a more local level, the city resident who uses a combination of bikes and mass transit to get to work because she realizes the reduction in her carbon footprint, or because she just cannot afford to purchase a car, will affect the environment either way. There is a difference in scale, but the outcome of either decision will impact many beyond the company and the young woman, altering the experiences and decisions of those additional parties.

Last night, I attended the monthly mixer of my local chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists. For the subway trip to the event, held in Downtown Los Angeles, I brought with me a copy of Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe. The book presents a stunning narrative of global climate change's impact. Rich with science, Field Notes remains a page-turner, as well-crafted as it is well-researched. “That,” I kept thinking as I read, “is the sort of work I should be doing.”

Yesterday, in a widely dissected event, the Yes Men satirized the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by pretending to represent the group at a press conference and announcing that the chamber had reversed its position on climate change. The event reminded me of the beauty of creative action. It also, coincidentally, sparked thoughts on the flaws in contemporary instant journalism, a subject that has been dissected in the Toronto Star and by Dana Milbank, as well as in a discussion I have been a part of on the SPJ's First Draft blog (and many other locations since I first drafted this post)

What all this reminds me is that I should be writing every day. I should be dissecting this problem and pouring my energy into it. I have the time. I have the preparation. I have the knowledge. I don't want to beat myself up too much, but I do have to acknowledge that if I want to chronicle my generation's great struggle as Melville did 70 years ago I can't wait for the story to come to me.

In recent months I've been applying to dozens of jobs. I've been trying to figure out my future. I've been pitching stories, writing cover letters and trying to identify myself, what I want and what I have to offer. I've been telling strangers why I matter to them and why only I can give them what they need. Meanwhile, I've been standing still, throwing things against the wall, rather than creating the world I want for myself. I don't say all this to draw attention to myself and my individual efforts. Instead, I say this because we cannot have the world we want unless we create it. It's that simple.

Cooking Up Frustration

In the middle of the night I had it all figured out. In a journal rescued from stack of half-finished tomes, I penned thoughts about what I am doing here, free of school, free of work and ready to cast out on my own yet again. Writing with a sudden fervor, I listed the major projects I wanted to work on, projects I've discussed tangentially here on this site from time to time, and repeatedly in conversation with my friends and family. I knew what it was I wanted to do. After an uneasy weekend of random, mounting bits of disappointment and frustration, I went to bed content. Hours after waking, it all seems to have dissipated. I can't start one project for fear it will distract from another. I send out queries. I update my résumé. I catch up on my reading. I research. I follow-up and I wait in silence.

Meanwhile, the life I want surrounds me. The radio crackles behind me as I type. Through a light fog of static Warren Olney spends 45 minutes catching listeners up on the rapidly changing situation in Iran then deftly switches the topic to American policy in Afghanistan.

Across the room one of my typewriters rests on a table. The paper is rolled up to reveal the few lines of faint text I've randomly typed on it. A reused sheet, I can see enough of the paper's opposite side to know it's an old 460 — a California campaign finance reporting document — printout I must have consulted for some story about political donations, or one I hoped to tell. It makes me hunger to pore over documents, to analyze connections, to question and prod and explore.

A pile of books sits stacked against my bed. Stories and stories and stories full. I want to tell so many similar tales. I want to bring people and places to life; to recount histories of far-off lands as well as all-too-familiar backyards. I want to look beneath the veneer of political and social idealism to the true machinations occurring in even the most progressive atmospheres. I want to translate complex knowledge to lush, page-turning narratives about the fascinating processes governing this world in which we live.

On one corner of my computer screen a little box occasionally lights up. It tells me I've received new updates about stories I've been following. Subjects that matter to me. Right now it's announcing the release of the full text of a new federal transportation reauthorization bill in Congress. It seems boring, but what it contains will directly shape how we get around our neighborhoods, our cities, and our country. I want to dive into the text, to carve it up, to continue one thread of my master's project. Then I realize that project still sits on a shelf. I wonder whether it will see the light of day, whether the editor pondering it will write me back, will find it suitable for publication, will believe that I have something to say, a story to tell that no one else can tell.

I've talked about this project for months and I'm starting to feel like a liar, like a cheat, like I've told all these people how I was compiling this grand tale of movement and transportation in Los Angeles. So far, most of them haven't seen word one. It's there, it's on the page, and I think it's fantastic. I think about it every time I ride the subway or the bus, or tell someone I am doing so and they look at me quizzically, as if they're shocked to learn there are ways to move about this vast, deep city without a car.

I understand — trust me I understand and kinda don't want to discuss — that the publishing world is rapidly changing. Even if it weren't, it takes time and patience to get something published. But I wonder about the rules of the game. With information spreading so rapidly how am I supposed to do this, to wait patiently on a story that is constantly evolving? Even if things go well with this story, how do we publish, how do we write or report anything? How do we set boundaries? Do we just say “that's the story” even as it continues to change? Do we just cut convenient slices of ever-lengthening timelines out?

I've just finished reading Roxana St. Thomas's most recent “Notes from the Breadline.” The poetry in her words. The honesty. Most importantly, the resounding familiarity of her situation, despite our differing professions, has brought me close to the point of tears. When she wonders why she left “The Big Law Firm” I ponder why I left my Big Job, then finished school feeling less certain than before about where I wanted to be, more certain than ever about my ability to do it, and completely lost about how I could ever fit into this transitioning world of journalism.

She ultimately recognizes the fight she has left in her and I think of the times I've come to the same realization, of the numerous times I've gotten off the mat, of the blessings I've counted, of the gratitude I have for the ceaseless support from my family and of the friends who have lately been crawling out of the woodwork. But I also feel the ebb and flow more than ever, the impermanence, the sensation that everything about where I am is foreign. I feel as I always have: neither here nor there. Too experienced to start completely fresh, not quite accomplished enough to stand out.

I've become good at what I call step one. Last week at the Los Angeles Press Club's Southern California Journalism Awards I countered my disappointment at not making my mark beyond a finalist in the commentary category by introducing myself to a few people I wanted to meet, getting my name and my card out there, and getting excited about journalism again. The question, now, is what is step two? I'm there, making the connections. What do I do with them? More importantly, why am I asking? Shouldn't I know by now? Shouldn't that be what I learned, if not in my years as a professional journalist then certainly during my master's studies?

The day after the Press Club awards I set up shop at a Melrose coffee shop and spent hours reading old Lascher at Large columns. The originals. The ones my dad wrote. The ones I always heard about at the childhood dinner table but never really grasped. For much of my adult life I've avoided them because I just didn't want my entire writing career to be some sort of cliched following-in-my-father's-footsteps endeavor. Finally, a few months ago, I realized they really had something relevant to say, something worth expanding upon.

Last week I sat at this coffee shop watching the traffic pass and savoring the sun despite irritation from a nearby smoker. I was riveted. In my father's words I found a tremendous richness, a biting wit, a sense of humor and an intelligence I wasn't old enough to appreciate before he passed away. I don't want to idolize a man I really barely knew, and there were elements of his legal columns that really are too specific to his field and his time to be of much interest, either to a general audience or a current one. Still, I did find threads I will eagerly pick up and weave, not just into my own writing, but into today's contemporary political and social discussions.

As I was saying before, though, do I pick that up or one of these other projects? Those with whom I've spoken are probably wondering about other plans of mine I've discussed. Where have they gone? Why am I not focused on them? I won't detail them here. I've articulated them again and again. Repeating what I want to write about like a mantra is meaningless if I don't do any of the actual writing (just as journalists' pondering repeatedly of how to monetize and disseminate their work means nothing if they have nothing to monetize and share).

My problem isn't forgetting what's simmering on the backburner. It's figuring out what I'm trying to cook in the first place.

Lucky Day

Friday the 13th always seems to be a lucky day for me. Of course, I was born on a Friday the 13th, so can I get any more self-absorbed than launching this website — a personal venue for my reporting and writing — than thinly veiling my contrarianism and how much I enjoy a day so mired in negative superstition? Regardless, I can't deny how much I enjoy the sound of the rain scattering across the broad leaves of the banana trees outside my window. It is incredibly comforting. A reminder on this day, when the U.S. House of Representatives took steps to at least appear to combat this historical moment so poorly underdescribed as an "economic crisis," that I am fortunate to have a place to live, to shelter myself from the rain drops, to savor, not dread, their sound.

I have the choice to be dry. The choice to be wet.

I really still can choose.

I imagine I'll be writing a lot about choices in the coming months. About the choices I make. About the choices others make. About the choices that have been taken, those that could be taken, and those that have been avoided and postponed. But I think about choices often, and my opportunity to make them. It's not because I'm taking a course in institutional decision-making — although I'm sure the subject influences my thoughts here.

Rather, I just think about my recent reporting, about the unique position in which so many of us still find ourselves. This is our moment to choose. We can choose to live life as we have, to return to the way things have been, to struggle and claw against time, or we can choose to live differently, to stop fighting the current and instead, to be carried along, to let the world unfold before us. We are where we are, and we will be where we will be. Shouldn't we accept that? Or is that easy for me to say, not facing the worst of these times?