Lascher @ Large

Notes From The Starting Line

Bill — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 22:33:34 +0000

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.

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The Thinkingest Episode 6 – Patrick Nork on Creativity

Bill — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 23:14:23 +0000

Download audio file (Episode-6-Patrick-Nork.mp3)
Freelance writing is far from the only game in town when it comes to striking out on one's own as a creative professional. For the most recent edition of The Thinkingest I sat down with Portland-based visual artist and creative consultant Patrick Nork to talk about going into business for oneself as a creative professional. Nork is the proprietor of Well-Inked Hand, which provides creative problem solving, design and other services. He is also an accomplished printmaker and a board member at Print Arts Northwest.

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No Exit – How Low Car Life Will Save Portland When The Big One Strikes

Bill — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 22:29:58 +0000

Bridges will tumble, rail lines will shut off and fuel will run low. But when the Big One strikes, 20-minute neighborhoods, bikes and even food carts may save Portland.

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Pearl Harbor as a Reporter Experienced it in Manila

Bill — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 00:30:55 +0000

"Manila has not yet digested the fact of war. Balloon and toy salesmen and vendors on the streets with extra editions are just appearing as fully equipped soldiers are appearing," After news reached Manila that U.S. forces had been attacked at Pearl Harbor, Melville Jacoby cabled news to his Time Magazine editors about how the Philippines capital digested news of the Japanese raids.

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Introducing “Monsieur Big-Hat”

Bill — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 01:30:35 +0000

Most of my posts about Melville Jacoby focus squarely on nonfiction. He was a journalist. I am a journalist. Though Mel worked for a time as a broadcaster and was handy with a camera, he was first and foremost a writer. So it shouldn't be terribly surprising that he dabbled in fiction a bit. I found one of those stories — "Monsieur Big-Hat" — and put it together with some photos Mel took of an air raid in Chongqing to make a short ebook that's now available online. The story describes what happens when an American correspondent meets a French diplomat as bombs fall on the Chinese wartime capital in June, 1940.

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The Thinkingest Episode 5: The Fluidity of Freaks

Bill — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 20:14:40 +0000

Download audio file (Episode-5.mp3)
What's behind the term "overthinking?" What's behind this urge to have a podcast of the things we over-analyze and dissect to exhaustion? In some sense there's an anxiety about being thought a freak, about doing things "wrong" by some sense. So I thought I'd spend some time having a conversation with Stevi Costa, an old friend of mine who devotes most of her overthinking to studying freaks and their portrayal in literature.

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Motion Picture Treat: “When The Whole World Is So Upset”

Bill — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:07:11 +0000

For the first time ever, I'm able to share a movie of Melville Jacoby himself. These snippets of 16mm movies were shot in the 1930s and are accompanied by excerpts from a moving letter he wrote his mother in early 1941 about why he pursued his dangerous careert.Mel was on a boat from China bound for Manila and, eventually, to the United States. He had just finished a year's work as a stringer in China and the region of Southeast Asia then known as Indochina. There, in the city of Haiphong (a part of modern-day Vietnam), Mel had been arrested and briefly detained by the Japanese, who'd accused him of being a spy. As he traveled back to the United States, he wrote a moving letter to his Mother in which he attempted to reassure her about the risks he'd taken in the previous year. Check out the full post to see the video.

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The Thinkingest Thoughts on Food With Rhea Kennedy

Bill — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:04:48 +0000

The Thinkingest is back with a new episode featuring Rhea Yablon Kennedy. Rhea is a Washington D.C.-based writer and teacher whose work often addresses food and foodways (though she explains it better herself on the Podcast). Food is, of course, one of our most primary needs, so it's no surprise we mull over the ways we eat so much. The decisions we make about what kind of food to buy, about how much of it to eat, about how to grow and distribute and sell food are all topics worth, well, chewing upon. But it still fascinates me how much energy we expend making sure we eat well, how much strain the realities of our modern life places on our ability to do so consistently, and how much imbalance there remains in the way food is distributed, marketed and subsidized. Many thinkers have digested these discussions far better than I, but they're still worth having.

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The Thinkingest Heads Home

Bill — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:10:43 +0000

In what may be boring or may be genius, I serve as my own guest on the latest edition of the Thinkingest podcast. This week, I discuss with myself what home means to me, and all the different ways I can identify home, and just how much I'm thinking about what might be my next home. It's an amorphous topic, but take a listen for a peek at all the little gears turning around in my mind. And don't forget to check out past episodes of the Thinkingest here at Lascher at Large, subscribe to the feed at Feedburner or iTunes. Like it or hate it, why not leave me a review on iTunes? And if you like it, please share it. My apologies if you hate it. I'll try not to think too hard about it.

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Not even pandas could spoil this honeymoon

Bill — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:25:23 +0000

This week's news of a panda cub's birth at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. reminds me of one of of the more comical aspects of Melville Jacoby's story. Shortly after Mel proposed to Annalee Whitmore he was transferred by TIME to Manila to cover the brewing war. After wrapping up her work with Madame Chiang's United China Relief, Annalee joined Mel and the two were married shortly before Thanksgiving, 1941. But the couple didn't end up in the Philippines unaccompanied, even after their nuptials. "They slipped away for a two-day rainy honeymoon in a cottage on Tagaytay," wrote TIME in its May 11, 1942 obituary of Mel [Sorry for the paywalled link] . "But they were not alone; they had to see to the care & feeding of two baby giant pandas, gifts of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek en route to the U.S."

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