Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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The Highly Capable Program Nomination Ends Tomorrow
When I was in school, they called it Gifted. After Gifted came Honours, and after that, was everyone else. Heike’s son Sascha speaks perfect English, with a delicate English accent (he’s 11) and explains how it works here in Germany:… Read More ›
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Pigs in zen
We thought something was burning in the house, but it was just the Backhaus up the road, where the women gather to bake bread and gossip in the fall and burn clippings from the grape vines. We journeyed to Stuttgart… Read More ›
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Hearts wrapped in cloth
It sounds like a joke, two Turks and a Kurd in our German class replaced by two Croatian construction workers and an Afghan refugee, but it’s no joke really when we go around the class and say where we’re from,… Read More ›
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A ribbon of darkness all the way
There are prehistoric smells in my mom’s laundry area where the drain water from the washer sometimes gathers and the floor’s a stark grey stone material, a peat bog of sphagnum moss collapsing in on itself, which makes a fine… Read More ›
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‘The Shapely Balloon,’ and other odd-fitting shapes
Our map of the UK still hangs on the Schrank in my mom’s dining area crooked and blocky, like some kid at the high school dance who’s just going to keep sitting there on the sides all night, unnoticed. I really… Read More ›
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Return of the cold toilet seats
Eberhard’s mom had German measles when she was pregnant with his sister, causing his sister to suffer from a variety of autoimmune diseases, loss of hair at a young age, rheumatism — now she needs a hip replacement, which is complicated… Read More ›
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‘The best Defence Against the Dark Arts’
I asked Lily to write the word beautiful in her journal and then draw an X through it. I said be careful about using this word in your writing (she used it twice in the same paragraph), and we talked… Read More ›
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Stepping out of the lines
Summer ends so fast here it’s like they’re taking down a theatre set and replacing it with autumn, overnight. Eberhard has a saying, «I’m a man, I fix things» — and he lets the words hang over me like mist,… Read More ›
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Coming to terms with the F word
OK, so I failed at my last job. That’s true, at least it is to me, but the word is so hard for some they won’t let me say it — they shake their heads and insist it’s something else,… Read More ›
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The Thane of Cawdor stole my log-in
Our kids threw a mild hissy fit about not being in the States for Halloween, complaining they’d gotten gypped, or in Germany — where the holiday’s just caught on — instead, we’ll be somewhere in Scotland, hopefully near a castle,… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 