Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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Lessons in corporate cruelty
Part 4: Heaven Audrick’s boss Gianna had a Mercedes too but hers was a model I’d never seen before, matte-black like the Batmobile. Gianna wore tight jeans and lots of make-up and jewelry, perfect hair. A decade earlier she could… Read More ›
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Lessons in corporate cruelty
Part 3: Separating When Audrick fired me he did it through his business manager Dale. I knew Dale was up to no good when I got the meeting invite with the fishy subject line. Dale and I had never met… Read More ›
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Lessons in corporate cruelty
Part 2: Retaliation I got the contract work at Microsoft through a friend of Dawn’s we ran into named Lindsay. It was going on two years since I’d been out of work. My run at Starbucks lasted almost 20 years… Read More ›
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Lessons in corporate cruelty
Part 1: Henchman After almost 20 years working at Starbucks I moved into the tech industry with a six-month contract at Microsoft. I didn’t understand anything about the technology or what anyone said, I just nodded and scribbled. The alphabet… Read More ›
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Make-ahead memories
There is also something intensely masculine about cooking large cuts of meat, or the entirety of an animal, like a turkey. I do it because no one else in my family will. It falls in the same category of dad… Read More ›
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The chime of the city clock
I don’t mind having more of the bed to be on when Dawn is gone, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty about it. I spread out like a starfish and sink into a deep sleep. But when the clocks toll downstairs… Read More ›
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The cat-faced canker
There is nothing like a chainsaw to make a man feel like a man. I caught myself in a dramatic pose sinking that steel into the side of a fallen tree, slinging it like a weapon, wondering how ominous and… Read More ›
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Change my life
It’s the strongest wind storm of the year and I do something I’ve never done before: drag a chair outside and sit by the front door with a blanket and coffee watching it come in. The sound is like the… Read More ›
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Don’t fall on me
If there’s any month in Seattle I really struggle with the rain it’s November. It’s not a mist or a drizzle but full-on sheets of rain, sideways rain, cold, blowing rain. Rain that gets through old roofs and runs down… Read More ›
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Trick-or-treating in the Scottish Highlands
The first thing you need to know about trick-or-treating in Scotland is it’s not called trick-or-treating, it’s called guising. And you don’t get candy for free just by waving your bags out, you have to sing a tune or recite… Read More ›