In the fall of ’97 I announced I would be leaving my job at Starbucks that December, moving home to Pennsylvania for a few months and then on to southern France, to live in a condo on the beach a… Read More ›

musings
Last postcard from Pinklightsabre for ’15
Happy holidays from Bill, Dawn, Lily and Charlotte…I will be out of the office from 16 December 15, returning some time in January. Until then, if this is an emergency please turn off your computer, go outside, and look deep… Read More ›
A moment with a bad piece of art in Galway
Monday, a down day. The waves crashing against the rocks in the painting don’t move me because a.) I doubt they were real rocks the painter really saw, and b.) doubted he/she had the knack to really paint. It’s like… Read More ›
Painting titled ‘Easter 1916,’ featuring Patrick Pearse
Staying up late listening to Toto, eating carrots and reading old blog posts, the unease that comes from seeing where you were compared to where you are now, and how little things change over time. Charlotte’s most prized stuffed animal… Read More ›
‘No hard shoulder’
Little things, like the fact they didn’t leave trash liners here at our flat in Belfast, or I need a different key for the back door to dump the coffee grounds in the ash bucket, or the fact my man… Read More ›
Postcard from Holyrood Palace
The girls are burned out on castles, history, foreign languages and pizzas from Tesco, leek soup. I buy a box of corn flakes to tie us back home, we leave the house in search of lunch in Edinburgh, but the… Read More ›
The ‘angel’s share’: lost whisky, lost memories
After sharing the same room, the same car, the same bathroom, I can see where Stephen King was coming from in his story about the writer Jack Torrance who collapses into alcoholism, writes nonsense, starts seeing dead people. Charlotte’s going… Read More ›
American family of expats braces themselves for Storm Abigail in Scottish flat with beer and leek soup, candles
Maybe it’s a tribal thing or instinct, but when a blogger friend from Bristol warned me of heavy winds forecast for where we’re staying in western Scotland, I snapped into action. I pulled my wife aside, who was in another… Read More ›