Bill Pearse

Recent Posts - page 24

• Famous last words

  By Bill Pearse on January 12, 2025 • ( 5 )

  

  It is hard to imagine things ever being better than this: me in pajamas and slippers with no socks, the days inching out of darkness and peach colored, both my parents still alive and our kids happy, my wife still… Read More ›

• Before coffee got automated

  By Bill Pearse on January 12, 2025 • ( 17 )

  

  Thirty years ago I joined Starbucks in Philadelphia as a manager-in-training, my fourth coffee shop job in four years. I’d work in downtown Philadelphia for a year, then transfer to a Starbucks on Mercer Island, near Seattle, the next summer…. Read More ›

• The remember when

  By Bill Pearse on January 10, 2025 • ( 10 )

  

  We would have rung in the new year in the Pennsylvania house, my third and last Christmas with Shana, the year mom and John gifted us airfare to Europe, my first time there. Like most rookie tourists we’d jam all… Read More ›

• Coming of age, firsts and lasts

  By Bill Pearse on January 8, 2025 • ( 12 )

  

  For years the days flowed from an endless tap, the morning waves at the bus stop goodbye, the evening kisses goodnight. The cycle of days spinning to weekends, holidays, to new seasons, the coming of age: a first crush, the… Read More ›

• Things that I will keep

  By Bill Pearse on January 6, 2025 • ( 16 )

  

  The narrative recounts a trip from Stratford to London, reflecting on themes of unemployment, nostalgia, and family experiences.

• Where are we now?

  By Bill Pearse on January 4, 2025 • ( 2 )

  

  I’d never flown into Germany in January and pictured it somehow colder and wetter, though resolved to make do for four weeks with just rolled-up clothes in my carryon and not check a bag. Bono had written an essay on… Read More ›

• That last winter in the UK

  By Bill Pearse on January 3, 2025 • ( 4 )

  

  Days of clouds and rain, low light. Light between eight and four with the rest more about the dark. Stripped of any daily responsibilities her life lost purpose and being a doer with nothing to do she went a bit… Read More ›

• Through the gap in Shakespeare’s garden

  By Bill Pearse on January 2, 2025 • ( 4 )

  

  It’s getting hard to make out the numbers by my bed, the clock. In the middle of the night they are a soft blue fuzz, military time, harkening back to Europe. On New Year’s we drove down from Chester to… Read More ›

• On Jackson Street

  By Bill Pearse on December 31, 2024 • ( 8 )

  

  I used to come down to Pioneer Square over my lunch hour to kill time. When my job didn’t matter much, no one cared if I was there, and I’d roam the side streets and street corners dreaming. Old Seattle,… Read More ›

• Two sides of the same coin

  By Bill Pearse on December 26, 2024 • ( 7 )

  

  It’s gotten increasingly harder to take all-cold showers as the season’s worn on. But it never disappoints, that first moment of sensory shock. Scenes of women giving birth in the Baltic from some grainy film we watched when Dawn was… Read More ›

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