I liked making stews this time of year. Last year it was the seafood gumbo and Guyanese pepperpot, this year a pork shoulder braised with lemon, green olives and tomatoes. But I’m starting to sense the stews are more appreciated… Read More ›
Creative Nonfiction
Rat torture scene reveal
By the time we got to winter it already felt like spring in the Pacific Northwest. A few things bloomed and the Christmas bugs returned, those gray, floppy, mosquito-like creatures that come every January. I don’t mind the bugs but… Read More ›
Sunday sauce
Any real Italian would add that leftover liquid from the jarred anchovies to the pasta sauce I thought, though the smell was pungent and the contents unknown. Probably olive oil and whatever salty oils had sloughed off the fish. So… Read More ›
Spirit of the rising sun
Just the radio in the corner and the heater blowing. The year winds down. We had so much rain this week they compared it to the floods of 1990 but this week was worse. I stayed in all day, no… Read More ›
Salthill Promenade, 2015
At times the rain could be maddening, the repetition. And it got so dark you had to watch your mood or you could slip under. I thought back to our time in Salthill, outside of Galway, when our family came… Read More ›
Sunday sermon
No color left to speak of in the woods. It’s ash gray, bone colored, drab greens and browns. The feel of cold wind rushing through a bare forest. Keeping an eye on the creaking trees (they sound like zippers). How… Read More ›
Tending and mending
You couldn’t see the moon because of the clouds but with it almost full it made the night sky milky white. More wind had raked down branches throughout the yard, pine needles too. My new haz mat suit was waiting… Read More ›
Extraordinary life
Then one day it just ends. The inexplicable way things begin and end. Like some pain in a joint or a job or the last of that awful, single-ply toilet paper roll you bought thinking it was the normal kind…. Read More ›
It’s a shame about Ray
Foggy morning walks through Soaring Eagle state park. By December the color has drained down to a dull copper with some last yellow in the leaves. The rest of the landscape is green, cloaked in gray. The deep greens of… Read More ›
Last Sunday in November
So long 54. With Thanksgiving late in the month this year it runs headlong into Christmas and no one’s missing a beat. My birthday fell the Sunday after turkey day and we went back to our favorite neighborhood restaurant, Jak’s…. Read More ›
Bill Pearse 