This is a series of posts I started in late May and plan to continue for 40 days, with a goal of hitting 50,000 words by July 5. It’s inspired by a three-day solo trek on the Washington coast, with… Read More ›
Starbucks
“Hang on to yourself” (the faith, identity theme)
Half-way complete today! This is a series of posts I started in late May and plan to continue for 40 days, with a goal of hitting 50,000 words by July 5. It’s inspired by a three-day solo trek on the… Read More ›
The jet hold | Field notes from the Pacific coast
I climbed the webby trail to the established sites at Mosquito Creek in search of the pit toilet. I asked two guys I’d seen at the big rock, by the overland trail: they said it’s easy to find, there’s a… Read More ›
“One more red nightmare”
Donnie said he forwarded my email to Fripp and would let me know if he heard back. I sent that to Loren, because I wasn’t sure I’d ever get an email like that again, that said “I forwarded your message… Read More ›
The speed of coffee and music, marketing serene
My last project at Starbucks was to address the move toward slow coffee, or as it’s called, the Third Wave. A strategy guy shared a deck with us he pitched to the board demonstrating why Starbucks had to act, the… Read More ›
Starbucks customers express outrage over green cups, take to the streets demanding explanation
I worked at Starbucks from the mid ’90s through 2014, a period of ups and downs and ups, when things like Frappuccino and breakfast sandwiches (and oatmeal) happened, the sometimes amazing success that came as a sort of surprise, the… Read More ›
The visual voicemail data fetching problem at the AT&T kiosk
I wore a T-shirt I bought in Vienna with a corruption of the Starbucks logo that said Austrian Beer instead, that turned the fins on the siren into bottle openers and replaced the face in the middle with a pilsener… Read More ›
The story of the mason’s apprentice, portrait or landscape
Arrived in the dark last night at a castle near a port town on the southwest coast of Scotland, woke to the sound of an owl stirring by our window so close it sounded like it could be in the… 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 ›
‘A shadow on the door of a cottage on the shore’
It has the feel of a wet campground, all the smoke and everything damp, watching the Guy Fawkes 5th of November fireworks and bonfire display here in Inverness, the largest festival of its kind in northern Scotland, because I have… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 