When we leave Germany, the vines growing up my mom’s house have lost most of their leaves and her courtyard has a battered look to it with all the dead and the dying lying on top of each other —… Read More ›
traveling with kids
Pinklightsabre Announces UK Winter Tour
Here is a list of where we’ll be when in the UK, for anyone who wants to pop by or meet up or look after our kids so Dawn and I can go to a pub. If you’ve been to… Read More ›
‘Strangeways, here we come’
When I lent Benny’s dad Christoph a book on German history and explained the author’s premise, that too much focus had been placed on the Hitler years, he said that’s because no one told them what happened, no one talked… Read More ›
Pigs in zen
We thought something was burning in the house, but it was just the Backhaus up the road, where the women gather to bake bread and gossip in the fall and burn clippings from the grape vines. We journeyed to Stuttgart… Read More ›
A ribbon of darkness all the way
There are prehistoric smells in my mom’s laundry area where the drain water from the washer sometimes gathers and the floor’s a stark grey stone material, a peat bog of sphagnum moss collapsing in on itself, which makes a fine… Read More ›
‘The best Defence Against the Dark Arts’
I asked Lily to write the word beautiful in her journal and then draw an X through it. I said be careful about using this word in your writing (she used it twice in the same paragraph), and we talked… Read More ›
The Thane of Cawdor stole my log-in
Our kids threw a mild hissy fit about not being in the States for Halloween, complaining they’d gotten gypped, or in Germany — where the holiday’s just caught on — instead, we’ll be somewhere in Scotland, hopefully near a castle,… Read More ›
First day of school in Germany, take 2
Starting our year of homeschooling today was like a kick-off meeting for a big project: give them a little information, get them engaged, show them a plan, have them leave the room excited. Start and end on time. And as… Read More ›
The logic of the bells
I turn like a rotisserie chicken every quarter hour in bed, with a window angled open toward the church up the street and the bells tolling every 15 minutes, and I wonder if they’re live bells or triggered by some… Read More ›
Licking my lips, the end of summer
The cat’s come back to my lap to harvest what she can, and in the town they’re hanging leaves and lights, grape clusters in different colors for the wine fest, next month. The fruit flies are slowing down in the… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 