In my 61 years, I’ve been a member of the Boy Scouts, the Society of Professional Journalists, and two unions. I think there was a year in there when I belonged to the Missouri Democratic Party, but only because I had to if I wanted to run as a Democrat…
Leave a CommentAuthor: Patrick Dobson
Dr. Patrick Dobson is a work in progress until his termination. In the meantime, He is a writer, scholar, postman, and college professor living in Kansas City, MO.
The University of Nebraska Press published his travel memoirs, Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer in 2015 and Seldom Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains in 2009. Canoeing the Great Plains won the 2016 High Plains Book Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. His essays and poems have been published in New Letters, daCunha, Kansas City Star, Garo, Wood Coin, and JONAHmagazine, and others.
Dobson earned a doctorate in American History and Literature at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2013. He has edited books, taught journalism, and been a union ironworker. He now teaches American History, Modern Latin American History, and Western Civilization at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS.
He looks forward to hearing from you soon.
A great deal happens when a friend tells you they have cancer. At first, the moment freezes, stops completely and a chill settles over the conversation. Cancer, after all, is the great insoluble conundrum. Everyone I ever knew who had cancer died of it. Lung. Liver. Brain. Colon. The people line up in memory as a phalanx of friendly, pained faces. They are smiling but their eyes reveal a resignation to the deadly forces of genes gone mad.
Leave a CommentHere’s the deal: I’m tired of the news and the recent, concerted effort of ideological morons to manipulate history, literature, and news. As a former journalist with a great deal of admiration for good reporters, librarians, and researchers, that’s not an unusual statement. I have a Ph.D. in Modern American…
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Reading Henry Miller makes me think about spiritual experience. My reading program, which is a strict one, has me in me in his works at the moment. I keep coming across the word “God” and references to the deity. I don’t consider Miller a religious man. Rather, he was a profane man who happened to be enlightened, insightful, and inspired. One doesn’t need to be religious to understand the nature of God. Perhaps Miller was so grounded in the physical world that he didn’t need to reach far to touch the eternal.
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Every day, the thought of writing something to you stiches my mind like an unseen yellowjacket catching me on the arm when I least expect it. The sting hurts. After a minute or so, the affected area swells—just like a real yellowjacket attack–and becomes a preoccupation. I wander along, slipping letters, magazines, and catalogues into mailboxes. Like an ancient insect’s ovipositor, my satchel opens to deposit packages on porches and stoops. Every delivery exacerbates the condition. Preoccupation becomes obsession.
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