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Author: 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.

The Staten Island Ferry changed my life

All that water. All that sky. The Statue of Liberty. The ferry itself and whispers of Walt Whitman. I understood the great teaming life of the city from the bow of the ship. Something shifted inside me. As a landlocked product of the Missouri woodlands, I adore open spaces. A…

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Eglise de la Sainte-Madeleine and the tourists

The landscape began to break up again as we approached Troyes. Hills and valleys of the Aube became more picturesque, with little villages beneath hilltop castles and churches. We drove into Troyes to look at the cathedral and the Eglise de la Sainte-Madeleine, two 13th-century churches that stood a few…

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Night in Palmyra, Missouri

The night settled down in the old house in Palmyra with a sigh. My dad set us kids up in a bedroom on the second floor. The wood spoke in pinched tones under his feet as he descended the stairs and entered the living room. I could tell when the…

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Rayford West, an important man

I never really knew Rayford West very well. To my detriment, I don’t know his story or our family’s connection to him. He was not related to us but we called him Uncle Ray. What I know is that he amazed and frightened me. Cerebral palsy confined him to a…

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Cell phones cost me . . .

The cell phone is at once a great communication tool and a menace. My friends and I stay in touch through the phone like never before. Where once I would have to send a letter or pay exorbitant telephone fees, I get to dial up whenever I want. It is…

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