The backyard erupted after the last rain. For a solid month, the sun shone. Days reached a hundred. The whole world began to smell like dry grass. At first, what seemed like endless days of sun irritated me. I’m really something of a pluviophile and revel in the gray dimness…
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.
Twenty-six years ago, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in my little one-bedroom apartment on 42nd Street. For the first time in a week, I had black rings under my eyes again. My sinuses felt stuffed. I had a thirst that no water could quench. For once I…
2 CommentsAll around us the neighborhood burned. Firecrackers, smoke bombs, fountains, and mortars. A couple of those really loud things—I don’t know what they are but I wished I had some—blew up and we felt the blast in our chests. They set car alarms honking and squealing. A normal Fourth of…
Leave a CommentThe last couple of days have blown through my life, bringing some fresh air and new perspective on my current state of affairs. It’s no secret that I’ve been having problems lately. Inertia makes my feet heavy and my mind dull. The lethargy and cynicism that comes with age has,…
Leave a CommentThe first time I ever smoked weed was in the fifth grade. We were on the annual class picnic at Sunnyside Park in Kansas City. It was a good, warm day in May. A small swimming pool stood at one corner of the park. About four of us followed a…
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