The other day, I had a conversation with a customer so comforting that when I walked away, I had a spring in my step that followed me for the rest of the 14 miles I had on my route. It’s not that he soothed me or made me feel good about myself or my life. His was not the succor offered to the sick and those in pain. The feeling I had was that conversations like ours were still possible in the present state of our union.
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.
When I walked 1,450 miles across Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana in 1995 and canoed the Missouri River back to Kansas City, I was left with a series of personal choices that arose from contact with the people and landscapes I had seen in my adventures. Life’s possibilities opened before me, probably due to the trip giving me new eyes with which to see the world.
Leave a Comment
The father and son stood on the corner in the afternoon sun. The father was about 30, the son eight of nine. Dressed against the slight cold, they hunched in together against a sudden gust and stood again, looking across the street for the walk signal. They exchanged a few words and then stood silently waiting for the light. They took each other’s hand. When it was their turn and traffic had come to a stop, they stepped into the street.
Leave a Comment
The weather turns and the postman looks forward to this time of year. Yes, there will be rains and late-season snows. But the promise of sun, warmth, and gentle breezes sifts through even the darkest of days.
Leave a Comment
What comes next? I’m a worrywart down underneath. Fear rules my life. While I have undertaken some bold adventures in life, I can’t help but think what I might have done had I not been such a scaredy-cat. Of sometimes I wonder what would have happened had I not acted on the fears that motivated me.
Leave a Comment