Author Archives: Dale Hobson

I’ve been kind of obsessed this spring and summer with how many sunny days have been made gorgeous by flotillas of high cumulus clouds. It is as if the overly-rosy memories of summers long past have been made manifest. Those … Continue reading →

My night vision is getting too poor to enjoy this form of meditation from the driver’s seat, but there is a special form of peace to be had running down a smooth empty highway in the middle of the night. … Continue reading →

Japanese knotweed, or Japonica, is a nearly unkillable invasive ornamental that will fight it out with the cockroaches and rats for control of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, I predict. Or maybe I’m just sore from all the digging. Knotweed In early … Continue reading →

The summer has gotten away from me. Between travel and a stupefying bout of Covid, I have not been able to write, or at least not well. I returned to my vast archive of Listening Post essays, looking for a … Continue reading →

Somehow I never managed to share this poem from “Light Year” on Facebook or in this blog. I come back to it now because it is central to the themes of my work-in-progress, “The Other Village,” a volume of poetry … Continue reading →

I went to get my hair cut the other day, something I do a few times a year whether I need it or not. The now-unisex business dated back to 1958, so while waiting my turn I fell into a … Continue reading →

During this time of seemingly non-stop bummers, of disease and unease, dreary with fear, a little drop of joy can feel like a revolutionary act. Into High Country Whenever I head up into high country my doubtsstay in the valley … Continue reading →

This is another poem extracted from a prose piece written for NCPR’s newsletter, The Listening Post. I spent a July day in 2015 in Ogdensburg where I had a ringside seat for the Seaway Festival Parade. I was staffing an … Continue reading →

If people were dogs, most would be gaze hounds, like the Irish wolfhound that hunts by sight. We rely overwhelming on our sense of sight. Do you see? But as my own vision begins to dim, I find myself using … Continue reading →

I grew up in a different world known as the ’50s and ’60s. Men still wore fedoras and women still wore white gloves to church. There was a Green Stamps redemption center downtown, the original cash-back credit scheme. I attended … Continue reading →