Issue 519 | The Sun Magazine

March 2019

Readers Write

Weight

An orphan’s hunger, a teacher’s praise, a mother’s farewell​

By Our Readers
One Nation, Indivisible

March 2019

Featuring Luis Rodríguez, Malidoma Somé, Julia Butterfly Hill, and more.

The Dog-Eared Page

Handy Tips On How To Behave At The Death Of The World

Eschew blandness. Eschew causing others pain. We are all the target so wear bright colors and dance with those you love.

By Anne Herbert
Quotations

Sunbeams

The real question is: How sturdy and solid is the floor our civilization stands on? How many lives with no prospects, shattered and senseless, can it bear the weight of before it cracks?

Christa Wolf, City of Angels: Or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud

The Sun Interview

Filling The Void

Bruce K. Alexander On How Our Culture Is Making Us Addicted

If we focus on people who are using opiates . . . we can say there’s an upsetting, awful addiction problem with them, over there, and deal with it in a prohibitive manner. In this way we minimize our vast social problems.

By Jari Chevalier
Tribute

A Tribute To Tony Hoagland

By turns funny and sad, caustic and poignant, Tony’s poetry first appeared in The Sun in May of 2000, and he was a regular contributor for the past ten years. Though he frequently used humor to make his writing more accessible, he could still catch the reader off guard with a sudden shift in tone, ending a poem in a very different mood than where it began.

By The Sun
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Love Running

Running is better for me than church; better than counseling, pills, or meditation; better than diet plans or twelve-step meetings. Running keeps me literally on the straight and narrow.

By Joseph Holt
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Ways To Take Your Coffee

With snow falling on blue spruce and a cardinal at the feeder and the fireplace’s crackly warmth easing into your bones and the final pages of a book about bears and the opening pages of a book about monks and no plans for the morning, the afternoon, the evening, tomorrow, next week, the rest of your life.

By Leath Tonino
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Greeter

I imagine them sending me to live with a family that is not my own. I have protected my parents for as long as I’ve been alive. If someone comes after them, I have teeth.

By T Kira Madden
Photography

Our Own Devices

After a few failed attempts to have conversations with friends who could not keep their eyes off their screens for more than ten minutes, I began taking photographs of people lost inside their phones.

Photographs By Gianpaolo La Paglia