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    Standards of Care
    The Sun InterviewBy Naomi PittsStandards of CareRolonda Donelson on Bias and Anti-Science Attitudes in Medicine

    The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

    Milk
    Readers WriteBy Our ReadersMilk

    Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

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August 2009

issue 404 cover
Departments

Readers Write
Readers Write

Fences

Access to water, a moose disappearing into the trees, the Israeli security fence

ByOur Readers
The Dog-Eared Page

Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity Of The Soul

Consciousness is a way of perceiving the various dimensions of reality. Consciousness as you know it is highly specialized. The physical senses allow you to perceive the three-dimensional world, and yet by their very nature they can inhibit the perception of other equally valid dimensions.

ByJane Roberts
Quotations
Quotations

Sunbeams

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.

G.K. Chesterton

August 2009

issue 404 cover
Across The Universe
The Sun Interview

Across The Universe

Stanislav Grof On Nonordinary States Of Consciousness

It became clear to me that consciousness is not a product of the neurophysiological processes in the brain, as I had been taught at the university, but something much higher, possibly superordinate to matter. The idea that consciousness somehow mysteriously emerges from matter didn’t make sense to me anymore. It was easier to imagine that consciousness could create the experience of the material universe by an infinitely complex orchestration. I was suddenly in the realm of the Eastern philosophies, where consciousness is a primary attribute of existence and cannot be reduced to anything else.

ByAngela Winter
The Closest I’ve Come To God
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

The Closest I’ve Come To God

I wake up at 8:50 A.M. and whip around the house frantically, not wanting to be late for my women’s Alcoholics Anonymous meeting: feed the cat, grab my knitting, splash water on my face, pour some half-perked coffee, and speed into town.

ByLois Judson
Theo’s Map
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

Theo’s Map

My friend’s uncle scared me. He lived in a dome house he’d built from compressed styrofoam blocks, giving it the appearance of an igloo. It had a composting toilet and a dirt floor, and it looked absolutely extraterrestrial on the little plot of ground across the pasture from our Kentucky farm, such that I thought it might simply lift off and head into the Milky Way, leaving the fields of corn behind.

ByCompton Gardner
By Song, Not Album
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

By Song, Not Album

My dad flew to Paris to rescue me, armed with music and marijuana. I was in France to study the language as part of my college major. Before that I’d spent a few months at a Buddhist monastery in India, where I’d experienced for the first time since childhood what it was like to be happy every day, to enjoy waking up each morning.

ByHannah Tennant-Moore
Aftertaste
Fiction

Aftertaste

Although it’s close to Labor Day, there is no hint of fall in the air. No streaks of red in the trees, no breeze stirring the leaves. The temperature in these last days of August has been ferociously high, even for Manhattan. Every day dawns steamy, and by nighttime a haze of heat blocks out the moon.

ByCynthia Weiner
With Eyes Shut
Photography

With Eyes Shut

Looking at the pictures, I think perhaps the face with eyes closed provides a glimpse of each person’s inner self.

ByCole Thompson
Poetry

Poems

— from “A Warning” | Today I feel better, because I woke thinking everything that disappears from the planet / might reappear somewhere else. The thought was grand at first.

ByEric Anderson
Poetry

Manifesto

In April I believe only in lilac, dogwood, and wisteria — such suddenness and color, indecency and mess, / always opening and opening, and fading, and falling away.

ByJoe Wilkins

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