Issue 44 | The Sun Magazine

June 1979

Readers Write

Family Stories

Waiting for the angels, chopping the head off a chicken, building a house — twice

By Our Readers
Sy Safransky's Notebook

June 1979

Words

There are no words / for who I am. I / build myself up, / I tear myself down.

By Sy Safransky
Quotations

Sunbeams

What is meant by light? To gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Therefore Choose Life

George Wald Speaks Out On Nuclear Energy, The American Revolution, Survival

Some of you may remember what the 60s were like. You know, things were moving. The kids were making every mistake in the book, but they were learning. My generation wasn’t learning, it was past learning. But they were learning, and then they stopped. I think it was a major event in human history. And I’m old enough to be very impatient, for them to get to it again. That poor guy Phil Ochs, nice person, committed suicide, Phil Ochs had that song, I’m Not Marching Anymore. A mistake. You have to keep marching. Stop marching, it’s over. A revolution that stops is lost. That goes for the American Revolution.

By George Wald
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Another Opinion

Like most spokesmen on both sides of the nuclear debate, George Wald takes the liberty of addressing only those segments of the issues that support his arguments. He employs the nuclear opponents’ tactic of couching ideas in emotional terms, as well as using the purely technical arguments preferred by the supporters of nuclear energy. Both sides are wrong in that they address themselves to the symptoms rather than the origins of the energy problem.

By Kevin Vaughn
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

“Truth” Crisis, Not “Energy” Crisis

It was all blamed on the “Arab oil embargo” but who really believed that? There were the tankers, filled to the brim with oil, being kept waiting off-shore. The figures that would authenticate a “shortage” just didn’t add up. Arab oil is just a fraction of U.S. supply and is mainly controlled and pooled internationally by the U.S.-dominated world oil industry.

By Karl Grossman
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Truth Is Stranger . . .

About a week before the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident — strikingly similar to the incident portrayed in the new film, “The China Syndrome” — the following memo was issued by the Carolina Power and Light Company, in its newsletter “Info-Briefs.”

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Out Of The Ashes

We find a patch of golden, untouched floorboards only two feet from the center of the fire, and discover that the solder on a water pipe had melted, pouring water right into the middle of the fire. Poor house — it did its best to save itself.

By Tom Bender
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Doing What I Do

Writing Poetry

Poetry, then, for me, is a journey, a pilgrimage. It is much like the alchemist’s search for the philosopher’s stone, the knight’s search for the Holy Grail, the farmer’s for a good harvest, or the cook’s creation of a nutritious delicious meal. It is my way of connecting with the world.

By Jeffery Beame
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Small Press Review

Destiny News And O Rosie

This collection of Bob Fox’s stories are described by Fox’s publisher, Curt Johnson, as “the most enlightening and enlightened surrealism I’ve read since Franz K.”

By Judy Hogan
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

And Some Not So Good

Book Review

The reader is perhaps three or four stories into the volume before he realizes the significance of the title; the volume for the most part concerns a group of people who knew each other at graduate school in Ann Arbor in 1960. They are gifted intellectuals, who expect great things from themselves and their friends, and the book is about the sad reality that they actually face. 

By David M. Guy
Fiction

Tales From Analogue Number One

But, as the fool soon learned, looking for himself raised some rather complex metaphysical pimples on his brain; for although he fully expected to recognize himself once found, he really had no idea what he was looking for in the first place.

By David Manning