My thanks to Daniel McDermon and Richard Reeves for their courageous interview [“Under Construction,” June 2025]. I’ve been a proud teacher for over twenty-five years. In my professional life I’ve observed how masculinity has been demonized and young men ostracized. I agree with Reeves: Young men today lack the incentives to succeed.
In A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, Edward Abbey writes, “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.” I’ve often thought about that quote when I see a forlorn student on his way to class. Every young man seeks a tribe where he feels like he belongs—whether that’s in a punk band or on a soccer team. Where can young men today find that sense of belonging? How might their souls be saved?
I was getting sleepy as the late-summer sun set, but it was too early to go to bed. The new issue of The Sun had arrived that afternoon, and I thought, Just one article . . .
I chose the shortest I could find: “Moon Boots” by Na Mee [September 2025]. The first few lines alone drew me in.
How much life and love can one fit on a page and a half? Her essay provides an answer. I read it twice before going to bed, thinking of the beautiful relationship between a mother and her son, the challenges of writing concisely, and, of course, the moon dust on my boots.
We returned from Iceland today. After a six-hour flight and a four-hour car ride, we were exhausted but happy to be home. We petted our cat, each had a big sip of water, and then went to the mailbox to collect our mail. When we saw the cover of the September 2025 issue of The Sun, our jaws dropped. Five days ago our daughter was married in that very church on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula.
For over thirty years we’ve loved The Sun. Thank you for that little bit of magic today.
If I had just befriended a space alien who wanted help understanding humans and our culture, I would simply share the September 2025 issue of The Sun with them. From Elizabeth Hawes’s essay, “Eight Tenets,” to Sunbeams, humanity was honestly and lovingly presented. I imagine my alien friend would have questions. Yes, I’d say, we have a thing called dementia here. Yes, we have prisons, but that doesn’t mean we lose our awareness, or our care for the world.
I was viscerally moved by Doug Crandell’s essay “Brother, Electric” [August 2025]. Through Crandell’s vivid writing, I felt the intensity of his love and his grief, and I reflected on my own relationships with my two brothers. Although we have love for each other, the bond Doug and Darren shared was exceptional.
My husband and I are now in our eighties and have reached that stage in life when we’ve become “lumbering, / stiffening, sighing, worried old relics,” as Alison Luterman writes in her poem “Manicure” [August 2025]. Describing a visit with her teenage niece, Luterman captures the texture and joys of old age. We relish the time we get to share with our grandchildren, who are now in their twenties and thirties. Our hearts are gladdened by the fact that they care enough to call, text, and spend time with us—no matter how short the visit.
I’m sometimes so intrigued by a photograph in The Sun that I wish I could interview the photographer.
For example, in the August 2025 issue, how did Vida Skerk get that photo of a man on the toilet doing a crossword puzzle while a woman bathes in the tub? Are they family? Friends? Was the photo staged? What a wonderful, intimate image.
In my own home growing up, my mother would sit on the toilet with the lid down while my father took his bath. It was their time to discuss important things without the kids around.
There was a time when I read every issue of The Sun cover to cover, but now they pile up on the coffee table or by my bedside. Sometimes I ask myself why I continue to subscribe.
Last night, though, the cover of the July 2025 issue caught my eye. This morning I opened it and looked at the photographs. The face of the little girl on the Contents page stood out to me, as did the mischievous expression of the child whispering to her father in the opening of Adam Rouhana’s photo essay “Before Freedom.” I put the magazine aside and noticed the steam rising from my coffee cup and the fly perched on the armrest. It felt like my eyes had been opened.
I enjoy everything in The Sun, but I was especially astonished by back-to-back pieces in your July 2025 issue. “Our Star,” the essay by Nick Fuller Googins, captured the poignancy of our human lives while we careen through this vast, ineffable universe. It was followed by James Davis May’s poem “Parting Advice,” a meditation on the limits of language that miraculously transcends those very same limits.
I’m grateful to Googins and May for their beautiful art, and to The Sun for publishing essays and poems like these.
I was brought up short when I turned a page in your June 2025 issue and saw the painting by Greg Osterhaus. I’ve been a subscriber since the nineties, and I felt sure this was the first time I’d ever seen full color in The Sun. [We also published full-color images of paintings by Ran Ortner in June 2012 to accompany Ariane Conrad’s interview with the painter.—Ed.] I felt a stab of anxiety. What could this mean? Then I saw the byline of the accompanying essay, “Look at Me Longer.”
I always love John Paul Scotto’s work. He helps me make sense of autism, which in turn has brought me closer to my autistic daughter. His essay explores the difficulties of interacting with strangers when one craves genuine connection but also feels vulnerable to misunderstandings and rejection. I kept interrupting my reading to look back at his portrait. Such kind eyes.
I’m now on my way home from a week at Burning Man, one of the few settings where I can be sure that anyone I approach will meet me with openness and curiosity, ready to “look at me longer.” It’s a needed respite from the hard, brief glances of the real world.
In her Readers Write contribution on “Records” [June 2025] Meg Newman tallies up the four weddings she says she and her wife had “in our attempt to obtain a legal record of our love.” My wife and I have a similar story—we snagged legal recognition on attempt number three. When we asked our nineteen-year-old daughter to attend our last (and this time very small) ceremony, she irritably replied, “How many weddings of yours do I have to attend?”
“As many as it takes, sweetheart,” I said. “As many as it takes.”
We get up before the sun to drive forty miles to the hospital for my wife’s surgery. The waiting room’s full; a nurse takes her for prep. We’ve been in many, many waiting rooms, and at my age I know to always bring something to read—but I forgot my book. I find only old AARP magazines and real estate booklets. The TV is stuck on the Game Show Network.
Three hours later my wife is in her room, and I spend the night in a chair next to her bed. When we get home, the June 2025 Sun is in our mailbox. I wish I had that yesterday.
A couple of days later, we’re off to the dentist. This time I round up your last ten issues and place one on each table in the waiting room, knowing someone will find something in your pages that will help them.
