Whenever The Sun addresses society’s challenges, it brings to light complexity, rather than quick fixes. The November 2025 issue is no exception.
Daniel McDermon’s thoughtful interview with John Washington [“The Golden Door”] dealt with the question of borders in ways I had not considered before. My heart is heavy as I think about the United States’s treatment of immigrants and the current push for deportation.
Later in the issue, Carrie Knowles’s short story “Her Mother’s Suitcase” captures the urgency felt by émigrés: “She didn’t know where she was going or what she might need, so she took every bit of clothing and packed it together with all the dreams she’d once had, not knowing anymore where she might arrive.”
As someone who has lived and taught on the US–Mexico border, I am grateful for John Washington’s perspective in “The Golden Door.”
My second-grade students at Naco Elementary School in Arizona were incredibly intelligent and vivacious. Most were bilingual, and many traveled across the border from Naco, Mexico, every day to attend school in the US. In the hills where I went running, I’d sometimes come across travelers who had just made it into the US. Sometimes people would leave water jugs for them in the trees. My friend even tried to drive one individual to Tucson, but she was pulled over by border patrol.
It was while I was teaching in Naco that the Minutemen were first established. [The Minutemen Project was an anti-immigration militia formed in 2005.—Ed.] I asked the other teachers and staff how they felt about the Minutemen—after all, this was their world, not mine. I was a newcomer to Arizona, and the town I lived in, Bisbee, wasn’t directly on the border like Naco. Many of them responded with something like “I think it’s good. We had to earn our way. People cross over in my yard and leave trash.” What could I say? It was their firsthand experience, and I try not to be judgmental.
Still, I hope that Daniel McDermon and John Washington can open the eyes of those who have never encountered the culture and spirit of our neighbors across the border.
The Sun regularly makes me feel amazed by humanity and by our little corner of the universe. The last time I was moved to tears by an interview in your pages was when I read Derek Askey’s conversation with Jim Tucker about children’s memories of past lives [“Old Souls,” December 2024]. This month I was blown away by “ Radar and Revelation,” Askey’s October 2025 interview with Jeffrey J. Kripal on the Archives of the Impossible.
Kripal raises the possibility that UFOs aren’t visitations by extraterrestrials from far, far away, but are perhaps humans traveling back in time. He suggests that these time travelers would be particularly concerned about nuclear energy and the environment, “because those things will affect the future.” This idea has inspired me to have a renewed sense of duty to future generations.
Askey’s ability to present the work of stimulating thinkers in such dramatic and profoundly moving form is the main reason I subscribe to The Sun. I love learning about these researchers whose ideas are foundational to our understanding of the world, and who sound the alarm about the ways modernity has gone awry.
Sy Safransky’s essay “The Cat Who Woke Me Up” [October 2025] made me cry. I had a cat like his, given to me by a friend who could no longer keep her. She settled in nicely, and for the next twelve years she was my best friend. Like every cat, she had her quirks: She refused to get into anything (boxes, bags) unless she could see an escape route, and she wouldn’t sit in my lap. But when I went to bed at night, she would lie down on my chest. I agonized every time I had to leave her, even if it was just for a weekend. I appreciate Safransky putting that sort of relationship with a cat into words.
The night before my cat was put to sleep, she made the monumental effort to jump up on the bed, and she rested on the pillow next to my head. It seemed like she knew what was coming—she was suffering, and we had been to the vet that afternoon. But I needed one last evening with her.
That was twenty-two years ago. I still feel her presence and even occasionally apologize to her when I remember some failure on my part, some need of hers that went unmet. I’ve never gotten another cat.
I was a Sun subscriber for nearly a decade, beginning in the early nineties. For a while I thought that the magazine had stopped printing. But much to my delight, I recently discovered that is not the case.
I’ve since resubscribed, and I am just as excited by the short stories, poetry, and photography as I was two decades ago. Rebecca Baggett’s and Leath Tonino’s poems in the October 2025 issue were especially thought-provoking, and I found it wonderful to be able to listen to the authors read the poems out loud. I’m grateful to The Sun for introducing audio—it’s a modern, personal, and touching feature.
To listen to Sun poets reading their work, sign up for our newsletter: thesunmagazine.org/newsletter.—Ed.
When I read Kathryn Jordan’s poem “Avium” [September 2025], the world dropped away. Like Jordan, I am living with mycobacterium avium complex (MAC). Although I too have a “still-able body that climbs hills and sings,” I am facing years of medication and lifestyle changes.
A photocopy of Jordan’s poem now lives in my wallet. It has become part of the answer I give whenever people ask, “So, what’s wrong with you again?”
I always enjoy Readers Write, and I hope to someday submit something that gets printed. When I read Donna Landi’s piece in the September 2025 issue [“Getting Dressed”] about her husband accidentally wearing her jeans to the CEO’s party, I laughed so hard and so long my wife asked what was the matter. So I read it to her, and we both laughed and laughed. What a great community of writers and readers.
Even though I still have nearly a year left on my subscription, I just renewed. I don’t want to miss a chance to laugh like that again!
My relationship with The Sun began more than twenty-nine years ago. I was a postal clerk and kept coming across the magazine while boxing mail. The cover intrigued me, so I set an issue aside. Later I sequestered myself in a corner and, unseen by the boss, explored what lay inside. I kept this up for a couple of months until I decided that I wanted the magazine to arrive in my own P.O. box.
This is now my twenty-eighth year subscribing to The Sun, and I still look forward to each issue.
