I sobbed for more than a half hour after reading Jessica Marsh’s essay about her father’s cognitive decline [“Dear Old Dad,” June 2025]. I sobbed for my dad, for my mother—and, perhaps, for my future self.
I grew up with Jessica Marsh. We spent summers with just the kids and our mums on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in a tiny cabin with no running water or electricity. On a campfire outside, the mums cooked the best-tasting meals I ever ate.
Today I opened your magazine to find my old friend’s essay “Dear Old Dad.” My heart thumped as I read it. Thank you, Sun, for being your beautiful and brilliant self, for publishing a voice like Jessica’s, and for helping all of us who’ve ever had an aging parent to heal.
I was taken aback by the color image in your June 2025 issue, since The Sun is usually published in black and white. Why spend the extra money to print one page in color?
After reading John Paul Scotto’s essay “Look at Me Longer,” I revisited Greg Osterhaus’s portrait of the author with a newfound appreciation. I’m grateful that the editors printed it in color, which fully captured its beauty.
Several of John Paul Scotto’s sentences in “Look at Me Longer” enthralled me the way he was captivated by the Greg Osterhaus landscape hanging in the Hotel Roanoke, particularly Scotto’s statement “There is no time for pessimism at this late hour. We must tell our stories, paint our paintings, sing our songs. We must show each other how gentle we truly are. We must pray that our gentleness can someday win.” Those words will help me to push back against our country’s disturbing march toward incivility and disrespect.
When I read Jim Imholte’s Readers Write entry about the folk duo Beth and Cinde [“Records,” June 2025], I had to know what their album sounded like.
I found it easily on Spotify, YouTube, Amazon—and even a signed vinyl copy for twenty-nine bucks on eBay. The latter showed its back cover, which states it was recorded in Portland, Oregon, in 1977 and issued by Rising Moon Productions out of Sandpoint, Idaho. To me, the LP is a lost classic, with its gorgeous harmonies, crack band, and lost innocence.
I’ve submitted it to Light in the Attic Records here in Seattle, Washington, an iconic reissue label whose mission is reclaiming works just like this that have been ignored for decades. Their catalog has generated viral attention and even long-overdue income for artists.
I send my regards to Beth, the surviving member of the duo, and am hopeful she will get more recognition for this gem of a record.
Mark Leviton’s interview with Jennifer Ackerman [“Bird’s-Eye View,” May 2025] reminded me of my good friends John and Kathy, who owned several exotic birds, including an African Grey Parrot named Sam. On many occasions Sam would delight us with his uncanny mimicry of the microwave, the telephone (ringing as well as being answered), the dogs, and the vacuum cleaner.
My hands-down favorite had to do with John being, well, flatulent. I was in the dining room with Kathy and John when there erupted from the living room an enormous farting sound followed by Kathy’s voice admonishing the perpetrator with “John!” If I hadn’t been sitting right beside them, I would have bet my paycheck that it was them, not Sam, I was hearing.
Mary Zelinka’s essay about collecting seashells as a family pastime [“Glory of the Seas,” May 2025] brought me back to Nova Scotia, Canada, where my family spent summers when I was a kid. We would scour the beaches for starfish, sand dollars, sea urchins, and many different shells. My mom always looked for, and frequently found, sea glass—there seemed to be an endless supply of it.
Going back as an adult roughly fifteen years ago, I noticed the beaches were empty of shells and sea creatures, both living and dead. That’s been the case whenever I’ve gone back since. I don’t know if it’s the result of people like me taking the shells home, or the dragnet fishing that goes on there, scouring the seafloor for all manner of sea life. Maybe it’s both. Either way, it’s sad.
I’m grateful to Zelinka for bringing back the beautiful memories, but also for reminding me how remarkable—and fragile—this world is.
It’s probably just my processing of all the horrific events happening right now, but I surprised myself this morning when I burst into tears upon reading the final lines of Mary Zelinka’s “Glory of the Seas”: “Mother had been dead for almost twenty years by then. Yet, for a moment, with the Glory of the Seas in my hand, I forgot. I couldn’t wait to call her.”
It was the first time I’ve ever wept while sitting on the toilet.
The last lines of Mary Zelinka’s marvelous “Glory of the Seas” reminded me of my wife’s joy at a beautiful sunrise, and how she would come home, cool from an ocean walk, and get under the covers to show me the photos she’d just taken.”
Hannah Gersen’s essay “Missing” [May 2025] hit many tender spots. For our twenty-fifth anniversary I gave my wife, Rae, a grandfather clock; it was still running perfectly when we celebrated our seventieth anniversary last September. Then she unexpectedly died in February, at which time that clock stopped.
I called a mutual friend to fix it, which he expeditiously accomplished, then spent even more time comforting and consoling me. He’d lost his wife several years earlier, so he was intimately familiar with the fog that had enveloped me. It was his theory that Rae had caused the clock to stop so that I would call upon him for help.
Both he and Gersen helped me accept as normal the way I sometimes freeze mid-task and break out in tears. I know that the serenity of acceptance is a distant goal, but with guides such as these, I’ll find my way through the thicket.
A large brown spider has made its home on my side of the window screen. I’ve seen it peeking out from the soffit, where it’s made a cozy nest. I initially thought of opening the screen and encouraging it to leave, but I was in the middle of reading Dave Zoby’s essay “Conversations with a Banana Spider” [March 2025], so I decided to leave it be. “Promise not to bite me,” I said, “and you can stay.”
As I opened my shades this morning, I felt some affection for this creature and glad not to have ruined its home.
The Sun is so damn good, yet my issues tend to pile up, only partially read, because life is so busy. I have a solution: I now leave the latest issue on my desk, always open to the last page I was reading. Just like in a yoga studio, where downward dog is the position you always return to, I now have The Sun in a place where I can always revisit it. I might even get caught up.
I appreciate the authenticity and emotional depth that The Sun consistently delivers. In a world increasingly saturated with superficial “content,” your magazine remains a rare space for honesty, vulnerability, and connection. Whether it’s a personal essay or the candid stories in Readers Write, each piece offers a glimpse into the vast landscape of the human experience. Thank you for creating a community built not on trends or algorithms, but on truth.
