Issue 7 | The Sun Magazine

January 1975

Quotations

Sunbeams

Money has become incorporeal, far transcending tangible possessions, a vibrant all-persuasive element, almost independent of the possessor, an atmosphere to which there is no longer any contrast. Now it is a question of finding the new poverty for this new “wealth,” all that having withdrawn far into the invisible; . . . real poverty must be born again anew inside the soul and will perhaps not be Franciscan at all.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Money

Money, or, as Karl Marx’s mother puts it, “If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of it . . . it would have been much better.”

By Sy Safransky
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Unthinkable Contract

It was one of those days that appear in endless number to those who look for work. Those days are numb and temperatureless, their color a shade of dull empty blue, and not grey as would seem the case. One walks past the bank on the way and notices the smart girls going in the back door to work, their dress, its neatness, and sharpness, remains a very real impression.

By Edward Dorn
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Depression Years: Costly Memories

Being of the “old school,” the subject of money affects me in a different way: memories of depression years, five cent apples sold on the corners, bread lines, cold winters without coal, hot summers without a fan, sweat shops and no money for trolley fare to go to the beach and cool off.

By Rose Safransky
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Two Dollars An Hour

On my first day at the book warehouse, D., the boss, is complaining of sore muscles and a bad headache. Baseball on Saturday, drinking with the boys on Sunday. “I done indulged too much,” he says wearily. His manner is relaxed and friendly.

By Sy Safransky
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Confessions Of A Junk Addict

CONFESSION: I realize that all may not share this addiction or feel the same high that I experience over a sixty-year-old rocker for $20.00 or a refrigerator for $35.00, but I admit that I’ll go to any length to satisfy this craving.

By Sue Anderson Hartnett
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

A Chapel Hill Cooperative?

The people of Chapel Hill are invited to participate in the formation of the Chapel Hill Cooperative. The organization to be formed will enable its members to assume greater control of the business and commercial community of the Chapel Hill area. This consumer Cooperative will involve its members directly in the pricing, marketing, wholesale buying and other phases of the local businesses which become members of the Coop.

By Mike Mathers
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The New Lesbians

The hexagram currently ruling the psychic differentiation of the human race is 11, STANDSTILL, Heaven over Earth. All beings, on the eve of the disappearance of polarity, rush to secure their own sex. The conjunction of opposites is rapidly becoming obsolete, as all powerful expressions of male and female are annihilated.

By Medea (Rob Brezsny)
Fiction

All In A Day’s Work

It came as no shock as I looked at the paper that our noble Leaders declared our Nation’s economic plight. Vaguely, I understood the declarations after earnestly seeking employment for the past two years, though never in Cincinnati. Maybe my first clue was the infinite numbers who trod the highways from nowhere to anywhere searching for a friendly face and a pot of somewhere beans on the side of the road.

By Ilyo
Poetry

Untitled

I/feel/a

By Amos