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    July 2026July 2026
    To Remain
    The Sun InterviewBy Judith HertogTo RemainRaja Shehadeh on Living through Destruction in Palestine

    I have been thinking that people all over the world these days are feeling a sense of despair because, like me, they are seeing the destruction of the world as they knew it. But it has occurred to me that the real destruction of my world happened in 1948, when the Palestinians lost Palestine.

    Distractions
    Readers WriteBy Our ReadersDistractions

    Reading at work, listening to music during labor, swatting gnats while meditating

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January 1985

January 1985 cover of The Sun. A marvelous photograph of a snowy park with a lone dog running in the middle of it.
Departments

A Bell Ringing In The Empty Sky

What Went Wrong

Readers Write

Prisons (All Kinds)

A subway ride, a military prison, a 1950s chain gang

ByOur Readers
Quotations

Sunbeams

More men die of their medicines than their diseases.

Moliere

January 1985

January 1985 cover of The Sun. A marvelous photograph of a snowy park with a lone dog running in the middle of it.
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

Connection

Disconnection doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right somehow. It feels like a jacket that’s just a bit snug at the armpits and waist. Everything’s fine except. . . . Except trust feels better than distrust. Connection feels better than disconnection.

ByAdam Fisher
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

Cancer Is The Answer

Cancer, which had begun to affect as many as one in four, was a disease whereby an essentially weak, immature, dysfunctional cell invaded and occupied surrounding territories, dislocating the inhabitants, destroying the territory, devouring the resources, providing no exchange whatsoever until the entire territory was devastated and the inhabitants died of starvation, suffocation or toxicity. This dread disease became endemic to the second half of the twentieth century as tuberculosis had been in Europe in the nineteenth, and the plague earlier. Ironically, cancer, which perfectly mirrored imperialism, became through its proliferation the agency of spiritual and social — and therefore political — conversion.

ByDeena Metzger
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

When The War-Father Appears

i can see the worst all right — the earth exploding in some climactic chain reaction and all of us going off sparking out at the same time and i think i am going to like it if it happens that way after all we’ll be learning something together something massive that we’ve been trying to understand for a while and in that final sparking and arcing of the earth’s blow-up we’ll finally get it we’ll understand

ByPat Ellis Taylor
Fiction

Transfer Day

Tuesday, at Gethsemane, was transfer day and when the bus arrived, the yard was invariably packed with men curious to see who was coming and going or to see one of their old partners passing through. The men scheduled to leave were already lined up at the gate with the usual effects: a roll of gray bedclothes, cigar boxes, a few books, a carton of cigarettes.

ByJoseph Bathanti
Poetry

Sister Mary Appassionata Lectures The Eighth Grade Boys And Girls: Every Day Another Snake

ByDavid Citino
Poetry

What The Body Longs For

BySy Safransky

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