Issue 299 | The Sun Magazine

November 2000

Readers Write

Sibling Rivalry

Unmailed postcards, phantom siblings, buried Barbie dolls

By Our Readers
Sy Safransky's Notebook

November 2000

In the moonlight, I study the face of the woman I’ve loved for eighteen years. I’m thankful the moonlight traveled such a vast distance tonight, just so I could see her sleeping.

By Sy Safransky
Quotations

Sunbeams

My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good whatever; it was simply dragging a child’s soul through the dirt.

George Bernard Shaw

The Sun Interview

Invasion Of The Classroom

How Corporations Buy Access To Children — An Interview With Alex Molnar

Schools get the Zap Me labs for no upfront cost, but they have to guarantee that children will use them for so many hours a day. And guess what: the browser portal has advertising on it. This means kids’ ability to do their schoolwork is contingent upon their viewing advertising.

By Derrick Jensen
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Hector Isn’t The Problem

I had known Hector for several months as his teacher, but up to that time I had never really seen him, nor would I have seen him then but for the startling puzzle he presented: he was gate-crashing with a fully paid admission ticket in his pocket. Was he nuts?

By John Taylor Gatto
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Traveling Mercies

I was usually filled with a sense of something like shame until I remembered that wonderful line of Blake’s — that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love — I took a long, deep breath and forced these words out of my strangulated throat: “Thank you.”

By Anne Lamott
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

We’re Family In Here

I glance sideways at my hospital roommate. Sonya sits erect as a queen in her cranked-up bed, gazing ardently at the goings-on in Julia’s kitchen. Cooking shows are Sonya’s favorite, and she is relieved that I profess to like them, too.

By Sandy Boucher
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My Father Never

My father never played catch with me when I was a boy — a tomboy, that is. I played catch for hours after school with Skipper, Evan, and Sammy, my friends from the neighborhood. And when they moved away, I played catch with myself, bouncing a tennis ball against the garage wall. But my father never played catch with me.

By Susan Moon
Fiction

Love, Michael

To me, my brother was his letters home. Even now, his lucid, correct handwriting remains more vivid in my mind than any picture.

By Gillian Kendall
Fiction

Any Comments Or Questions?

Girlie slid out like a hot buttered noodle on that Indian-summer night in October — her father’s birthday, in fact.

By Dulcie Leimbach
Poetry

Dead Letter #4

Ganymede’s out on the hood of the truck, / keeping warm, hoping I’ll relent and let / him in, or more probably thinking nothing, / or perhaps only warm, if there is such a word / in the language of cats.

By Ron Mohring
Poetry

All My Previous Poems

Over and over, / I have submitted poems / to this magazine. / Over and over, / the editor / has rejected them. / Finally, / he accepted / this poem.

from “this poem”

By Sparrow