Issue 508 | The Sun Magazine

April 2018

Readers Write

What Really Matters

A good teacher, a shared meal, a heartfelt apology​

By Our Readers
One Nation, Indivisible

April 2018

Featuring Barbara Kingsolver, Kathleen Dean Moore, John Elder, and more.

The Dog-Eared Page

The Brave Little Parrot

Long ago, a little gray parrot lived in a green forest. She was a happy bird and loved to fly. One day a dark storm hovered over the forest. Lightning flashed and the forest began to burn.

By Rafe Martin
Quotations

Sunbeams

It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all — but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.

N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

The Sun Interview

We Only Protect What We Love

Michael Soule On The Vanishing Wilderness

The reason we act when something threatens our family or our neighborhood is because we love these people and places. Maybe it takes a tangible threat to our home environment to make us realize that we really do love the earth.

By Leath Tonino
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Lost Cause

My dad’s name was Ed, but his friends called him Eddie. In old photos he is Jack Nicholson handsome, with devilish good looks and a mischievous gleam in his eye. I can see why my mom fell for him.

By Christi Clancy
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

One Flight Up

One can die in cleanliness, or one can die in filth. I’m not talking about your soul. At the Prince Hotel — an old Bowery flophouse — the men paid a few dollars a night to live in stalls, four feet wide and six feet deep, with chicken-wire ceilings.

By Mary Jane Nealon
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

A Place For Songs

In the summer we got word that the county forestland near our northern-Wisconsin home would be clear-cut. “Not my favorite pines,” I said, hoping. But, yes, those were the ones.

By Marie Greenstone
Fiction

Mother And Child

My husband, John, calls me a good mother. He says this with a glint of unease in his eyes, as though he is telling a lie or working a charm. 

By Laura Freudig
Poetry

Lynn Street

My father hadn’t left us yet / but I have no memory / of him living there.

By Matthew LaPierre
Poetry

The Big Picture

I try to look at the big picture. / The sun, ardent tongue / licking us like a mother besotted /with her new cub, will wear itself out. / Everything is transitory.

By Ellen Bass