Issue 529 | The Sun Magazine

January 2020

Readers Write

Nourishment

Dad’s leftover stew, the kids’ Lunchables, coffee and pie with a friend

By Our Readers
One Nation, Indivisible

January 2020

Featuring Stephanie Mills, Jack Turner, Dave Foreman, and more.

The Dog-Eared Page

Joyas Voladoras

Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe.

By Brian Doyle
Quotations

Sunbeams

An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.

Martin Buber

The Sun Interview

A Test Of Our Compassion

Louisa Willcox & David Mattson On The Plight Of Grizzly Bears

Do we want a deeper, richer relationship with nature, or do we want to just kill everything and live through our smartphones?

By Savannah Barnes
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Top Ten

Abby has a progressive congenital disorder, fatal, and lives her young life with a deep-running current of wisdom in her spirit, a quiet equanimity to her understanding of what it means to be alive in a day that the rest of us can only feel as hint and shadow.

By Kerry Hudson
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Sparrow’s Guide To Meditation

Meditation teaches that change is constant. You fool yourself into believing that you are a fixed entity, but you are not. You are a river of transforming whims.

By Sparrow
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Cat Years

He stops short, horrified that he has interrupted his employer during an emotional moment. Bishop quickly wipes away her tears and says, in Portuguese, Don’t worry, José. I’m only crying in English.

By Christine Marshall
Fiction

Waiting For The Coywolf

I’ve read about a new creature called a “coywolf” — the offspring of a coyote and a timber wolf. That must have been what I saw. Waiting for it to reappear gives me something to do.

By Devin Murphy
Poetry

Peaches

There were signs, I suppose. First she stopped lining up with the other kids for ice-cream sandwiches and chocolate bars. No dessert, she said.

By Marion Winik
Poetry

Lava

Once, two women hiked a volcano, / stood on the lip, and watched the fire / move in the crater’s mouth.

By Danusha Laméris