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Friend Of The Sun

When Nature Is Larger Than Life

Imagine the humbling pause each of us felt to behold the faces of three naked and bruised whales just a few inches away from our own. For two solid weeks the global village never lost eye contact with these three neighborly ambassadors representing the mysterious tribe of great whales.

My Machines

There is a man I talk to in the Astor Place subway stop. He lives there, and he’s missing a tooth. Today his hair was wound around sticks.

TV Guide

I took a job in an area lacking electricity. Our daughters were two and four when we moved, and had had almost no contact with television. We lived for the next nine years without television.

Letter From A Mailbag

It was a dare. A dare I gave myself, but still a dare: “I will ride in a mailman’s pouch all day, and write an article about it for The New Yorker.”

Utne Reader’s 1991 Alternative Press Award For General Excellence

Of The Brave

Bob’s friend Ken was supposed to meet him at the Internationalist around nine that very night. But when Ken opened the creaky screen door, he found Bob sprawled on the floor, bleeding and unconscious. He’d been shot in the head. Ken called for an ambulance and the police, and Bob was rushed to the hospital, but he never regained consciousness. He died the following day.

Study War No More

An Interview With Colman McCarthy

Pacifists believe in force: the force of justice, the force of ideas, of love, of organized resistance to Caesar and the Pharaohs. Others solve their problems through the force of fists, guns, armies, and nukes. There’s no third way. Any problem you have, whether at home with your family or among governments, is going to be solved through the use of force: nonviolent force or violent force.

Friend Of The Sun

Catching Up

I’m never going to read them all. My wife knows it. My children know it. They exchange sly smiles when I haul a big box of magazines along on family vacations. Or when I announce at the beginning of the new year, as fervently as the president promising a balanced budget, that I’m finally going to get caught up. They know I’ll subscribe to more magazines, that the stack of unread issues — already taller than I am — will grow taller still.