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Death
November 2001
If we could ask the people who died in the attacks what to do now, I wonder what they would say. Wouldn’t we want to take time to listen to all their voices? Voices of rage. Voices of sorrow. Voices of compassion. Voices of hate. Voices that say, Do something. Voices that say, Don’t do something stupid.
November 2001The Empty Sky
Reflections On 09.11.01
The Sun doesn’t usually report on current events, but September’s terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. marked a turning point for all of us. We put out a call to our writers, inviting them to reflect on the tragedy and its aftermath. The response was overwhelming. As word got around, we received submissions not only from regular contributors but from writers who are new to The Sun’s pages.
November 2001
Sunbeams
October 2001The dollar sign is the only sign in which the modern man appears to have any real faith.
September 11, 2001
A Special Sunbeams Supplement
On September 11, 2001, our staff gathered around a radio and listened incredulously to the news that terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Someone rushed home to get an old TV. We fashioned an antenna from a coat hanger, and through the snow and static emerged the images that would grow so appallingly familiar in the days to come.
October 2001
September 2001
One way to love myself is to stand still when sadness comes sweeping in like a storm. This means not judging the storm, and not condemning myself for getting drenched; three-quarters of the world is covered in water.
September 2001An Unfamiliar Form Of Solitaire
When I first came to this mountain town in central Mexico a year ago — bored and dissatisfied with myself and my American surroundings — I was eager to learn about a group of thirty or so imigrantes, American expatriates, who gathered daily in the lobby of the Hotel Jardin.
August 2001Realism
About your opening: editors often judge a story by the first paragraph, and yours has no hook. Take the description of the father: his soap-encrusted wedding band, the blue tennis shoes he wears with suit pants and tropical shirts, the fading hair that crests above his forehead — these are all fine, specific details, but they come too soon and contribute little or nothing to the narrative. Always keep in mind that writing fiction is about choices, painful choices.
July 2001May 2001
I’m here in the early-morning darkness, a congregation of one. I’m here, just one more man who thinks he deserves God’s ear, as if God had time for everyone who reached out. I’m here, reaching.
May 2001Mothers And Sons
Picking out a baby outfit, playing an innocent game, becoming a caregiver
May 2001
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