Issue 257 | The Sun Magazine

May 1997

Readers Write

Fallen Angels

A stolen backpack, a lesson on self-esteem, a stranger and a thunderstorm

By Our Readers
Quotations

Sunbeams

Alas, O Lord, to what a state dost Thou bring those who love Thee!

Saint Teresa of Avila

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Why Didn’t You Vote For Me?

A Diary Of My Presidential Campaign

I wasn’t going to run in 1996, until Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire Republican primary. For ten days, the leftist agony came over me — the certainty that Bakunin was right: the ruling class does wish to extinguish us! I saw vividly a white-supremacist army occupying the White House, closing our borders, and setting up Christian reeducation camps. I knew I had to act swiftly. So, on March 4, I declared my candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.

By Sparrow
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Dinner At The St. Francis Inn

I grew up in the suburbs, and the only time I remember encountering a street person as a kid was when I was about twelve, on a trip to Boston with my father to see the Red Sox play.

By Tom Lagasse
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Small Acts

I like to picture my father, thirty years ago, standing in a half-built department store, with a hammer in one hand and a forty-five record in the other. The forty-five is Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” My father is alone, it is early morning, and he is trying to decide what to do with the record, which he hates.

By Sybil Smith
Fiction

Miracle Cure

I saw the whole thing in my rearview mirror. In the final seconds before fate in the form of a silver Volvo station wagon collided with me, I was fascinated by the slow unraveling of the inevitable. I was stopped in traffic, a car in front of me, cars to either side of me.

By Kimberly Jones
Fiction

Bert

I’m in love with Bert. I’ve been dreaming for going on six months now about having an affair with him. Unfortunately, I’ve had to take into account the fact that Bert don’t want to, even though he thinks I’m a goddess.

By Joan Gray
Fiction

The Patron Saint Of Girls

Girls, look up here! See me hovering close to the water-stained ceiling, above the buzzing VCR. Behold, I am Agnes, patron saint of girls, come to distract you from the climax of your freshman biology class, the video How Christian Girls Blossom into Maturity.

By Mary O’Connell