Chapel Hill itself is the theme of this month’s SUN — yet it’s hardly more definable than our last subject, God and Enlightenment. Its context is unique: a liberal Southern university town that is neither typically Southern nor typically liberal, where the gap between knowing and doing, awareness and action, grows greater and greater. It’s a small town feeling the insistent pressures of growth, and somehow apart from and yet representative of mainstream America. For America — the America of suburban subdevelopments and shopping malls, of the razzle-dazzle, rape-of-the-eye architecture of burger joints and cruelly expensive, shoddily built apartments — begins more and more to represent what the Chamber of Commerce still affectionately calls “the Southern part of heaven.” And heaven, indeed, it is for many: as a learning center, as a haven for the eccentric and colorful personalities who give the town so much of its flavor, as a community where life, despite everything ugly and cheap and commercial, can still be beautiful and graceful and easy.

This issue just hints, then, at what Chapel Hill means to a few of us. It isn’t intended as a comprehensive look at the town. In future issues, though, we’ll bring you more and more articles about Chapel Hill. Like Chapel Hill, the SUN is growing, and with your continued encouragement, we hope to become an increasingly valuable resource for the people of this community.

To that end, we need your help in several ways: as contributors, of articles and drawings and suggestions for stories, on any subject; as subscribers (five dollars for the next ten issues of the SUN); as advertisers, because the reality of publishing is that advertising makes it possible; and, of course, as readers, the other part of this two-way communication.

The theme of our next issue is Food. Articles on this subject, as well as any other topics, are invited. Please send all correspondence to the SUN, Box 732, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.

We’re also looking for people to help sell the SUN. For more information, drop by the Community Book Store, 403 W. Franklin St.

The deadline for the October issue is September 18.

Mention us to your friends.

— Sy Safransky
for the SUN