Sy Safransky
Sy Safransky is founder and editor of The Sun. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
— From December 2023Winter Was The Season
I don’t like saying goodbye to the people I’ve worked with at The Sun — not after we’ve spent years together drinking too much coffee and meeting impossible deadlines and struggling to make the magazine better and trying to be better people ourselves. But sooner or later they leave. A spouse gets a job offer in another city, or graduate school beckons, or it’s simply time to move on. We promise to keep in touch, and often we do. So it’s goodbye, but not really goodbye.
December 1999I Don’t Have All Night
Yet even here, at one of the more innovative schools in the country, graduation was still . . . graduation. Even here, at the end of the most violent century in history, graduates were exhorted in the usual ways to step across the mass graves and the poisoned waters and the broken vows. Step lively, the speakers told them.
January 1999One Hand Clapping
I studied Ram Dass’s spiritual odyssey as if it were a map to some mysterious continent whose existence I’d only recently discovered. A year earlier, I’d taken LSD for the first time; I, too, had experienced a radical shift in consciousness as I’d glimpsed my true self, and tasted the glory at the heart of creation.
May 1998January 1998
Jesus stands at the end of the sentence. He extends his hand. I make my offering: something I can easily afford.
January 1998October 1997
Let’s respect the heroes who live far from public sight: behind a battered desk in a legal-aid office; on a meditation cushion; in the kitchen at three in the morning, rocking a child who can’t sleep.
October 1997Safety
I pull away and look at her from arm’s length, this grown woman with wet hair. I’ll never know what part of my soul swept through my body when her mother and I conceived her; I’ll never understand the mysterious bond between a parent and a child. I know I can’t keep life from pouncing on her, from tossing her dreams around like a cat playing with a mouse: deadly play, here on this deadly planet. But she’s safe now, here in my kitchen, on this sunny afternoon that can’t last. I hug her again.
August 1997One Man, One Vote
Clinton knew that the federal government was the last line of defense for millions of poor people against the predatory forces of the free market. He signed the bill anyway. Clinton understood that there could be no meaningful welfare reform without a guarantee of decent jobs. He signed the bill anyway.
March 1997Request a free trial, and we’ll mail you a print copy of this month’s issue. Plus you’ll get full online access — including 50 years of archives. Request A Free Issue