When The Sun’s founder, Sy Safransky, came to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the early 1970s, he was a dis­illusioned former newspaper reporter from New York City with idealistic dreams. One day he and a friend named Mike Mathers decided to try to start a magazine. They tossed around some names — The Sometimes Sunshine was one — and put together sixteen pages of material exploring the topic of “Energy.” Sy typed it all up, and Mike drew illustrations and cartoons. They spent fifty dollars on paper and photocopied two hundred issues. The hand-drawn cover includes a quote adapted from a Leonard Cohen song: “We are locked in our suffering and our pleasure is the seal.”