Issue 352 | The Sun Magazine

April 2005

Readers Write

Small Victories

Delivering a calf, surviving a rape, arm-wrestling like a girl

By Our Readers
Sy Safransky's Notebook

April 2005

I told a friend I was still feeling aggrieved about last November’s election. He suggested I take a more philosophical view. The ancient Chinese, he said, used to consider themselves fortunate if a great emperor came along once every five hundred years.

By Sy Safransky
Quotations

Sunbeams

I bet, after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him “father.”

Will Rogers

The Sun Interview

Hidden Power

Noam Chomsky On Resurrecting The Revolutionary Spirit Of America

The big popular movements in this country did not all come about in the sixties. The women’s and environmental movements both began in the seventies. The antinuclear and solidarity movements arose in the eighties. The big global-justice movements started in the nineties. The elites have to keep trying to beat freedom down, because it won’t go back into its shell.

By John Malkin
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Surviving The Body

A thick canopy of smells — car exhaust, rotting vegetables, melting tar — hung in the sweltering midafternoon air. As I stepped onto a narrow side street to escape the noise and crowds, my left leg buckled beneath me, and I fell down in a puddle of motor oil in front of a sidewalk stand.

By Emily Rapp
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

A Boy Named Candy

Growing up, my siblings and I were aware of the enormous volume of water contained there. We knew that if the dam broke, our house would be swept away. It was tangible evidence of something we already felt: that we were never really safe.

By Sybil Smith
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

And Passion Most Of All

Her eyes were hard. I knew then that she was going to be relentless and wouldn’t give up until I acknowledged the truth.

By Michelle Cacho-Negrete
Fiction

Not A Scratch

The first time he takes a shower after coming home, he looks himself over: Ten fingers. Ten toes. No scars beyond the ones he collected in childhood.

By Bruce Holland Rogers
Fiction

Sawdust

Sugar suspected I was a fruitcake because of my friendship with Mr. Quick, which began during my freshman year. Sugar had learned about it from my mother. (My father was dead.)

By Peter Selgin