Issue 453 | The Sun Magazine

September 2013

Readers Write

In The Dark

Reading Goodnight Moon to a child, cross-country skiing at noon under a full moon, gasping at the sight of the ocean awash in moonlight

By Our Readers
The Dog-Eared Page

excerpted from
The Cat Inside

I question the underlying assumption that one does a cat a favor by killing him . . . oh, sorry . . . I mean “putting him to sleep.” Turn to backward countries that don’t have Humane Societies for a simple alternative. In Tangier stray cats fend for themselves.

By William S. Burroughs
Quotations

Sunbeams

If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

Will Cuppy

The Sun Interview

Inhumane

Nathan J. Winograd On Reforming Animal Shelters

The real roadblock to widespread implementation of No Kill is shelter directors who have dug in their heels and who are legitimized and defended by the ASPCA and HSUS. There’s a shelter in Davidson County, North Carolina, with a 96 percent rate of killing cats. On top of that, it puts animals of different species into the gas chamber together. Despite this, the HSUS gave it an award in 2012, calling it a “Shelter We Love.”

By Lisa Sandberg
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Still Life

He stood on the threshold, holding an apple in both hands and smiling. I was thirty-eight years old. It had been a good while since anyone had stood at my door like that. And now here he was: a messy blond-haired man who looked as if he hadn’t slept; a neighbor; a man offering an apple to me.

By Marilyn Abildskov
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

My Life In Vegetables

I became a vegetarian in September 1971 after meeting a man wearing a white robe during orientation week at Cornell University. I saw this saintlike figure reposing on a hill, staring at a tree. Curious, I approached; he told me his name was Peter and begged me to sit. Soon he was explaining the Essene Gospel of Peace.

By Sparrow
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Whole House

“I don’t know what we’ll do if they don’t hit water,” I told him, scrolling through a table of well-restoration data I’d found online. This was my real fear, both for the well and for IVF — that our efforts would not work, and, financial resources depleted, we would have to figure out a plan B.

By Belle Boggs
Fiction

Mercy

Jimmy nods toward his tow truck, and Davis gets in the passenger seat. Sliding in beside him a minute later, Jimmy offers coffee and some kind of airy sweet, the exact right thing. This is how a moth must feel when it finally gets to the light: warm inside and out.

By Frances Lefkowitz
Fiction

Alternate

Before Cat and I became a couple, before we even knew each other, we were a team: knocking on strangers’ doors to bring them Barack Obama’s tidings of hope. Everyone in Brooklyn was already voting for him anyway, so they just cheered us on and thanked us for our service. There was a precoital vibe, a tingling anticipation of victory.

By Amy Bonnaffons
Poetry

Thinking

Don’t you wish they would stop, / all the thoughts swirling around in your head like / bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage?

By Danusha Laméris
Poetry

The Encounter At Twenty, 1966

The day that it happened, / my teacher had written crap on the bottom of my first poem. / I wanted to throw it into the Hudson / where it would sink with its no / under the gulls, the garbage scows, and the litter.

By Ellery Akers