Issue 511 | The Sun Magazine

July 2018

Readers Write

Threats

A pack of dogs, a husband’s secret, an obsessive ex

By Our Readers
One Nation, Indivisible

July 2018

Featuring Lorenzo Milam, Tram Nguyen, Brian Doyle, and more.

The Dog-Eared Page

Intimacy With Fear

If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.

By Pema Chödrön
Quotations

Sunbeams

She loved the serene brutality of the ocean, loved the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.

Holly Black, Tithe

The Sun Interview

Sunken Treasures

Sylvia Earle On Why We Need To Protect The Oceans

We have measured a sharp decrease in oxygen in the ocean over the last fifty years. If the ocean has less oxygen, then less is going into the atmosphere as well. I don’t want to mess around with my oxygen-generating system. Ask any astronaut how important your oxygen-generating system is. Shouldn’t this be the highest priority of every man, woman, and child — to be able to breathe?

By Michael Shapiro
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Invisible Symphony

The next two hours are the most precious I will ever spend with my father. He is alert and not visibly suffering. Though not a chatterbox, he converses with us all.

By Poe Ballantine
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

In Praise Of Incompetence

That word, competence, came to me after my six-year struggle; it came as an alternative, if not an outright escape hatch, to the daily grind of despair.

By Lauren Slater
Fiction

The Narrows

My sister Nell and I were standing on the banks of the Duvallis River, waiting for a man to float down it.

By John Jodzio
Fiction

V.I.P. Tutoring

For a term paper I demanded a Louis Vuitton purse. For a take-home midterm, a Tiffany bracelet.

By Vanessa Hua
Poetry

All The While The Women

Days & nights I carried two weapons everywhere. / I wore pockets of bullets / across my chest. I wasn’t / of age.

By Hugh Martin
Poetry

In The Dermatologist’s Office, Again

The cancer he wanted / to cut out of my back / somehow disappeared / in the month / since the biopsy.

By Robert Tremmel