50 Years Ago
(1962)…Sir Winston Churchill returned to London from Atlanta from Athens after
a 17-day Mediterranean cruise on shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis’ yacht… The
crippled U.S. spacecraft Ranger 4 crash-landed on the far side of the moon due
to failure of a key electronic system…Soviet Premier…Khrushchev was put in
charge of a committee to draw up a new constitution, the first since the one
written in 1936 by disgraced dictator Josef Stalin…Caroline Kennedy’s
playground was the center of attraction for the traditional Easter egg roll on
the White House lawn…Segregation leaders in New Orleans are offering free
one-way train tickets to dissatisfied black persons for travel to northern
states…Cassius Clay, Eddie Machen and Ralph Dupas are featured fighters for a
star-studded card arranged by Joe Louis.
The cocky, 20-year-old Clay o Louisville has a 12-0 record including nine
knockouts…Seattle World’s Fair had an opening crowd of 24,000 in the first few
hours while an Air Force F102 jet fighter, which had taken part in an aerial
salute to the fair, crashed north of the city…Dean Martin was signed by
producer Henry T. Weinstein to star opposite Marilyn Monroe in 20th
Century Fox’s “Something’s Got to Give”.
100 Years Ago
(1912)…The U.S. Supreme Court authorized the regulations of interstate commerce
in Alaska, declaring it a “territory” and not a “district”…When the White Star
liner “Olympic” was ready to sail for New York from Southampton, 300 engine
workers quit the vessel, declaring its collapsible boats
unseaworthy…Wanted-Entertainer needs assistant able to sing alto & change
slides. Evening pay $1…Five new Zepplin
airships have been orderedby the German government for the military fleet…It
was announced at the convention of the Pennsylvania Spiritualists that William
T. Stead, who perished on the Titanic, has already communicated from the world
of shades. Mrs. Mary Feldman declared
she had chatted with Stead and stated, “He is happy and preparing to
communicate with us more fully”…Tenor Enrico Caruso will be principal in the
opera “Girl of the Golden West” in Paris.
Proceeds will go to the French government for the purchase of
aeroplanes…The grizzly bear hug and turkey trot dances will be banned from the
new dancing at Spanaway Park.
“Your magazine has
shown me that I am not alone. You show
the beauty, the wonder, and the dirty truth of the human spirit.” --Bridget Willey, Sun reader
“The Sun is an intimate
forum where some of the finest contemporary writers share their most polished
and provocative prose.” --UTNE reader on
presenting The Sun an Independent Press Award for Best Writing
As we grow up, we put
away our laughter and our silliness and our childish noises, the great sensory
hilariousness of our young lives. We
pick up a few notions about proper behavior, like what books to read and how to
go about getting married and buying a home and being polite and having cocktail
parties . . . and the next thing sensory apparatus – is just another boring
adult going to work in a seersucker suit with a briefcase. –John Rosenthal, Amazing Conversations
Day dawned cool, and
Mary and I sipped tea at the kitchen table, enjoying the rarity of a moment
alone. Then came the sound of the boy’s
bare, scampering feet on the hardwoods.
He often looks surprised to see us in the morning, as if his nighttime
dream journeys have been so vast he can believe we’re actually still her in the
house, right where he left us.
“I had two bad dreams and
twenty-thirty good,” he said.
“What were the good dreams
about?” I asked.
“Dragons.”
“And what were the bad dreams
about?”
“Dragons.” --Chris Dombrowski, The Oar
When he was old, I
tried to introduce him to the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness; I thought it
would ease any anxiety he might be having about imminence of death. “Ultimately,” I began, “you never were.”
“Maybe not,” he said,
peering over the rim of his glasses. “but I made a hell of a splash where I
should have been.” --Stephen T.
Butterfield, Of Lineage And Love
For years, whomever
we spoke on the phone, he would ask, “So, do you have a boyfriend?”
“No, Dad,” I’d say, “I’m a lesbian.”
“Well, maybe you
should think about getting involved with a man for a change.”
“Maybe you should
think about getting involved with a man for a change, Dad.”
That conversation got
old after a while. –Judith Joyce, My
Father, The Tree
Finally my mind
caught up with my mouth. . . . My apoplexy ceased. My fury lost its redness. And, for the first time that trip, I really
took them in: Dad’s once-chiseled face,
collapsing with age. Mom’s hair, pinned
up in a bun, one step closer to hoary and desolate white. How old they’d become. How many more visits would I even be blessed
with? How many more chances to make
things right? . . . These were not the same people who had raised me. Those people existed only in my head, caged
and rotting behind my tight, unhappy grin for decades while my actual parents
got older, gentler, wiser; while their bodies fell apart and their souls grew
deep. –Shozan Jack Haubner, A Zen Zealot
Comes Home
I am plum with my
husband’s love, overfed by his kindness, yet still I treat our marriage like an
all-you-can-eat buffet, returning to him over and over again to fill my plate,
as if our vows guaranteed me unlimited nourishment. During Ramadan, when he turns inward and has
less to offer me, I feel indignant. I
want to make a scene. I want to speak to
whoever is in charge, to demand what I think was promised me when I entered
this marriage. But now I wonder: Is love
an endless feast, or is it what people manage to serve each other when their
cupboards are bare? --Krista Bremer, My
Accidental Jihad
The human definition
of the natural world is always going to be too small, because the world’s more
diverse and complex than we can ever know.
We’re not going to comprehend it; it comprehends us. –Wendell Berry, Digging In
Strawberries were too
delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly
ripe ones bruised at even too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had
ever eaten – every piece of fruit –had been picked by calloused human
hands. Every piece of toast with jelly
represented someone’s knees, someone’s aching back and hips, someone with a
bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat.
Why had no one told her about this before? --Alison Luterman, What We Came For
Anytime we see
somebody who is pushing a shopping cart and talking to themselves or apparently
drunk on the sidewalk, we know they didn’t start out that way. . . . Something
happened to them, probably something awful, probably more than once, that broke
them and brought them to their sorry state.
They were once children who didn’t get a fair break. So let’s honor who they were. Let’s at least give them a fair break
now. –John Records, Leave The Light On
Optimism is a
political act. Those who benefit from
the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any
better. In fact, these days, cynicism is
obedience. –Alex Steffen, The Bright
Green City
For five years I
raced around digging ponds, chopping trees, clearing paths, pulling rocks,
unclogging channels, planting—always making lists, plans, agendas; always “improving”
things. . . . One day, after finishing yet another important project, I made a
list of all the things I had left to do. . . . According to my schedule, I
could begin enjoying my land twenty-five years down the line. Something was dreadfully wrong. –John Taylor Gatto, What I Did On My Summer
Vacation
A few weeks before
Robyn’s death, my husband and I went to see Wynton Marsalis perform at a small
club. Bill and I sat about four feet
from the stage, and Bill, who loves music more than he loves me (although he
might deny this), was entranced, transported, gone from his body and taken up
into pure sound the way prophets and poets claim we ecstatically dissolve into
light at the end.
I kept looking at my
husband, Bill’s serious guy, not quick with words, which he respects too much
to misuse, aware as he is of their often-paltry ability to hold truth – unlike
the long note from Marsalis’s trumpet, that sound emitted from a gleaming piece
of metal, its mouthpiece surrounded by those wide lips and miraculous,
triple-jointed cheeks. . . . Then the blue of his eyes caught the brown of mine
for a second, and he leaned toward me and whispered, “I could die now.” My eyes moistened, and I wanted so badly to
believe that this joy was what would come for Robyn; that it’s what will come
for us all in the end. –Genie Ziegler,
20, 40, 60, 80
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