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3 weeks ago | 
thesunmagazine.org | Nancy Holochwost |Stephen J. Knauth |Leath Tonino |Richard Chess
In Stephen Knauth’s “My Favorite Bird,” a “drab” little visitor to the author’s backyard prompts a thoughtful and empathetic contemplation of who this feathered creature is. The poem is a reminder that the world around us deserves our attention, an idea that is shared by the other poems in our April issue.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
outsideonline.com | Leath Tonino
Seasonal reading—that’s my boring-but-apt term for enriching the mood and meaning of a certain time of year with the addition of a certain text. Each April, I reach for the “Spring” chapter in Walden.
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Nov 9, 2024 | 
tricycle.org | Leath Tonino
Mazu Daoyi was a famous Chan master who lived from 709 to 788 in Tang dynasty China. It’s foolish to try to summarize his deep teachings, but I am nothing if not a certified fool. Reading the anecdotes and dialogues that have come down through the ages (most recently in translations by David Hinton), what leaps out at me is an emphasis on nonjudgment. We need to drop the mind of “yes this” and “no that,” the mind embroiled in notions of good and bad, correct and incorrect, success and failure.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
tricycle.org | Leath Tonino
Recently, I’ve adopted a new mantra. If you’re surprised to learn that it comes from the mouth of my 5-year-old nephew—a mouth often smeared with ketchup and/or chocolate ice cream—well, clearly, you haven’t met Dean. Granted, the kid is a grubby little hellion who refers to his dear uncle as Mr. Buttcheek Man, but he’s also quite introspective and bright. And more to the point, he’s very, very, very into catching.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
outsideonline.com | Leath Tonino
Let me acknowledge, right up front, that in this ghastly era of anthropogenic global warming I combusted a whole bunch of fossil fuel in order to descend from the cool green sanctuary of the Colorado Rockies, where I’m blessed to reside, and cross the hot, dry, fiercely sunburned interior West. My destination was the kiln of the Mojave Desert and, sequestered within that immensity of thirst, a line on the thermometer: 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Or perhaps worse.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
flipboard.com | Leath Tonino
This Is What It’s Like to Camp in One of the Hottest Places on EarthLet me acknowledge, right up front, that in this ghastly era of anthropogenic global warming I combusted a whole bunch of fossil fuel in order to descend from the cool green sanctuary of the Colorado Rockies, where I’m blessed to reside, and cross the hot, dry, fiercely sunburned interior West. My …
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Jul 5, 2024 | 
tricycle.org | Leath Tonino |Eihei Dogen
Some texts are just plain hard. Finnegans Wake, for instance, or anything by Martin Heidegger. I appreciate the challenge of dense, weird writing, and I appreciate the argument that stories and ideas occasionally demand the experimental stretching of language and logic. Otherwise, the argument goes, we remain in a too-comfortable and too-familiar realm, where the words on the page are mere inky markings: not moving, not breathing, not life-disrupting nor life-enhancing. But still.
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May 29, 2024 | 
thesunmagazine.org | Nancy Holochwost |Chrys Tobey |Jodie Hollander |Leath Tonino
Most of us turn to fiction or memoir for great storytelling, but sometimes poetry fits the bill just as well, as the poems in our May issue show. In “Dear Woman Who Tried to Pick Me Up at a Hollywood Club in 1998,” Chrys Tobey imagines the life she could have had if she’d said yes to a romantic overture. Jodie Hollander’s “In the Freezer” recalls a grisly childhood pet that still lurks in the speaker’s memory.
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Dec 20, 2023 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Leath Tonino
click to enlarge The boy and the girl meet at the edge of the playground, away from the swings and slides, away from the shouting and giggling and screeching of their classmates. They meet where the grass is tall and green and the sky is big and blue and there are secrets everywhere — secret houses, secret patterns, secret songs and secret singers. He is 6 years old. She is 6 years old plus 2 months. Exploring together, they become best friends. When the boy and the girl get older, they hold hands.
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Aug 29, 2023 | 
thesunmagazine.org | Leath Tonino |Bruce Rogers |Cedar R. Koons
This month’s interview with Gordon Hempton, reprinted from 2010 as part of our ongoing celebration of The Sun’s fiftieth year of publication, is on the search for silence in a noisy world. The selections from the archives below offer other ways to think about the power of silence — and of sound.
Take care and read well,
Your friends at The Sun
The Sun Interview
Call of the Wild
Tonino: Is sound a better way to judge the health of an environment than using our eyes?
Krause: I think so.
