Welcome to The Sun's Eye, a journal of essays and reports on sundry topics gathered from interesting people in a variety of places.

We've taken our name from a poem by Yeats who, in his 1914 collection, Responsibilities, argued for the independence of intellectual and artistic elites from uneducated opinion and common preferences, and for the importance of contributing what one can afford to efforts one believes to be inherently worthwhile.

Although we’ll decline to claim for ourselves the status of elites, we do believe the pursuit of quality is worthy of educated and intelligent people in a democratic society, and we're just arrogant enough to think we're qualified to set ourselves up as arbiters of what's worth taking into consideration. Consider, then, TSE's debut offerings, all of which happen to have been contributed by regular participants in Slate Magazine's online forum, The Fray:

The Wheel Broken at the Cistern, by Phillip David, an educator in Oregon, who describes some of the distinctions between orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism, and explains why most people haven’t a clue about the latter.

Keeping Score, an on-the-scenes report from The Fray’s forum manager, Irving Snodgrass, on the political situation in Indonesia as that country approaches its first free elections.

Curtain Call, a column on theatre by actor, dramatist, and writer Adrianne Call, who reviews a performance of G. B. Shaw's Heartbreak House at the Washington Stage Guild in D.C.

Simple Solutions, a column on politics and the economy by Jay Ackroyd, a New York businessman, who explains why scrapping the corporate income tax would be fair, and why the status quo is not.

In issues to come, we hope to be able to print your letters (to thesunseye@hotmail.com) responding to what you read here: your dissent, assent, and additions to the cases made.

We also welcome readers’ proposals to debate at length the authors we've published. Final decisions regarding challenges to debate will, of course, be the authors'; however, the editors will entertain all well written counter-arguments as "unilateral" responses (which will, of course, be edited for conciseness where necessary), and authors will always have the option of answering at their convenience.

We hope you'll check our site every week or two, as we'll be staggering content. Letters may be uploaded fairly frequently, and correspondents who supply us with late-breaking news will (we hope) be published quickly. Please advise us of any technical problems you might have seeing the site or printing out articles; we’ll consult the appropriate gurus for help in making things better.

Our next issue will focus on education. Look for articles by Cyndi Hughes and Phillip David, who teach public school in Arkansas and Oregon, respectively. Their stories tell how very different states—small and heavily rural, wealthier and increasingly high-tech—have come to grips with the need for education reform, and they offer some telling, ground-level analysis of the potential for success or failure of this venture that has become critically important to citizens all over the US, especially during the last decade.

Again we welcome you—and your thoughts—to The Sun's Eye.

J. Crohn & T. Corley,

Editors

To a Wealthy Man who promised a second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if it were proved the People wanted Pictures

You gave, but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be 'some sort of evidence,'
Before you'll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market-place,
What th' onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino's windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds' will.
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancor ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To Michelozzo's latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.
Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would,
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!

-William Butler Yeats