Readers write: Food waste, gun control debate

Letters to the editor for the Aug. 29, 2016 weekly magazine.

|
Mel Evans/AP
A worker removes leaves as nectarines get sorted for packaging at Eastern ProPak Farmers Cooperative in Glassboro, N.J.

Extra food for others

Regarding the May 30 People Making a Difference piece: I was thrilled to read about the work of Laurie “Duck” Caldwell in gleaning surplus crops. It troubles me that, in a country where many children go hungry (more than 1 in 3 in the New York borough of the Bronx!), we are wasting about 30 to 40 percent of all food produced. Our CSA (community-supported agriculture) farm donates all “leftovers” (shares not picked up by members) to a local center for recent immigrants; this food is a healthy addition to their diet, which most certainly consists mainly of “cheap” food. I feel certain that there are plenty of other groups doing a similar thing. Just to say... if each of us helps in our own small way, we can make it better for everyone.

Elisa Bremner

Armonk, N.Y.

How to handle gun problems

Regarding the June 22 article “Democrats sit in: Treading a line between leadership, grandstanding”: Talk about sitting down on the job! Postmodern progressives are a strange breed with regard to gun control. They apparently believe that if we make the acquisition of assault rifles more difficult in the United States, where 10 million assault weapons are already legally owned and where there is an active aftermarket, then things will be better. 

They never address the 350 million guns presently in circulation and actually oppose policing measures designed to eliminate illegally owned guns on the street by claiming that some such tactics, like stop-and-frisk, are an infringement of civil liberties, usually those of minorities. 

More stringent gun control can be justified by, for instance, tightening gun-show loopholes or revisiting the sale of guns to those on a terror or no-fly watchlist or people with demonstrated mental instability, but more gun control is no panacea. 

Our progressive friends simply must do better. They must address the toxic ideologies that drive shooters.

Paul Bloustein

Cincinnati

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Readers write: Food waste, gun control debate
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Readers-Respond/2016/0827/Readers-write-Food-waste-gun-control-debate
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe