Elton John: 5 stories from his new memoir

John looks back over his career and his personal involvement with the AIDS crisis in his new memoir 'Love Is the Cure.'

5. Elizabeth Taylor's strength

House of Taylor/PRNewsFoto

John remembers when a very ill Taylor, who spoke out on the issue of AIDS when it was still a stigma, attended the Academy Awards viewing party his foundation hosts every year to raise money for the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Despite being in pain, the actress soldiered on. "There were dozens of photographers and reporters – perhaps more than a hundred, in fact – cramming the very long red carpet," John wrote. "Elizabeth had a terrible time getting around at that point. But... Elizabeth walked the entire stretch. And not only that, she spoke to every single journalist and posed for every single camera that was aimed her way. More to the point, Elizabeth spent the whole time talking about the importance of EJAF's work and the urgency of the AIDS epidemic... Elizabeth must have been on her feet for an hour, and the whole time she was as energetic and graceful as ever."

5 of 5

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.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.