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Readers write: Japanese in America, space junk solutions, science in the Weekly, new format

Letters to the editor for the Sept. 4, 2017 weekly magazine.

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Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
A Madagascar day gecko sits on a perch in the Masoal rainforest hall at the zoo in Zurich on March 19, 2013.
  • By Jeanne Scott-Monck Monitor reader
  • Joyce Wineland Monitor reader
  • Mary Lynne Isham Monitor reader
  • William Cheney Monitor reader

Japanese in America

Regarding the July 11 Monitor Daily article “Mary’s story: Exclusion, forgiveness, persistence, reward”: My book discussion group read “The Buddha in the Attic,” by Julie Otsuka. It, too, is all about what happened to the Japanese living in the United States during World War II. It is heartbreaking to read about how these people were treated. It is a reminder of how we often mistreat people who become associated with a negative situation not of their own doing.

Jeanne Scott-Monck

New York

Space junk solutions

Regarding the July 3 Monitor Daily article “How to curb rise in ‘space junk’? Scientists eye the feet of geckos.”: It’s good to hear there are new ideas of how to dispose of space debris. There is still a lot of work to make the gecko technique foolproof. Keep us informed of progress.

Joyce Wineland

Greenbelt, Md.

Science in the Weekly

This idea of a Weekly accessible science section sounds great! Please include at-home experiments to do. How about goofy names for some experiments, too? Fun and more fun is how I think of science, so let’s have some great fun with it!

Mary Lynne Isham

Berlin, Vt.

New format

The freshness and conciseness of the new Monitor Daily has enabled me to be more involved and effective in supporting the issues raised in each article prayerfully and metaphysically. Thanks for the renewed inspiration. I’m especially loving the daily, five-plus articles approach!

William Cheney

Los Angeles

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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.

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