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Readers write: Effects of Victoria’s matchmaking, Finland-Russia relations, complex situation in complex world, America’s government

 Letters to the editor for the Feb. 12, 2018 weekly magazine. 

 

 

 

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The Royal Collection/Historic Royal Palaces/AP
The silk satin wedding dress worn by Queen Victoria in 1840, when she married Albert Saxe-Coburg, is prepared by a conservator for conservation work to begin.
  • By Joan Armstrong Monitor reader
  • Rosalie Dunbar Monitor reader
  • Nick Royal Monitor reader
  • Ken Brack Monitor reader

Effects of Victoria’s matchmaking

I’m pleased to have read the Q-and-A with the author of “Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking” (Jan. 1 & 8), which details the effects of Victoria’s efforts to arrange advantageous royal marriages for her family members. The book satisfies my long-held wish to know more about the outcomes of Vicky’s efforts. It’s fascinating history told most perceptively. 

I recall the opinion of one of my Boston University professors (a former reporter) that we journalism students should measure newspaper excellence by The Christian Science Monitor’s standards. That was true many years ago for me and is still applicable.

Joan Armstrong

Branford, Conn.

Finland-Russia relations

The Jan. 22 OneWeek article “In Finland, a WWII film stirs emotions” was an excellent presentation of the relations between Russia and Finland. It gave me a new perspective, since I didn’t know about this war.

Rosalie Dunbar

Dracut, Mass.

Complex situation in complex world

I enjoyed reading the Dec. 18, 2017, cover story on Iran, “Mideast’s new superpower,” which examined a complex situation in a complex world. I thought the cover and the article were really helpful, as they gave me a sense of the relationship of Iran to its neighbors.

Nick Royal

Santa Cruz, Calif.

America’s government

I very much appreciated Mark Sappenfield’s Jan. 15 Upfront column, “Keeping the American experiment alive.” I heartily agree with his assessment of the American model of government.

Ken Brack

Huntington, Vt.

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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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