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Readers write: Blessings from a radio station, hearing from the other side, peaceful unity of the future

Letters to the editor for the April 9, 2018 weekly magazine. 

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Amanda Paulson/The Christian Science Monitor
Wind turbines are located at the Rock Mountain Power's Seven Mile Wind Park just outside Hanna, Wyo.
  • By Kathleen Cramer Monitor reader
  • Cliff Lawson Monitor reader
  • Ruth Plum Monitor reader

Blessings from a radio station

Regarding the Feb. 9 Monitor Daily article “ ‘Calls From Home’: How one Kentucky radio station connects inmates and families”: This article speaks to the heart. I communicate with an inmate here in California, where I live, and we have a very inexpensive telephone calling program that is provided for a number of prisons, so he is able to call fairly frequently. I think that what that radio station in Kentucky is doing is a compassionate, kind, tender activity that is surely blessing many people. I am glad you covered this story. Thank you.

Kathleen Cramer

Azusa, Calif.

Hearing from the other side

Regarding the Jan. 9 Monitor Daily article “Gun rights: Bid to federalize concealed carry puts GOP in unfamiliar territory”: It is refreshing to come away from an article, after reading well-made arguments from people whose position is opposite my own, thinking “Well, they have a good point there!” Frustrating, mind you – it’s always comforting to read articles that just reinforce one’s own beliefs – and uncommon, but refreshing.

Cliff Lawson

Water Valley, Miss.

Peaceful unity of the future

I appreciate the balance of articles in the Jan. 15 issue of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly. The stories in Points of Progress about improvements in energy conservation worldwide in Bahrain and California as well as a Progress Watch piece that details the liberating use of solar panels in Jordanian refugee camps and a Focus about remarkable converts to wind power in Wyoming are especially inspiring. Hats off to your excellent staff and reporters for finding and publishing examples of long-range social, economic, and environmental good. Such articles hold promise for the peaceful unity of our future together.

Ruth Plum

Wilmington, N.C.

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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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