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Readers Write: New economy fuels green energy, entrepreneurship; Pray in secret

Letters to the Editor for the July 22, 2013 weekly print issue:

The destructive extractive economy is indeed changing, as is the expectation of what constitutes a truly satisfying standard of living. Bozeman, Mont. epitomizes a new economy with a respect for environmental conservation.

In the debate of prayer in school, it's worth remembering that Jesus said to pray in private and silently, not publicly.

| College Park, Md. and Mountain View, Calif.

A changing economy, new energy

The June 10 cover story, "Rise of the 'Green Coast,' " brings out the idea that entrepreneurship that responds to change lives on. My great-grandfather Gen. Lester S. Willson and his brother orchestrated the first wagon train to Bozeman, Mont. – the focus of the article – in 1867. He founded a freight company, general store, and bank. His son, Fred Willson, studied architecture abroad and returned to build much of Bozeman and Montana State University, including the Baxter Hotel, pictured in the article.

The destructive extractive economy is indeed changing, as is the expectation of what constitutes a truly satisfying standard of living. The habits and sensitivities of the past 40 years of expensive resource-intense living fueled by housing appreciation and cheap credit and energy are over. As American author and social critic James Howard Kunstler has argued, in the future, our communities will thrive on local economies that are "simpler, smaller, closer," even as businesspeople use amazing technology to create livelihoods.

Bozeman, indeed, epitomizes a new economy with a respect for conservation and development of new energy and an eye to environmental preservation so that future generations can enjoy nature and health. I've just returned from the BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Livable Economies) conference in Buffalo, N.Y. Rest assured, the pioneer spirit is alive and well throughout the United States, and a new sense of quality of life is imminent.

Lester (Casey) Willson III

Main Street and Sustainability Programs manager

MD Small Business & Tech. Development Center

University of Maryland

College Park, Md.

Pray in secret – at school or not

The June 17 cover story on the state of religion in schools 50 years after the US Supreme Court "banned" school-sanctioned prayer ("Was God expelled?") overlooked one important issue. In Matthew 6, Jesus said to pray in private and silently, not publicly and not aloud. This is a basic tenet of true Christianity, a religion of deeds and behavior, not of overt expressions of belief.

John Cormode

Mountain View, Calif.

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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.

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