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Readers write: Reporting of protests, parental authority, new Austen insight, essay admiration

Letters to the editor for the Sept. 11, 2017 weekly magazine.

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Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Bonnie Britz learns how to shoot a bow and arrow during an archery lesson at a Jane Austen character weekend, on Aug. 12, 2017 in Hyde Park, Vt.
  • By Jack Coleman Monitor reader
  • Kathy Davis Monitor reader
  • R.F. Levine Monitor reader
  • Carolyn A. Hill Monitor reader

Reporting of protests

The Monitor did a very good job with the Aug. 19 article “The message from a day of protests in Boston” (CSMonitor.com). Your story brought out the best in many attendees but still showed that much more needs to be present in our minds to protect individual liberties, to foster thoughtful discussion, and to enable love to become the focus. This will support our government and its representatives in order to guarantee that we continue to have one of the best balanced, equalized, and evolving government systems of peace and progress in the world.

Jack Coleman

Dixon, Ill.

Parental authority

Regarding the Aug. 14 cover story, “Can you please talk, not text?”: The solution to the texting issue lies with the adult – simply do not give your child a phone. Parental authority remains up to the parent.

Kathy Davis

Cary, N.C.

New Austen insight

Regarding the July 17 book review “ ‘Jane Austen at Home’ considers where and how Austen lived and why it matters” (CSMonitor.com): I gained information about Austen even though I’m an avid reader of her work and books about her. I enjoyed the perspective about modern women’s issues, which were acknowledged as very similar to Georgian women’s place in society.

R.F. Levine

Meadville, Pa.

Essay admiration

Photographer Melanie Stetson Freeman has been one of my favorites for years. Seeing her name on the July 31 Home Forum essay, “What I saw, and what she knows,” confirmed my admiration and made it run even deeper. Thank you, Melanie, for who you are and what you’re doing.

Carolyn A. Hill

Portland, Ore.

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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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