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Readers write: Rewilding of Europe, guide to Puerto Rico’s challenges, encouragement for students, hope for the future

Letters to the editor for the Nov. 13, 2017 weekly magazine.

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Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros. Pictures/AP
Ryan Gosling (l.) and Ana de Armas (r.) star in 'Blade Runner.'
  • By M. Strong Monitor reader
  • Carol Olano Monitor reader
  • Sara Barnacle Monitor reader
  • Kristi Seibert Monitor reader

Rewilding of Europe

I loved that the Oct. 23 OneWeek article “As Italy ‘rewilds,’ its wolves return” started with wolves near an airport in Rome, then led me outward with other wolves as far as Denmark. I knew nothing of the rewilding of Europe and the hope of increased small-town tourism. The piece was so well written and so informative. It represents what journalists should aspire to and the dissemination the internet developers foresaw. Kudos to the author and editors involved.

M. Strong

Silver Spring, Md.

Guide to Puerto Rico’s challenges

Regarding the Oct. 9 OneWeek article “Puerto Rico: Out of the shadows?”: Having previously lived in Puerto Rico for more than 12 years, I thought this was an excellent article that would give someone with little knowledge of Puerto Rico a very balanced perspective of what challenges people are facing there. Thank you.

Carol Olano

Seattle

Encouragement for students

Regarding the Oct. 9 Monitor Daily article “A bus that brings learning into a danger zone”: My heart goes out to that police department, to the brave traveling instructors and assistants, and especially to those students who take the risk of attending school. Don’t give up, any of you!

Sara Barnacle

Harrison, Maine

Hope for the future

The Oct. 6 Monitor Daily article “Dystopia redux: ‘Blade Runner’ reboot as a cultural yardstick” was a good story. I do wish that Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Toynbee Convector” was better known. The story’s theme is that we strive to create the future we envision. I’m a big sci-fi fan but have grown weary of the dystopian visions that seem to equate despair with realism.

Kristi Seibert

Boulder, Colo.

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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.”

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