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Readers write: Kindness and justice for victims in Bangladesh, age difference depicted in film, a sport for each country

Letters to the editor for the March 19, 2018 weekly magazine. 

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Peter Dejong/AP
Sven Kramer of The Netherlands competes during the men's 10,000 meters race at the World Championships Speedskating Allround at the Olympic stadium in Amsterdam, Netherlands on March 11, 2018.
  • By Joy Hinman Monitor reader
  • Colleen McGovern Monitor reader
  • Nancy Cobetto Monitor reader

Kindness and justice for victims in Bangladesh

Regarding the Feb. 2 Monitor Daily editorial, “After mass rape, turning disgrace into grace”: What immense kindness and justice has been shown to help the women victims of mass rape and assault find some peace and self-worth. 

Even though they live in the terrible conditions of the refugee camps in Bangladesh, here is a fresh start for them to find some hope in life and a renewal to self-worth. Hopefully it can be a model for other women who have been so abused.

Joy Hinman

Turner Valley, Alberta

Age difference depicted in film

I’ve always looked to Peter Rainer’s reviews for his thoughtful insights and incisive comments on films. In fact, his reviews have allowed me to view some exceptional acting and directing that I might have otherwise missed and led me to seek out more films while avoiding those that have received wide acclaim based on name recognition or hype.

However, one of Mr. Rainer’s demerits of the movie “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool” is, as he writes in his Feb. 5 review, that “it’s not difficult to understand what Gloria sees in Peter.... It’s less obvious what Peter sees in Gloria.” My sister pondered whether there would have been any need to clarify what the much younger man, Peter (Jamie Bell), saw in the much older woman, Gloria (Annette Bening), had the genders of the two leads been reversed with the man much older than the woman, as is often the case in Hollywood films.

Colleen McGovern

Englewood, Colo.

A sport for each country

I enjoyed sharing the ideas in the Feb. 5 issue, which included the cover story about Olympic dynasties. The perception of each nation having its own sports identity was new to me and to many friends with whom I shared the article’s content. Many thanks.

Nancy Cobetto

Avon Lake, Ohio

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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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