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Readers write: The beauty of darkness and difficulty of moral math

Letters to the editor published in the Jan. 23, 2023, weekly magazine. Readers applaud dark sky efforts and question the Brittney Griner exchange. 

  • By Monitor readers

Protecting darkness

The article “Where darkness enlightens and inspires” in the Dec. 19 Weekly magazine immediately brought to mind the insights of Henry Beston in his classic 1928 book “The Outermost House” (still in print!).

“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. ... With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea. ... Today’s civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.” 

Mind you, Beston was writing in 1928, long before light pollution became of any concern. Kudos to the residents of Blanco, Texas, for adding to dark sky initiatives around the country.

Ronald Lane Reese
Roanoke, Virginia

Fair trade?

In regards to the Monitor Daily article “Moral math: Does 1 WNBA star = 1 arms dealer?”: Does trading a WNBA star for a convicted arms dealer make sense? As we’re not privy to all the facts it’s hard to make a judgment call. On the surface, I imagine Russian President Vladimir Putin must be laughing at the deal, taking the U.S. as a sucker. It would have seemed much better if we would have made Paul Whelan part of the deal. It would be better for all if a full disclosure were made as to the reasoning that went on behind the scenes.

Paul Sedan
San Francisco 

Protesters in Iran

The Nov. 28 cover story, “‘Women, life, freedom,’” gives a helpful overview of the protests in Iran and their participants. I wonder if anyone noticed a couple of oversights in the photo captions. One states that a woman is flashing a peace sign, when it is more likely a victory sign. (A peace sign would be an odd expression of frustration and protest!) Another states that many of the “young” protesters were born after the 1979 revolution, and have only known life under the Islamist regime. If they are young, they certainly were born after 1979. Many of their parents, as well, would be too young to remember life before the revolution.

Jennifer Quinn
Abingdon, Virginia

Flipping the narrative 

Now approaching my senior years, I consider myself to be a little wiser than at midlife. I am African American. I relish in my cultural heritage as it pertains to the struggles for equality and justice over the years in our society. 

Therefore, when I received the email from the Monitor on Dec. 23, the subject line captivated me: “Today’s Read: ‘So inaccurate’: Soledad O’Brien flips the narrative on Rosa Parks.” I am understanding more the Monitor’s publishing approach, and appreciate the Why We Wrote This about Soledad O’Brien’s “brutally honest” documentary. 

Ms. O’Brien is so very popular within the Black community. We welcome and enjoy each and every project that she embraces.

Wayne E. Williams
Washington

A note of thanks

Just a short note to say thank you for week after week producing such a wonderfully high-quality, informative, thought-provoking publication. Every issue is truly a treasure, a gem.

Ned Carr
Newton, Massachusetts

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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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