2019
December
16
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

December 16, 2019
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Amelia Newcomb
Senior editor

Our five stories today look at a presidential campaign that could be more about the past than the future, a newly minted Hong Kong politician, one city’s bid to engage people positively around climate-friendly behavior and another city’s bid to appoint a “night mayor,” and what’s spurring the ire over the movie “Richard Jewell.”

There’s been a lot of intergenerational sparring in the public square of late, especially between millennials and boomers. Maybe that’s why a week in which a lot of intergenerational harmony was on display was heartening.

Take 93-year-old Ed Higinbotham of Georges Township, Pennsylvania. He teamed up with state troopers about half his age to deliver his 300 handmade toys to children about 1/20th his age. He likes making others happy, he says.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, Jim Annis, who recalls sparse childhood Christmases, has similarly created wooden toys for 50 years to hand out alongside the Salvation Army. “My pay is when I see the smile on kids’ faces,” he said.

At Arlington National Cemetery, the entrance was packed Saturday with a wide array of volunteers eager to help lay 253,000 wreaths on veterans’ graves. “It was really moving,” said one young participant.

And in Newtown, Connecticut, exactly seven years after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, all generations showed up as the football team took to the field after a wrenching day of memorial services. The stands were packed; fans on both sides wore green to honor victims. Then Newtown won its first state championship in 27 years with a last-minute touchdown, and emotions surged – for the coach, the parents, the students, everyone else who knew what it meant to have experienced that terrible day in 2012.

“The whole town showed out on this special night,” said one player. “We knew we had to bring it home for our town.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor
Newly elected Hong Kong District Councilor Fergus Leung, a pro-democracy advocate and Hong Kong University student, meets with constituents near the Kwun Lung public housing estate in western Hong Kong Island, Nov. 28, 2019.

Climate realities

An occasional series
Alfredo Sosa/Staff
The Providence Rink, adjacent to City Hall in Providence, Rhode Island, hosts a skating exhibition Dec. 7, 2019. The city of 180,000 is looking at the advantages of having city employees who are dedicated to the unique concerns of the nighttime economy.

On Film

Claire Folger/Warner Bros. Pictures/AP
Paul Walter Hauser (center) stars in the new Clint Eastwood movie “Richard Jewell.” The biopic about the man falsely accused of bombing the 1996 Olympics has drawn backlash for inferring that a real-life reporter slept with an FBI agent in exchange for a scoop about the case.

The Monitor's View

Reuters
Sudan's former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir sits inside a cage during a court hearing on corruption charges in Khartoum Dec. 1.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters
Fieldfares feed at a rowan in Minsk, Belarus, Dec. 16, 2019. The migratory European birds often form large flocks while wintering.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Britain’s Dec. 12 vote, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won decisively, was a bad night for parties in Scotland who support the 312-year-old union with England. Simon Montlake reports on how things look from Stirling, Scotland.

More issues

2019
December
16
Monday
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