2020
May
19
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

May 19, 2020
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Today’s five selected stories cover navigating state and city job losses, the path to reviving global tourism, a new reason to buy local, creativity under lockdown, and a refining of Ramadan.

Have you noticed? There’s an emerging “do not go gentle into that good night” quality to 2020 commencement events. When the coronavirus closed schools, seniors saw a rite of passage, graduation day, snatched away. 

Yes, adequate, even spectacular, facsimiles are happening online. For example, the digital capstone event hosted this past weekend by LeBron James and former President Barack Obama. Yet there’s a rumbling of rebelliousness, a rejection of the vanilla Zoom graduation.

You see it in the Texas high school principal who drove 800 miles to personally deliver every single diploma to 612 graduating seniors.

You see it at the Phoenix Raceway, where graduates from four Arizona high schools drove the track Saturday, taking one last lap as seniors before crossing the finish line. 

You see it in Pennsylvania, where on June 5 the Hanover Area High School is going Hollywood. Their seniors will become big-screen stars at the Garden Drive-in Theater. Valedictorian speeches, individual honors, and slide shows will be projected on the theater’s screen. “This will be the most memorable graduation in school district history,” superintendent Nathan Barrett told CNN.

Undoubtedly. But principal Kevin Carpenter has an epic plan too. North Conway, New Hampshire, seniors will be social distancing June 13 with a chair-lift processional on their way to graduation on the summit of Cranmore Mountain. Where else would the Kennett High Eagles perch? 

Dylan Thomas would approve: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Patterns

Tracing global connections
Matt Rourke/AP
As the pandemic takes a toll on the U.S. food system, farmers are having to get creative in ensuring that their produce makes it to consumers. In Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a message printed on bales near a farm reminds consumers to support dairy farmers, May 12, 2020.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Brian Fox, shown in his studio in Fall River, Massachusetts, does high-profile work for sports and entertainment clients. During the pandemic, he’s had time to focus on his Vietnam War paintings.
Alaa al-Marjani/Reuters
Iraqi family members eat their evening iftar meal to break the fast during Ramadan in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq, April 27, 2020.

The Monitor's View

Reuters
German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin holds a joint video news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron May 18.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Jason Cairnduff/Reuters
A Liverpool fan is held up as he looks over a fence to watch training at Melwood in England, May 19, 2020. Today was the first day Premier League soccer teams were allowed to hold small-group training, an early step in the process toward resuming the league season. Liverpool is in first place, with a 25-point lead before the pandemic stopped play.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow. We’re working on a story about mental health support and empathy for doctors, nurses, and other health care workers during a pandemic.

More issues

2020
May
19
Tuesday
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