2020
July
10
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

July 10, 2020
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Noelle Swan
Weekly Editor

Parents with young children likely know that Legos can be a lifesaver. But last week, the broader world got a glimpse of the magic of those tiny bricks when staff at the Maryland Zoo shared the heartwarming story of “Lego turtle.”

The male Eastern box turtle had spent two years in the care of veterinary staff at the zoo after an employee found him in the park with a badly broken shell. After surgery, staff realized he would need help moving around while waiting for his shell to heal. 

“They don’t make turtle wheelchairs,” Garrett Fraess told The Washington Post. A veterinary student at the time, Mr. Fraess reached out to a friend and Lego enthusiast in Denmark for help making one. That Lego wheelchair turned out to be a crucial component of this turtle’s healing, and he was released back into the wild last week.

Around the country and the world, veterinarians and wildlife workers are finding creative ways to assist injured turtles and are calling on the public for help. Motorists are encouraged to keep an eye out for injured turtles. Even if their shells are badly broken, they can likely be saved with assistance. And if you happen to have an old bra with hook and eye clasps, rehab facilities welcome donations for use in shell repairs.

This may seem like a lot of effort for one small creature, but with half of all turtle and tortoise species at risk of extinction, every life counts.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

At a time of deep U.S. political polarization, the Supreme Court ended its term with two decisions that emphasized unifying basic principles: the importance of the rule of law, and the fact that it applies to everyone, including presidents.

Patrick Semansky/AP
Tom Alexander holds a cross as he prays prior to rulings outside the Supreme Court in Washington, July 8, 2020. The court issued three rulings this term expanding religious liberty.

Religious liberty laws were passed in the 1990s to protect Native American religions. The Supreme Court has now ruled that they can be broadly applied to prioritize the rights of Christians.

A principle of President Trump’s foreign policy is to allow local players to resolve regional conflicts. But with U.S. allies Egypt and Turkey clashing in Libya, could a solution just be a phone call away?

Dan Busey/The Decatur Daily/AP
Emily Williams, a third grade teacher, helps her daughter Lily, as her sons Braden (bottom left) and Landen complete a virtual assignment from school, at their home in Decatur, Alabama. on March 20, 2020. Parents have been wearing many hats during the pandemic.

As the pandemic wears on, how can working parents keep juggling everything? Many are taking a problem-solving approach – carefully thinking through options, tapping into networks, and asking for flexibility at work.

Sophie Hills/The Christian Science Monitor
Christina and Catelin traveled to the beach from Connecticut, where they’ve been living for the past three months. They are from New York City. “The Cape has been conducive” to vacationing while social distancing, says Christina.

Americans’ time-honored vacation traditions are being tested as people pine for beaches, boats, and bowling alleys during a pandemic. One result is the rise of the away-from-home staycation.


The Monitor's View

NASA via AP/File
Engineers watch the first driving test for the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance in a clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

When you’ve got troubles, nothing beats stepping back and getting a long-range perspective. In this case, from more than 30 million miles away.

This month three countries plan to send probes to explore Mars, the opening salvo in a space race to the red planet that looks as if it will continue for years to come. The Hope Probe – a project of the United Arab Emirates and the first effort of an Arab nation to visit another planet – is scheduled for launch July 15. China’s Tianwen-1 goes next, sometime between July 20 and July 25. It will be that country’s first visit to the planet. 

The United States, after several delays, plans its launch for July 30, its fifth mission to Mars. 

Russia and the European Union are expected to join this new Mars explorers’ club in a couple of years. India and Japan are planning trips after that. 

Mars beckons in part because it could answer a big question: Are humans alone in the universe? Over its history the planet has shown intriguing potential for life, including, at least at one time, the presence of water. If any life has ever existed there, how likely then is the possibility for life anywhere in a universe filled with uncounted planets?

Mars has long been a fascination – and an intriguing distraction – for humanity. As European relations grew tense and World War I approached a century ago, astronomer William Pickering peered through his telescope and described what he saw as changing weather systems on Mars, which he imaged as a vast wilderness. 

To Pickering, the planet was almost a refuge, “free of suffering and injustice and of difficulty,” points out Sarah Stewart Johnson in her new book “The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World.” It was a place “free from all of the horrible things that were happening in his world, on his planet.”

But even as telescopic views improved, astronomers’ frustration grew: If only they could get a closer, better look. That finally happened in the last half-century as space probes began plunking the Martian surface, sending back data, including photos. The car-sized American rover Curiosity – named by then 12-year-old Clara Ma after a national essay competition – has been wandering the planet since 2012, and continues to explore it.

For the United Arab Emirates and China, visiting Mars means gaining scientific stature back on Earth. For the U.S. it means maintaining its prominent role in space exploration. Each of the missions will advance human knowledge. 

The U.S. rover, named Perseverance, for example, will include a robotic helicopter that will test what it’s like to fly in the Martian atmosphere and, it is hoped, serve as a scout for the rover. Perseverance will also collect rock and soil samples that some future mission would be able to return to Earth.

This flurry of exploration sets the stage for the ultimate Mars endeavor: putting humans on the red planet. That goal remains a couple of decades away at least, U.S. researchers say.

But a visit to the moon by humans once seemed unthinkable. Now Mars is coming ever closer in thought.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

When a cyclist became discouraged and overwhelmed while training for a long-distance event, she turned to God for inspiration – which turned her attitude and experience around completely.


A message of love

Ann Hermes/Staff
Among the cypress trees and sparsely populated coastline of Point Reyes National Seashore, the KPH Maritime Radio Receiving Station blends in well. Though the art deco building may seem quiet and long-forgotten, it emits a series of dits and dahs each Saturday – signals from the last remaining Morse code transmission station in North America. For the past 20 years, volunteers from the Maritime Radio Historical Society (MRHS), in partnership with the National Park Service, have been restoring the equipment at the former Radio Corporation of America facility. These "radio squirrels" meet every Saturday to send out transmissions. The massive commercial machines require an endless amount of tinkering – an ongoing labor of love.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for spending time with us today. Come back on Monday, when Ned Temko will explore how a look into the post-pandemic future offers reason, if not for unbridled optimism, at least for cautious hope. It’s the final installment of our global series “Navigating uncertainty.” 

More issues

2020
July
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Friday
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