2020
January
02
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

January 02, 2020
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Eva Botkin-Kowacki
Science, environment, and technology writer

Today’s stories examine optimism in the world’s economy, a unique strain of environmentalism in Alabama, an effort to break down barriers around Swiss dinner tables, how religious women in Israel are pushing back against gender segregation, and the exclusive society of hat-masters in Tunisia.

New Year’s conversations invariably turn to resolutions. For years, I’ve tried to scoot out of the room, embarrassed to say that I don’t set New Year’s resolutions, largely because I know I’ll beat myself up when I inevitably don’t attain them fully.

My glass-half-empty view isn’t unfounded – researchers estimate that only 55% of resolvers stick with their goals until February. But recently I realized that I may have been missing the point. New Year’s resolutions aren’t entirely about making literal goals. They can be a vehicle for reflection and regrouping, a chance to check in with oneself.

That epiphany came from two directions. Last year, a friend shared that one of his resolutions was to pet more dogs. The idea was to bring a little extra joy to each day. It was a simple, attainable, and energizing goal. 

At the Monitor, we also have a sort of New Year’s resolution tradition. Each team, from the science desk to the Middle East desk, is asked to think about a particular idea to be something of a touchstone for the year. The exercise gives us a chance to give sustained attention to consequential issues. 

Rather than being strict goals bound to frustrate, these resolutions are more intentions that empower. So in this new year – and new decade – perhaps I’ll actually set personal resolutions. And maybe I’ll pet more dogs, too.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Between the U.S.-China trade war and the uncertainties of Brexit, 2019 was marked by economic anxiety. The turn of 2020 may come as a sigh of relief.

A deeper look

It’s easy to paint Trump supporters as indifferent to the environment. But a trip to Alabama’s Baldwin County reveals a more nuanced portrait. This story is part of an occasional series on “Climate Realities.”

Karen Norris/Staff
Dominique Soguel
Filmon Heileab, an Eritrean refugee living in Switzerland, shares videos of his children and music from his home country with Clara Belke (left, holding baby Malou), Simon Gottwalt, Julia Buhmann, and Philipp Kerler (right). The two Zurich couples invited Mr. Heileab for dinner on Sept. 23, 2019.

Sometimes a warm welcome smells like homemade pasta. Some Europeans are welcoming refugees not just to their countries, but to their kitchen tables. These meals are meant to break down barriers.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters/File
A girl peers through a curtain separating men and women at the gravesite of Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira, a Moroccan-born sage known as the Baba Sali, during an annual pilgrimage held on the anniversary of his death in the southern Israeli town of Netivot, Jan. 13, 2016.

Gender segregation among devout Jews has been expanding into Israeli society. In this first of two stories, we look at how religious women are combating what they see as their marginalization.

Taylor Luck
Tunisian hat-master Abdullatif Zurdazi prepares a "chachiya" for packaging at his shop in the centuries-old Souk Chaouachine in Tunis, Tunisia, Oct. 25, 2019.

What value is in a hat? Warmth? Fashion? A better question might be: What values? In a Tunis souk, an exclusive society of hat-masters ruled by honor and tradition manufacture the iconic chachiya.


The Monitor's View

Julio Cortez/AP
The U.S. Capitol in Washington is seen to the right of the bottom part of the Washington Monument before sunrise in December 2019.

A bit of the spirit of Dolley Madison may be quietly at work within the U.S. Congress.

The wife of James Madison, a Founding Father and later the fourth president of the United States, she is often remembered as a gracious hostess. But the “presidentress,” as she was known, accomplished much more. 

Her popular social gatherings, called “squeezes” (for the crowds they drew), brought together the members of Congress in the early 19th century from both sides of the aisle. The deeper purpose: helping politicians get to know each other as individuals, not as anonymous enemies.

Today the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has taken up that task. Its wide range of interests has included recommending money-saving measures like bulk buying of office supplies, mandatory cybersecurity training for members, and even an overhaul of the budgeting process itself. 

But one of its most important functions may be as a low-key effort to reduce hostility between the parties.

Rather than having more members from the majority party, the committee’s membership is evenly split: six Democrats and six Republicans. And when it meets members don’t sit as two opposing camps but interspersed, as individuals.

Tom Graves of Georgia, the group’s top Republican, has called the committee “a little place of refuge” where members can offer “ideas of how to make this place work better.” Rather than operating as a typical committee, where Republicans put on their red jerseys and Democrats put on their blue jerseys to battle it out, “we kind of made a decision not to do that,” says committee Chairman Derek Kilmer, a Democrat from Washington state. “Everybody’s wearing ‘fix Congress’ jerseys.”

Other than at the House gym or on the floor of Congress itself, members of the two parties have few opportunities to actually meet each other, Mr. Graves notes. The committee recommends that at the start of each new term a bipartisan retreat be held for all members and their families. And it says a bipartisan, members-only space should be created on Capitol Hill as well. 

As part of an effort to reach out, Mr. Kilmer has visited the Republican Study Committee, an influential caucus of conservative members. And Mr. Graves paid a similar call on the New Democrat Coalition, a group of center-leaning congressional Democrats.

The select committee’s proponents include some 40 House freshmen, who are eager to see a change in the highly partisan climate of the chamber, and the Association of Former Members of Congress, which includes members from both parties.

The committee is" a bright spot in all of this [partisan] noise right now,” Mr. Graves has said. 

Last November, the House extended the panel’s tenure through the end of 2020, which promises to be a politically acrimonious year that will include presidential impeachment hearings in the Senate and the November elections.

At the same time the select committee will be trying to bring sensible reforms to the way the House operates. That could pay an even bigger dividend: the realization that Republicans and Democrats can work together for the common good. 


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

The start of a new year is often seen as an opportunity to commit to new initiatives, fresh starts, and improvements in character. But we don’t need to let the calendar define our potential for progress. At every moment we can welcome inspiration from God that brings reformation and healing.


A message of love

Muhammad Iqbal/Antara Foto/Reuters
A baby is evacuated by a rescue team using an inflatable boat after floods hit a residential area in Tangerang, near Jakarta, Indonesia, Jan. 1, 2020. Torrential rains and severe flooding in the Jakarta region have killed some 30 people and displaced more than 60,000. Heavy rains are expected to continue through Jan. 10.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow. In the wake of the attack on the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, we’ll probe the disconnect between Washington and the reality in Iraq.

More issues

2020
January
02
Thursday
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