2021
September
14
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 14, 2021
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Sara Miller Llana
Americas Bureau Chief

I traveled for work to Gander, the Newfoundland town that welcomed stranded passengers during 9/11, and brought my child. That’s reality as a foreign correspondent, and I’m happy to report that from Dutch politicians to Canadian authors to Slovak mayors, sources have been universally awesome about it (even pre-pandemic, when we pretended our work lives were somehow divorced from our family lives).

I always bring an iPad and headphones. That’s our deal – watch as much as you want, so long as you don’t interrupt (and, please, never for Goldfish).

In Newfoundland, I took her to an interview with Oz Fudge, the retired police constable on duty in Gander that day 20 years ago. I had the supplies, and we met next to a playground. “Go have fun,” I nudged.

But then Mr. Fudge started talking. And wow, can Newfoundlanders weave a narrative.

He talked about his daughter who dressed up as Commander Gander (the town’s goose mascot) to entertain stranded children; he talked about kids who were off from school for the week, but instead of scurrying off they helped their parents care for others (thank you, Mr. Fudge!); he talked about the role he saw for himself in the community helping to shape the next generation (when teens would get their driver’s licenses, he’d pull them over to scare them just enough to stay within the limits next time – issuing tickets that read “STFD,” or “Slow The Fudge Down”).

She was enraptured – nary a snack request to be had. It became a window for me onto what has made the story of Gander on 9/11 so magical – even musical-worthy.

Newfoundland has whales, puffins, and Vikings. But it’s Oz Fudge who captured her imagination. She hasn’t stopped talking about him since.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

President Joe Biden’s mandates have supercharged America’s debate about vaccines and personal liberty. But a look at history can offer context and a calmer lens to consider what lies ahead. 

Finding Resilience

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor
Sandra Bierman paints in an art studio at Frasier, a life plan community in Boulder, Colorado, on Aug. 20, 2021. During the pandemic, the professional artist was inspired to return to her craft after a nearly two-decade hiatus: “The creativity in there wasn’t dead."

Pandemic society views older adults as a group at risk. But many have overcome labels of frailty. You can read more articles like this one in our Finding Resilience series. 

Promoting ecologically friendly practices is not easy in Russia. But in the country’s Arctic north, locals are finding inventive ways to change the public’s interaction with their environment.

Abdallah Al Naami
Al Qarara Cultural Museum co-founder Najla Abu Lahia holds up a copper pitcher at the museum in Al Qarara, Gaza, in late August 2021.

The Gaza Strip’s first private museum holds more than artifacts from six millennia of local culture. On display are the ingredients of identity – and a sense of belonging to the land.


The Monitor's View

In a rare rebuke of Moscow last week, Germany accused the Russian security services of mounting “wholly unacceptable” cyberattacks on several members of parliament. It claimed the attacks were aimed at collecting personal information on the politicians for a disinformation campaign to influence Germany’s Sept. 26 federal election. With the outcome of the election uncertain, German leaders took the attack more seriously than previous ones.

Since 2015, Germany has been the main target of Russian disinformation in the European Union. Russia’s goal, according to an EU report last March, is to cultivate distrust and “convince citizens that their participation in the democratic process is meaningless.” One particular target group is young people, whose low voter turnout reflects their widespread disillusionment. According to a 2020 survey by Vodafone, 73% of young Germans do not feel sufficiently represented in politics.

Like other democracies, Germany realizes it cannot be mainly defensive against foreign disinformation. Hackers are moving targets able to penetrate the tiniest openings in computer systems. A better course, says German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, is to pursue a “positive agenda” that builds up social resilience to disinformation.

One of Germany’s new “positive” tools is the use of nonprofits to promote democratic participation among young people. The nonpartisan group called Unmute Now uses bus tours to survey young people about their top issues, which include climate change, drug policy, and social justice. It also helps project young people into the current election campaign – literally. At night, it projects the faces of young people onto the facades of prominent buildings as a message for politicians to take them seriously.

The idea of such campaigns is to counter one of Russia’s main false narratives: that Germany’s democracy is rigged for the elite. If more young people join in politics and turn out to vote, they will realize the truth that the political system is available for them, too.

Western democracies, states a recent report by the Center for European Policy Analysis, must play “to the greatest strengths of free societies dealing with authoritarian adversaries: the inherent attraction, over the long run, of truth.” In Germany, a truth-affirming strategy has begun, focused first on its youngest voters.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Getting to know our true nature as God’s immortal children empowers us to overcome problems of all kinds, including age-related discomfort.


A message of love

Thibault Camus/AP
The "L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped" project by the late artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, will be on view from Sept. 18 to Oct. 3. It is shown here on Sept. 14, 2021. The famed Paris monument will be wrapped in about 270,000 square feet of silvery blue fabric and with 3,300 yards of red rope. The couple began collaborating on works of art in public spaces in 1961. For decades, Christo had thought about wrapping the Arc de Triomphe, making photomontage and collage versions of the idea in 1962 and 1988, respectively. That vision is now being fully realized.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today! Tomorrow, education reporter Chelsea Sheasley examines what a “win” looks like in today’s polarized school culture wars over masks, critical race theory, and gender identity.

More issues

2021
September
14
Tuesday
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