2022
March
11
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

March 11, 2022
Error loading media: File could not be played
 
00:0000:0000:00
00:00
Linda Feldmann
Washington Bureau Chief

They called it “five minutes in the West” – a meal at McDonald’s. In 1990, that dream became a reality for countless Russians, when the nation’s first McDonald’s opened in Moscow’s Pushkin Square. The line snaked for blocks, and by the end of Day One, 30,000 people had been served.

I was the Monitor’s Moscow correspondent then, and still have my souvenir sweatshirt featuring the golden arches juxtaposed against the onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral. And what a day it was: Musicians and actors performed. Speeches were delivered. Once inside, customers shoved their way to one of 27 cash registers – all for the privilege of overspending on a “Beeg Mek.” This video captures the excitement.

Perhaps most remarkable were the legions of cheerful young Russian employees taking orders and wishing everyone a nice day – a far cry from the usual surly Soviet “customer service.”

The food itself was a hit, tastier than the U.S. version, it seemed. Russians said, of course their McDonald’s was better, because their ingredients were locally sourced and not “full of chemicals” – the party line on American food.

But that day wasn’t even about the food. It was about being part of the wider world, about the lowering of the Iron Curtain that would soon disappear.

McDonald’s has now suspended operations in Russia – shuttering 847 restaurants – as have many other Western companies, in protest of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Will this form of sanction make a difference? Some observers are hopeful.

“Millions of Russians have very personal memories about that first McDonald’s, and the others that opened later,” says an American friend who lived there in the 1990s. “The symbolism of this closure is resonating deep in Russian society. The closing will have more of an impact than the opening, just watch.”


You've read 3 of 3 free articles. Subscribe to continue.

Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor
A member of the Ukrainian armed forces stands amid the wreckage of a house damaged by Russian rockets on the southern outskirts of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. Russia’s attempts to take the port city have so far failed, though artillery and rocket barrages have caused an exodus of citizens to safety.

Resilience in the face of seemingly overwhelming power is a main theme of this war. Our reporter visited the front lines in a southern city to examine the disparity in motivation between attacker and defender.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Peter Dejong/AP
A protester calls on NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine during a demonstration in Paris, Feb. 26, 2022. The NATO alliance has been aiding Ukraine in other ways, including by sending in machine guns, ammunition, and anti-tank missiles.

Horrors including the bombing of a maternity hospital have amplified calls for NATO to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine. But an idea that some see as a “moral imperative” is fraught with moral complexity.

Andre Penner/AP
Graffiti artist Eduardo Kobra (front left) and musicians hold letters spelling out the word "peace" during a concert of the São Paulo Philharmonic Orchestra calling for peace in Ukraine, in São Paulo, March 5, 2022.

Brazilian Ukrainians have nurtured their ethnic identity for over 100 years, keeping their language and culture alive. That is strengthening their motivation to help Ukraine now.

Points of Progress

What's going right

In our roundup, progress is reinforcing roots for Indigenous peoples in California and Venezuela, renters in a struggling Beirut, giraffes in Africa, and whales near the bottom of the Earth.

Staff

Listen

Illustration by Jules Struck

Accent discrimination at work: How do we listen better?

It can be a challenge to understand someone who speaks differently. But this man’s story shows why we all benefit when we listen with empathy and compassion. Here’s episode 3 of our podcast series “Say That Again?”

Episode 3: Whose Job Is It Anyway?

Error loading media: File could not be played
 
00:0000:0000:00
00:00

The Monitor's View

A month after declaring war on Japan and Germany in 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a letter urging him to preserve the coming season. The game is “a definite recreational asset to at least 20,000,000 of the fellow citizens,” the president wrote, “and that in my judgment is thoroughly worthwhile.”

Baseball mattered, just as it did on that July day in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Future Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry launched his first major league home run that day – as if to say to the astronauts, “Here you go, boys. Here’s a little piece of home.”

For any given date since the 1880s, there’s a baseball footnote. The game was always there to draw people together – to dazzle, to commemorate, or to salve. It was there through the pandemic, because baseball mattered, just as it had been after the Boston Marathon bombing. The rallying cry of a wounded city, “Boston Strong!,” was coined at Fenway Park.

For 99 days this winter, the pro baseball season was in doubt. The major league’s first labor dispute in a generation threatened a spring without its most enduring national symbol of hope. There were no offseason trades to parse, no February workouts to watch. Opening day was postponed once, and then – almost – once more. In a Los Angeles Times poll, 60% of fans said they had lost interest in the season due to the player lockout.

But the woes of the major league did not spell the end of the game. Sales of balls, bats, and gloves have been growing. The market reaches right around the globe, from New York to Nigeria. The minor league season is already underway. So are college ball, Little League, and softball leagues. In the sandlots where dreams are spoken out loud, younger versions of Shohei Ohtani and Fernando Tatis Jr. taunt each other until called home for supper. Because baseball matters.

And because baseball matters, the players and owners of the major league reached a five-year deal on labor conditions March 10 and saved the season. There are even hopeful signs that the dispute did some good. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the deal with a note of contrition. “One of the things that I’m supposed to do is promote a good relationship with our players,” he said. “I think that I have not been successful in that. ... It’s going to be a priority of mine moving forward.”

Older players went to bat for the guys at the margins. “It’s not about me,” said Max Scherzer, the veteran pitcher who helped negotiate better salaries for young and aspiring players. Minor league players make as little as $8,000 a year. Clubs often hold back even their brightest young prospects to prolong the day when they can demand bigger paychecks. “I’ve seen what happens to the other guys,” Mr. Scherzer told The New York Times. “Players in my position understand that there’s players in the minor leagues grinding through.”

The dispute is settled. Spring training camps are open. Fans can stop fretting over the collective  bargaining agreement, whatever that is, and get back to the issues that really matter – like that iffy checked swing call that ended last year’s playoff series between the Dodgers and Giants in the bottom of the ninth of Game 5. C’mon ump, you gotta be kidding.

Spring is coming. And baseball, for all that it’s up against, still brings it home.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

When we let the light of Christ, rather than matter-based concepts, shape our goals and actions, “restored lives and healed hearts” are a natural result, as this poem puts it.


A message of love

Mindaugas Kulbis/AP
A girl wrapped in the Lithuanian flag joins a celebration at Independence Square in Vilnius, Lithuania, March 11, 2022. The country celebrated the 32nd anniversary of its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union on Friday, recalling the seminal events that set the Baltic nation on a path to freedom and helped lead to the collapse of the USSR.

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us. Please come back Monday, when Moscow correspondent Fred Weir looks at the impact of economic sanctions on Russia.

More issues

2022
March
11
Friday
CSM logo

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Explore values journalism About us