One dog Coston treated was a mixed breed who swallowed a rock, which then blocked his intestines. Coston says the dog, Greco, was tough and seemed to be trying not to display any signs of weakness despite his pain. "Stoically, Greco stood as if planted on my examination table," he wrote. "Too macho to exhibit his discomfort overtly, he simply stared straight ahead, eyes fixed on the wall in front of him... staring at the wall as if engrossed in must-see TV." Coston operated on Greco, and the operation was successful. The veterinarian said the dog seemed to view the trouble as over and done with after the operation. "No sooner had Greco opened his eyes after surgery than he was trying to stand," Coston wrote. "Within another ten minutes, he was staggering drunkenly toward the door. His sentiments and intentions were unmistakable. 'Thanks, Doc,' he was saying. 'You did good. I'll take it from here. See ya later.' We literally had to tie him down till he was fully recovered."
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
