As a professional athlete, Orr found one perk was the opportunity to meet a lot of famous people, both in and out of the sports world. Three stars of other sports he particularly admires are Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, and Ted Williams. Orr attended a few of Ali’s bouts, met him a time or two, and considered his athleticism “spellbinding” and the aura that surrounded him special. Like many pro team athletes, Orr is an avid golfer. He’s had an opportunity to play with Palmer a few times in pro-am type events and says he is in awe of the professionalism with which Palmer conducts himself at all times. He admires the way Palmer treats people, especially fans, and how he can put people at ease – even amateurs sharing a round of golf with him. It took many years for Orr to catch up with Williams. The occasion was a black-tie fundraiser for former Red Sox great Tony Congliaro at which Williams was the only person in the room not in formal attire. Orr and Williams share a love of fishing, and with true Williams focus, he took to instructing Orr on how to properly fly-cast amid all the tuxedoed VIPs.
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.
