2022
October
05
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

October 05, 2022
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At first, they tried Zoom. During the initial months of the pandemic, after health officials had warned against singing in gatherings, choirs convened online to rehearse. The results were cacophonous. Fractional delays in sound hampered synchronous singing. 

A new documentary, “The Drive To Sing,” tells the story of how ingenuity enabled choral groups to safely commune in 2020. The story begins in the Massachusetts home of the film’s director, Bryce Denney, who has a family of singers.

“We started thinking, ‘OK, how in the world would people in multiple spaces be able to hear each other well enough, fast enough?’” says Mr. Denney. 

He went back to 1980s technology: microphones that tune in to FM radio waves. When his wife, Kathryn, and two daughters sang into microphones from different rooms, their voices harmonized with zero time lag. 

Mr. Denney made an online connection with professional singer David Newman, who’d been first to take a similar idea one step further. He’d conducted people singing into microphones in their cars. Mr. Denney and Mr. Newman shared their innovation via the internet. “The Drive To Sing” chronicles how at least 60 choirs in North America began to meet in parking lots, using wireless microphones so singers could remain inside their vehicles. 

The Denneys filmed drive-in choirs such as the Somerset Hills Harmony chorus in Pluckemin, New Jersey.

“The people in New Jersey started out with 20, 30 people. And then by the end of the year, they had 80 or 100,” says Ms. Denney. “It was really something for people to look forward to, and something for people to get out of the house for, and not worry about being sick.”

The movie captures the value of joyful communion during a time of fear.

“It was emotional for a lot of people,” says Mr. Denney, whose movie has its cinema debut at Lonely Seal Film Festival in Boston on Saturday and will later be available for streaming online. “It was more meaningful than they even expected.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

A deeper look

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor
Bridge mechanic Fuss Johnson, a born Floridian, checks how the Astor Bridge holds up against floodwaters from Hurricane Ian, Oct. 4, 2022. The St. Johns River and other major central Florida rivers experienced historic flood highs, pushing Floridians out of their homes and putting pressure on the state's insurance industry.

With great risk comes great responsibility. Florida is facing a reckoning over rising insurance costs, shifting storm patterns, and who pays to put the state’s homeowners back on their feet.

In the fight against inflation, it’s not all up to the Fed, whose rate hikes curb demand. It’s also a supply-side issue. So how close are we to solving supply-chain and labor shortages?

Patterns

Tracing global connections

Even the most doctrinaire of politicians cannot ignore reality. Some leaders seem ready to put problem-solving ahead of ideology when real-world pressures are strong enough.

Q&A

RWT/AP/File
Students at the registrar's office at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ask for forms to fill out to withdraw in protest of the expulsion of 18 classmates for their part in lunch counter sit-downs in March 1960.

The campaigns that civil rights leaders waged were as carefully strategized as military operations. They developed a plan not only for protests, but also for reconciliation. 

Marilena Umuhoza Delli/Courtesy of Ian Brennan
British poet Raymond Antrobus, who recently released a new spoken-word album, was exposed to poetry at an early age. His mother read William Blake to him; his father recited the words of socially conscious reggae icon Linton Kwesi Johnson.

British poet Raymond Antrobus has a host of awards and a mission: to inspire understanding and inclusion. His latest work, a spoken-word album that emulates how deaf people encounter sound, furthers his message. 


The Monitor's View

AP
President Vladimir Putin watches a Russian military exercise at Donguz shooting range near Orenburg, Russia, two years ago.

As Russia’s military forces lose ground in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has escalated his threats to use nuclear weapons. The United States, he said Friday, had “created a precedent” in 1945 by dropping atomic bombs on imperial Japan to force its surrender. Russia, warned Mr. Putin, will defend “our land” – which he now claims includes eastern Ukraine – “with all the forces and resources we have.”

The U.S. takes these threats seriously, promising “catastrophic consequences” for Russia as a deterrent. Yet the fact remains that ever since Russia began to lose the war soon after its invasion in February, it has not used a nuclear weapon or even prepared them for battlefield use.

One reason is that the world has rejected the 1945 “precedent” and created a strong taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. A global norm to protect innocent civilians from weapons of mass destruction has held pretty well. Even within Russia, “it is still a taboo ... to cross that threshold,” Dara Massicot, a former Pentagon analyst of the Russian military, told The Associated Press.

On Monday, the Kremlin even criticized a call by one of its loyalists, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who had advocated the use of “low-yield nuclear weapons” in Ukraine. A spokesperson said the Kremlin prefers a “balanced approach” to the issue of nuclear weapons and not one based on emotion. Russia will rely on its military doctrine of using nuclear weapons only if another weapon of mass destruction is used against it or it faces an existential threat from conventional weapons.

The rise of humanitarian law since World War II – known as the Geneva Conventions – may have helped restrain Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Its troops have killed thousands of noncombatants, yet the global outcry – and Ukraine’s studious investigation of such war crimes – could be coloring the Kremlin’s thinking on nuclear weapons.

The keeper of those humanitarian laws, the International Committee of the Red Cross, has been busy trying to protect civilians in Ukraine. Last week, ICRC Director-General Robert Mardini was in Kyiv calling for a halt to military operations around a Russian-held nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. He said any release of radioactive material from the Zaporizhzhia plant would bring “consequences for millions of people.”

More countries openly oppose Russia’s taking of Ukrainian lands and its tactics. Statements by China and India indicate those two powers do not want any military escalation. And the European Union warns that Russia’s political leaders will be held accountable for violations of international humanitarian law.

It may not seem like it to Ukrainians, but part of their defenses against Russian forces is a global norm, or international laws safeguarding the innocent. The world’s embrace of its progress against nuclear weapons can be a mighty weapon.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

How can we contribute to our communities and the world in meaningful ways? A Christ-inspired foundation is an empowering place to start.


A message of love

Maya Alleruzzo/AP
A Jewish father and son walk through a market area near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Oct. 5, 2022.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today. Please share your favorite stories on social media. Tomorrow, we’ll have a report about saving red squirrels in the United Kingdom, where their numbers are declining.

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2022
October
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