2022
October
28
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

October 28, 2022
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Yvonne Zipp
Features Editor

In his 42 years at The Christian Science Monitor, David Clark Scott traveled the world: He roamed throughout Latin America as the Mexico City bureau chief and reached into Southeast Asia as Australia bureau chief. He supported and counseled dozens of Monitor reporters as international editor. When he wrote columns, his favorite stories were of people taking the time to help one another. He even produced an entire podcast.

In these times, when everyone is fixated on what went wrong, it’s important to look for what is going right, and sometimes, frankly, it needs to be at the top of the page.

Dave passed on this week. On his last day of work, he pitched three stories, any one of which would have made a lovely column. But, he told me, he’d already “put a call in to the principal at the Nansemond Parkway Elementary School cuz, well, that’s the intro that tugs at my heart.”

It did mine, too, so I wanted to share it with you.

The Nansemond students in Suffolk, Virginia, have been learning a new language: sign language, so they can communicate with food nutrition service associate Leisa Duckwall, who is deaf.

It started with a fourth grade teacher, Kari Maskelony, who has deaf family members and started teaching her class. This month it spread when Principal Janet Wright-Davis decided the whole school would learn a new sign every week in honor of Disabilities Awareness Month.

“I don’t think [the students] saw it as a disability,” Dr. Wright-Davis told me over the phone. It was just a new way to communicate. Her biggest surprise? “How much they want to learn it.”

Their favorite sign: pizza.

The difference in the cafeteria is palpable, she says. Instead of pointing, as they used to, the students sign their requests. “She’s smiling and they’re smiling, and it’s just a different environment,” says Dr. Wright-Davis.

Ms. Duckwall has come to morning announcements to teach everyone new signs and has signed that day’s menu. Dr. Wright-Davis gets stopped in the hall by students signing good morning and wanting to show her what they’ve learned. Instead of stopping at the end of this month, the students are going to keep learning all year.

The school had its Trunk or Treat event Thursday evening, and the children were signing as they celebrated Halloween.

“One gentleman came out, and he was signing,” Dr. Wright-Davis says. It made her realize the lessons wouldn’t be confined to the lunchroom or even the school. “They’re going to encounter someone, even if it’s just to say good morning, or please, or thank you. ... Now they know a little bit more to show some gratitude.”

There’s plenty to learn from Nansemond: Show some gratitude, look for ways to make people feel welcome, and seek out kindness and celebrate it when you find it. Dave always did.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Oded Balilty/AP
Israeli far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir (center), head of the Jewish Power party, campaigns in Hatikva Market in Tel Aviv, Oct. 21, 2022. A disciple of extremist anti-democratic ideologue Meir Kahane, and an ally today of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Ben-Gvir has himself been convicted of incitement.

It would seem like a given that cooperation is key to political success. Yet alliances can be fragile. In Israel’s fifth election in four years, one successful partnership crumbles even as an anti-democratic union gains strength.

A deeper look

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Graduate student Sean Fulcher holds up a piece of rock taken from deep within the Earth. It’s part of a project to heat Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

To solve humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels, solar and wind power isn’t enough. Some researchers and investors are looking down, not up. Our reporter finds ingenuity powering new efforts to produce heat and electricity by tapping the Earth’s core.

SOURCE:

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

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Karen Norris/Staff

Film

Reiner Bajo/Netflix
Felix Kammerer stars as Paul Bäumer in the German version of "All Quiet on the Western Front," based on the 1929 bestselling novel of the same name.

German filmmaker Edward Berger’s version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” is an effort to help his native country continue its discourse about war and responsibility. 

Commentary

Love sometimes comes in the form of openness – even when that means revealing a brutal truth. Our commentator found that depth of love in the movie “Till.”

Listen

Where ‘the draft’ serves the nation, and the draftee too

Many countries require some form of national service. Our writer found signs of a new, balanced approach in Northern Europe, where war is at the doorstep but social responsibility seems still at the fore. From our weekly podcast.

Rebooting Conscription

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The Monitor's View

AP
An art teacher in Mumbai, India, makes paintings to congratulate new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Oct. 25.

For nearly a decade, India has been ruled by a political party rooted in Hindu nationalism. Many of its actions, critics lament, threaten a constitutional principle of secular rule by marginalizing people of other faiths, especially Muslims. Yet that sort of identity politics took a subtle hit this week from, of all places, Britain.

Rishi Sunak, whose family heritage lies in India, was chosen as Britain’s prime minister by the Conservative Party. Almost immediately, his entry into No. 10 Downing St. jolted debates among Indians around the world about their country’s treatment of minorities. Some, including prominent members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, celebrated Mr. Sunak’s rise as a justification for their brand of politics. Others saw it as a moral prompt.

“Indians in India have greeted the news of Sunak’s elevation with a feeling of awe and pride,” wrote Siddharth Varadarajan, former editor of The Hindu, India’s national English-language newspaper. “But instead of feeling happy for themselves,” he wrote, Indians should be asking what has happened “to the religious diversity and cultural pluralism that has been part and parcel of Indian life for thousands of years.”

The debate in India reflects the breadth and subtlety of Mr. Sunak’s biography. As the grandson of immigrants, he says he is more British than Indian. “I am thoroughly British, this is my home and my country, but my religious and cultural heritage is Indian, my wife is Indian. I am open about being a Hindu,” he told Business Standard in 2015.

Mr. Sunak’s combined identity marks a sharp distinction from the assertive ethnic nationalism of rulers in China, Russia, and India, as well as the nativism of a few political movements in Europe and the United States. In the same interview, Mr. Sunak drew an observation from his time as a graduate student at Stanford Graduate School of Business in California. Religion pervades political life in America, he noted, “and that is not the case here, thankfully.”

He enters office not just when Britain’s economy is reeling from record high inflation, but also at a tumultuous time for its democracy. His unique identity – shaped by a mix of experiences across countries – explains why so many in India have sought this week to claim his rise as their own. Some latch on to his Hindu faith. Others to the possibility that India might follow Britain in putting high ideals over race or religion.

For now, Britain has crossed an important threshold. Mr. Sunak’s “elevation is welcome, even precious,” wrote Janan Ganesh, a columnist for Financial Times. “His virtue isn’t competence. It is rectitude. If all he does for a couple of years is give institutions their due and obey the law ... he will be a reprieve for British democracy.”

For India, meanwhile, a debate has been renewed over treating all citizens as equal, even able to become a prime minister.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

When faced with uncertainty, we can let God’s love and peace, rather than fear, carry us forward.


A message of love

Tyrone Siu/Reuters
People picnic near the Victoria Harbour during sunset in Hong Kong, Oct. 28, 2022.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Have a great fall weekend! We’ll see you on Halloween, when Sarah Matusek will report in from a Colorado softball field, where women in their 60s through 90s are finding joy in taking their turn at bat.

More issues

2022
October
28
Friday
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