2024
October
08
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

October 08, 2024
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Taking the word “senior” out of senior centers might seem a rather superficial and transparent change. But it isn’t. 

Today, Ashley Milne-Tyte shows that senior centers across the United States aren’t just being rebranded; they’re being transformed, because our sense of age is being transformed. Today’s seniors are active and curious. Why shouldn’t the ecosystems around them be, too?  

It’s not really about taking one word out. It’s about pouring more life in.


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Today's stories

And why we wrote them

For the past year of war in the Middle East, many critics of the Biden administration at home and abroad say its inability to restrain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has damaged U.S. stature and credibility in the region.

Today’s news briefs

• AI Nobel Prize: John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton are awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries and inventions that formed the building blocks of machine learning.
• Biden executive order: The U.S. Supreme Court has turned away a challenge from Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania to a Biden administration executive order that is intended to boost voter registration. 
• TikTok lawsuits: More than a dozen U.S. states and the District of Columbia file lawsuits alleging that the popular short-form video app is harming youth mental health by designing its platform to be addictive to children.
• Lead pipe removal: A decade after the Flint, Michigan, water crisis raised alarms about the dangers of lead in tap water, President Joe Biden sets a 10-year deadline for cities in the United States to replace lead pipes.
• U.S. water system targeted: The unauthorized activity detected on Oct. 4 prompted New Jersey-based American Water, which provides services to people in 14 states, to pause billing to customers.

Read these news briefs.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP
A supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris (left) argues about abortion rights with supporters of Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, protesting alongside an event kicking off a national "Reproductive Freedom Bus Tour" by the Harris-Walz campaign, Sept. 3, 2024, in Boynton Beach, Florida.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ballot measures supporting abortion rights helped drive turnout for Democrats in 2022. Now, a vote in Florida will test the long-term strength of that political backlash. 

Antony Paone/Reuters
Gisèle Pelicot, who was allegedly raped by men solicited by her husband, leaves the courthouse during the trial of her husband and 50 co-defendants.

Gisèle Pelicot, a French rape victim, has turned down her legal right to anonymity and demanded her name be published. She is asking that rapists, not those raped, carry the burden of shame.

Courtesy of The Florida Aquarium
With Hurricane Milton moving toward the Tampa Bay region, sea turtle biologists and veterinarians scrambled to move this sea turtle, Calintina, to safety. The turtle was washed ashore during Hurricane Helene.

As Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida, the first priority is on readying humans for its impact. Amid the preparations, scientists are also tending to animals in their care. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Thai Thoi Linh leads a tai chi class at the Open Door Senior Center in New York’s Chinatown. With increasing longevity – and all baby boomers now over the age of 60 – the center effectively serves two generations between the ages of 60 and 100.

Senior centers are evolving into active, modern cultural hubs to meet the needs of baby boomers and their Silent Generation predecessors who are living longer, more active lives.


The Monitor's View

When the rainy remnants of Hurricane Helene slammed into western North Carolina in late September, they swelled the river running through Asheville into a destructive torrent. Yet the flooding also quickened many social back eddies. The storm brought out Asheville’s “communitarian spirit,” one resident told The New York Times. Another told The New Yorker that it had “made people humble.”

More affluent residents turned to serve those less fortunate, according to many reports. Political differences that might otherwise be pronounced dissolved as people helped one another.

“We know God’s truth and we know God loves Western North Carolina, so while this tragedy surprised us, we’ve been able to see so much life change and so much redemption just through how He’s moved through our people,” Devin Goins, an executive pastor at Biltmore Church, told the Asheville Citizen-Times.

The neighborly responses shaping Asheville’s recovery will be familiar elsewhere in the storm’s path. Already hit by Helene, residents in Florida are now bracing for the arrival of Milton, Around the world, the greater impact of natural disasters from floods to wildfires is forcing communities to find social and physical resilience, which compels higher trust and compassion.

“In communities characterized by strong trust, solidarity, and active participation, responses to disasters tend to be more effective,” noted a recent study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. “Residents in such communities are inclined to assist neighbors in need by sharing resources, providing shelter, offering financial support, aiding in disaster preparedness through early warning information, and providing emotional support.”

The study found that “fostering a robust sense of concern” reduces the cost of risk and sense of vulnerability. It can also turn recovery efforts into creative opportunities that enhance equality and good governance.

A series of earthquakes that leveled buildings in Turkey last year, for example, exposed corruption in the construction sector. The recovery effort has included calls for greater transparency, accountability, and public education of civic values.

In Hawaii, where a wildfire hit the coastal town of Lahaina last year, residents are rebuilding more than their homes and shops. Restoring community involves restoring wetlands destroyed by past commercial sugarcane farming and healing the social resentments it fostered. “Right now, believe it or not, even though people say our town is gone, I look at it as the opposite,” one community leader, Keeaumoku Kapu, told The Washington Post.

Natural disasters often bring out the best in people far and wide to meet the needs of those in distress. In Asheville, church groups from St. Louis arrived with food and shovels. Rescue crews came from Colorado and Ohio to help local first responders check in on isolated residents. Local musicians have put down their instruments and picked up chain saws.

“We have two choices,” Darren Nicholson, a mandolin player in a bluegrass band, told Rolling Stone. “We either sit around and dwell on the problem or we can get into the solution.” That spirit of neighborliness turns seasons of vulnerability into seasons of trust and resilience.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Recognizing that the kingdom of heaven is a present reality frees us from constraints that would hamper productive steps forward, as a woman experienced during a job search.


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Julio Cortez/AP
Susana Ortiz fills sandbags on the beach at Davis Islands’ Yacht Basin as she prepares for the arrival of Hurricane Milton, Oct. 8 in Tampa, Florida.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

We’re so glad you spent time with us today. We have one more story for you – a bonus read from Air Force Two. Linda Feldmann traveled with Kamala Harris as she barnstormed two must-win states and began a media blitz. How did it go? Please read the story here.

More issues

2024
October
08
Tuesday
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