![]() We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. 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’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. 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. ![]() We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “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. I tried to place the baby carriage.Then I had to turn and run.Ībout 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”: ![]() ![]() I imagined Eisenstein instructing the dozens of extras, the Cossack soldiers, the young mother. I had to move fast.As I viewed the steps, I wondered about the history that had occurred there. And he had a friend.The next day, Sophia met us at the military checkpoint near her parents’ apartment inside the off-limits area. I bought an old yellowed postcard featuring the grand steps at a Sunday flea market instead.This trip I was determined things would be different.The steps are still off-limits, but Oleksandr Naselenko, who guides and supports Monitor reporters in Ukraine, had an idea: Residents living inside the restricted area couldn’t be prohibited from having visitors. For unexplained “security” reasons, the area near the site was closed. Last August, I’d tried, and failed, to reach the steps. But with an air raid siren wailing and a Ukrainian soldier ordering me back, I had less than 10 seconds to take it all in.My quest to see the steps had taken much longer than that.This was my second reporting trip to Odesa for the Monitor. In perhaps the most iconic moment, a mother pushing a baby carriage is shot, with her fallen body sending the carriage down the victim-strewn steps.Last week, I found myself at the top of the Potemkin steps. If the words “stairs” and “baby carriage” together leave you shuddering, you know what I’m talking about.In Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film “Battleship Potemkin,” the 192 steps leading from the port are the setting for czarist Russia’s murderous repression of Odesans greeting the mutinous sailors of the film’s namesake ship. Though the strong bond between boy and horse only fuels his father's disdain, Ken's growing love for his friend Flicka is changing him-leading a once-aimless young man down the path to responsible adulthood, forging a new respect and understanding between father and son, and inspiring a fierce loyalty that nearly costs Ken his life.You don’t have to be a film connoisseur to know the Potemkin steps in the Black Sea port city of Odesa are the setting for one of cinema’s greatest scenes. Then one day, Ken's life is filled with new purpose when he finds Flicka, a magnificent filly as wild as she is fast. ![]() To his brusque, practical father, the boy is an enigma and a disappointment. This novel has sentiment and quality.”- Donald GordonĪ timeless favorite of adults and children alike, My Friend Flicka resides in “that borderland where some of the best-loved books in the English tongue hold their immortality.” ( New York Herald Tribune)Ī daydreamer and a time waster, young Ken McLaughlin spends his days on his family's Wyoming ranch with his head in the clouds, surrounded by endless blue skies, wide-open spaces, and beautiful horses. “A blend of Steinbeck’s short gem, The Red Pony, and Rawling’s The Yearling. ![]()
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