Readers write: Inspiring story, open communication, chain of knitting

Letters to the editor for the May 29, 2017 weekly magazine.

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Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Employees twist cashmere/linen blend and a USA sourced wool for knitting yarns at the Saco River Dyehouse on April 21, 2016 in Portland, Maine.

Inspiring story

Regarding the April 24 & May 1 People Making a Difference story about Esther Zeiher: Thank you so much, Isabelle de Pommereau. This is a beautiful story that is very well written. Thank you for sharing your talented and compassionate style of witnessing the profound and reporting it so clearly. Very inspiring!

Diane Novak

Lake Geneva, Wis.

Open communication

Regarding the May 1 online article “Should Trump chastise Duterte for extrajudicial killings instead of inviting him to the White House?
(CSMonitor.com): Keeping all lines of communication open, especially with our enemies, is the utmost of importance for world peace. 

And even though President Trump’s diplomatic efforts may not go anywhere today, his extended invitation to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has laid the foundation for plausible relations in the future.

JoAnn Lee Frank

Clearwater, Fla.

Chain of knitting

Regarding the April 10 Home Forum essay, “The mystery of knitting ... remains a mystery”: I am a knitter. In fact, I am a knitting teacher because there are many like our dear writer, Murr Brewster, who have run screaming meemies from their computers to my living room, pleading for permission to turn the screen off.

Ms. Brewster seems quite delightful and does have a handy way with a phrase, if not eventually her knitting. 

She will learn very soon that knitters are enablers. She will find her enabler, who will tutor her into enabling another newbie knitter. And so it goes! There will always be enough sticks and string to go around – and around another unsuspecting future knitter. You go, girl!

Betsy Bailey

Salem, Ore.

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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.”

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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.

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