Tin Mountain welcomes Milltown author Kerri Arsenault
May 06, 2021ALBANY On Thursday, May 6 at 7 p.m., Tin Mountain Conservation Center s Author Series, welcomes Kerri Arsenault, author of award winning Milltown: Reckoning with What Remains.
Arsenault was born and raised in the rural town of Mexico, Maine. Mexico, like many other towns that grew up on the banks of rivers, revolved around a mill. In this case it was a paper mill. The mill provided jobs for many people in town and those that didn t work in the mill, worked in the businesses that came to support those that worked in the mills the grocery store, furniture store, doctors, dentists and yes, even the funeral director. Playgrounds, churches, local parks and more benefitted from the generosity of the mill and some bear the name of the mill founder. A marble bust of the mill founder, Hugh J Chisholm sits in the lobby of the town hall. What we come to learn through the pages of Milltown, is that the very mill t
From the episode:
Andrew Keen: Let’s spend a couple of minutes to end this talking about what we want to see happen in 2021 and onwards. Tom, I’m quoting you here in your book,
The National Highway: “More than a flag, a tribe and ethnicity, a legal agreement, a cluster of art or production of culture, America is a civilization of whereness. Our shared geography between the oceans is the lowest common denominator within this clashing territory of strangers.” Tom, is the solution then to reestablish geography? Is that where we should begin?
Tom Zoellner: I can tell you, Andrew, that this last four years has been incredibly disillusioning for me. I grew up with certain notions of America as a kind and decent place, and those foundations of my beliefs have been shaken like they never have been shaken before. But I come down to the fact that not only was the country founded on an idea an imperfect idea, imperfectly executed, but still a good idea but also, as much as the roman