Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. He offers me a glass of his favorite, a fifteen-year-old Glenlivet matured in French oak casks. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople. My mother, who laundered so many clothes, didn’t know the shit didn’t wash off. There are days when the smell hits you. Skip to main content.sg. St. Martin’s Press. Many cancers are “idiopathic,” a Greek word meaning “of local origin,” i.e., not seemingly caused by some- thing outside the body: idio (one’s own) and pathos (suffering). “Mill Town is a powerful, blistering, devastating book. Then, people started fearing chemicals of any kind, even ones exonerated by science. Kerri Arsenault's Mill Town is a book of narrative non-fiction, investigative memoir, and cultural criticism that illuminates the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease with the central question: Who or what are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?. In the meantime, toxins accumulate in our bodies, their presence a placeholder for something that may or may not multiply out of control. “No data, no market” is their approach. --Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance He died a terrible death, his chest working overtime like he often did in the mill. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working-class town of Mexico, Maine. Their house and the business are basically one and the same, changed, appended to, refurbished over the years; the upstairs apartment Arthur’s parents lived in became a casket room; a neighbor’s property became a parking lot; and the Meaders purchased a large house next door that became their residence, which they later connected through a small overpass to the funeral home. On the wall of a downstairs guest bedroom, a photo of him skiing at Black Mountain in 1963, heading through a slalom gate. Cart All. The result, her book, is tender, enthralling, and, ultimately, devastating. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimat. No mention of his asbestosis from his work or that he was a smoker until 1986. I like Arthur’s choice of words, because death is not the kind of business you want to propagate and it’s a more accurate description of Arthur’s allegiance to the community. What kind of life have we made for ourselves when the very thing that sustains us also kills us? Nobody is coordinating such a thing. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. “Under” means less than or below, the condition beneath his actual death, and “lying” is something the death certificate may do—lie—because his esophageal cancer was supposedly gone, as the doctor indicated just months before he died. “Mill Town is a powerful, blistering, devastating book. Muskie always saw both sides to every argument, the kind of guy who went hunting as a kid but would never shoot anything. MILL TOWN: Reckoning with What Remains. Arsenault reflects on her serene hometown and … Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The Corrections. I’d love to see in the Information Booth some real information—a pamphlet outlining the path of mercury, dioxin, and other toxics the paper mill released and are part of our heritage, too. “How about a glass of scotch?” he asks with a quick lift of his eyebrows. She writes urgently about the dire effects the mill’s toxic legacy had on Mexico’s residents and the area’s ecology while evocatively mining the emotional landscape of caretaking for aging parents and rediscovering the roots of her childhood. Stream an excerpt from Mill Town, courtesy of Macmillan Audio.. But what James and I didn’t know, as we carved through those gates in our earlier years, was that we were the last in our line. Rules and procedure got us through. The mill, while providing community, work, and stability, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and our health. Was that a condition of his death? This places the burden of proof on us to prove toxics cause harm. There are lines we follow (family lines), lines we shouldn’t cross (picket lines), and lines we hardly dare to bridge (silences among ourselves). The standards for permissible amounts of toxics allowable for humans to intake usually only deal with one substance at a time, and don’t consider the burdens of one chemical or carcinogen or toxic in coordination with another, or the cumulative effects of all of them or some of them together. Imagine for a moment the United States eliminated all the toxic chemicals it has created. Arsenault had a happy childhood, but years after moving away, she realized the price she paid for that childhood. Slowly, beautifully, terribly something comes to the surface. Did toxics like dioxin bioaccumulate in my grandfather’s blood, and in doing so, crawl up the food chain to my father and probably to me? Those two words “underlying cause” seem to mock his death. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. In blue pants, a matching blue watch cap, and a short-sleeve red polo shirt exposing his brawny arms, Bunyan proffers an equally enormous ax that could clear-cut even the Amazon. $27.99. Kerri Arsenault narrates her own work and does a fine job sharing personal stories of growing up in the mill town of Mexico, Maine. By Kerri Arsenault. Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, Kerri Arsenault’s pursuit of truth is as compassionate as it is relentless. The only straight line I’ve found in this whole damn mess is the clothesline where my mother hung her wash. In the US the regulatory approach is largely innocent until proven guilty. My grandmother smoked.. She didn’t get cancer. But asbestosis, which my father definitely had, can develop into lung cancer in ten, thirty, or fifty years, and if you ever smoked like he did, the likelihood increases with every puff you take. His “failure to thrive,” may have been because the last nurse was careless and the nursing board even more so. Was it because the sacs in his lungs took all they could take? White did when he drove over that same bridge on his trips to Brooklin, Maine, but I can see where my lifelines are drawn. My father always showered after work at the mill but it didn’t matter. Arsenault writes nonfiction with the density and beauty of poetry, in this telling of the costs and tolls (environmental, physical, cultural, medical) of industrialization and its aftermath. Maine Public Radio From Arthur and Sheila Meader’s back deck in Rumford, Maine, you can hear the 176-foot drop of the Androscoggin River plowing over rocks. Emily Raboteau, author of Searching for Zion. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. What if we began to enshrine those kinds of legacies, the ones that don’t want to be found? My father’s obituary says he died peacefully with his family by his side, but that’s not true either. Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. We’ve been creating the very thing that could be destroying us in the landscape of the American Dream. At a 1964 conference on asbestosis sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences, scientists presented data showing that asbestos was found in people “who lived in the same house with workers who came home with asbestos dust on their clothes.” It turns out asbestos can cling not only to someone’s clothes, but to their lunch basket, shoes, hair, car, bedding, skin, sofa, and subsequently end up in their family’s lungs, too. One of O Magazine's Best Books of Fall 2020Newsweek’s “Must-Read Fall Nonfiction”A Publishers Weekly Top 10 books for Politics & Current Events “Mill Town is a powerful, blistering, devastating book. Yet on June 1, 2018, the EPA announced a “significant new use rule” to allow US companies to manufacture, import, and process new asbestos-containing products. He blended into the background, as improbable as that seems. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. Kerri will be joined in conversation with Lisa Huber, PhD, discussing Maine’s nickname “Vacationland” and how that myth silences communities living in the periphery of tourism. "Mill Town is a powerful, blistering, devastating book. In telling the story of the town where generations of her family have lived and died, she raises important and timely questions. But the proof is no less elusive. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. It indicates his immediate cause of death was esophageal cancer “due to (or as a consequence of)” lung carcinoma; “due to (or as a consequence of)” prostate cancer; “due to (or as a consequence of)” coronary artery disease, with “other significant conditions contributing to the death but not resulting in the underlying cause given in the above consequences: COPD, respiratory failure with PE, failure to thrive, aspiration.”. Like Kerri Arsenault I grew up in Mexico, Maine the town across the river from the paper mill that dominates life, the economy, and the environment in the River Valley. "Mill Town is a powerful, blistering, devastating book. Yet connecting asbestos exposure to lung cancer is difficult to do. And he is a man of rules, either making them or complying with them. An idiopathic diagnosis, like in my father’s death certificate, blames the body itself for its own undoing. Other Muffler Men held hot dogs, fried chicken, and one in Illinois was found holding a rocket. Perhaps it was our fault in the end. The Rumford selectmen had voted in 2009 to use $6,500 from their economic development fund to create Babe, figuring he would encourage tourists to follow his meandering line around town. But blame, like a river’s flow, is a fugitive act, because its target shape-shifts as the current of time presses forward, as fugitive as finding the link from pollution to disease. Review: 'Mill Town: Reckoning With What Remains,' by Kerri Arsenault NONFICTION: A disturbing look at the fragile existence of small-town Maine weaves personal history and environmental alarm. Each is the author of a critically acclaimed new book about contemporary America: Arsenault’s Mill Town, Hoffman’s Liar’s Circus, Maharidge’s Fucked at … But why? Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. Today, Andrew invites Kerri Arsenault, Carl Hoffman, Dale Maharidge, and Tom Zoellner to discuss how to fix America. A “powerful investigative memoir… about a soul-crushing portrait of a place….This moving and insightful memoir reminds readers that returning home—’the heart of human identity’—is capable of causing great joy and profound disappointment.”, Kerri Arsenault grew up in a small town many people in town believed in the mill, they adored it, they fought its sale, and then they have worried about its departure. That statue has been around as long as I remember, although it used to tower above the Village Shoppe across the street. Mill Town is a book of narrative nonfiction, investigative memoir, and cultural criticism that illuminate the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease with the central question; Who or what are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. John Freeman, author of Dictionary of the Undoing and Tales of Two Planets and editor of Freeman’s, The story begins with the exciting news of jobs at a new mill in the small town of Mexico, Maine. The author’s reflections and stories took me back to my childhood and my own love/hate relationship with my community. We keep them hidden in the earth, invisible to the naked eye. How could they go? What they forgot to consider was there’s not much left in town to see but Bunyan himself and those garish blue hoofprints that end abruptly at Rite Aid. The third time, I’m going to ask you, where are you working now?” Arthur always showed up. Kerri Arsenault investigated how the paper mill in her hometown of Mexico, Maine, affected the financial and physical well-being of its residents. What about before he was sick, when he worked as a pipefitter in the mill? It didn’t help that industry fought back against regulation with corruption and lies, deploying an alphabet soup of sinister acronyms like CERCLA, which sound like chemicals themselves. It’s a property where the past never recedes and the personal is always mixed with business; much of Arthur’s “bread and butter” is from the paper mill that employs the majority of residents in town. If you go to the doctor and ask, am I going to die tomorrow? While cancer is not provincial, neither are pollutants; they do not stay where we put them. As corporate greed and malfeasance abound, the community is torn between the mill jobs they desperately need and their struggles with health problems, including a … EXCERPT: “Kerri Arsenault on Life and Death in a Maine Mill Town: What We'll Never Know About Capitalism's Toxic Aftermath” from my book, Mill Town, Literary Hub. Or maybe an interactive feature so future generations can see what the world was like before we choked it with garbage that contains the half-life of a zillion years. Publisher’s Weekly list of “Best Books of 2020”, Barnes & Noble’s list of “Best Social Science Books 2020”, Amazon Editors’ Choice “Best Biographies and Memoirs 2020”, Indie Next Pick, September 2020 (by independent booksellers), Literary Hub’s “September's Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies”, Barnes & Noble’s “Essential Election Reading”, Publishers Weekly’s “Top 10 books for Politics & Current Events”, Mr. Porter’s “Ultimate Guide To Labor Day Weekend 2020”, BuzzFeed’s “Twenty-one books to get excited about this Fall”, Literary Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2020”, The Revelator’s “New Environmental Books to Motivate Action”, Oprah magazine’s “Best Books of Fall 2020”, Newsweek’s “Fall Must-Read Fall Nonfiction”, Goodreads’ “September 2020 top History/Biography Pick”, Goodreads’ “Six Great Books Hitting Shelves This Week” 9/1/20, These bookstores have been generous to me and I hope you will be generous to them: 32 Avenue Books (CO) * Arcadia Books (WI) * Auntie’s (WA) * Barnes & Noble * Belmont Books (MA) * Blue Hill Books (ME) * Bogan Books (ME) * The Bookshop of Beverly Farms (MA) * Brookline Booksmith (MA) * Brown University Bookstore (RI) * Bull Moose (ME) * Center for Fiction (NY) * City Lights (CA) * Devaney, Doak, & Garrett (ME) * Fact & Fiction (MT) * Galaxy Bookshop (VT) * Gibson’s Bookstore (NH) * Greenlight Bookstore (NY) * Gulf of Maine Books (ME) * Harvard Book Store (MA) * Hickory Stick Bookshop (CT) * IndieBound (Online) * Interabang Books (TX) * Left Bank Books (ME) * Longfellow Books (ME) * Market Block Books (NY) * Northshire Bookstore (VT) * Oblong Books (CT) * Oxford Exchange (FL) * Point Reyes Books (CA) * Politics and Prose (DC) * Powell’s (OR) * PRINT: a bookstore (ME) * RJ Julia (CT) * Rocky Mountain Land Library (CO) * Sherman’s (ME) * Twenty Stories (RI) or your favorite local bookstore, Kirkus starred review: 5/27/2020. Sign in. We commemorate resource development and industry with memorials like Bunyan or the marble bust of our paper mill’s founder, Hugh Chisholm, but we don’t memorialize the environmental consequences of their work. He says his one rule is to lead by example. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. Today scientists are certain: asbestos causes harm. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. Speaking of cause and effect, it’s what I’ve been looking for: in cancer rates, in wealth disparity, in the disappearance of the working-class, and in the past itself and all the concomitant truths it holds. MILL TOWN. Was that lying under his prognosis? Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. In 1982, on Meader & Son’s 65th anniversary, the local paper profiled the funeral home. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault's own family. Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. The model was a blank slate for whatever fairy tale we chose. Bookish and six feet four inches tall, he was a giant in real life although painfully shy (admittedly so) and smart: so smart that, as a student, he was asked more than once to substitute for his teachers when they fell ill. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. We leave his office and walk up the back stairs, through the casket showroom, through a private office on top of the garage, bang a left, and we are in the overpass. MILL TOWN: Reckoning With What Remains. Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. So when I drive back over the Piscataqua River Bridge with Mexico and Rumford in my rearview mirror, I may not see “true love,” as E. B. I was there. And even if a cancer cluster is found in your neighborhood, they may not be able to determine the exact cause or do anything about it. This profoundly important book reports on the way so many parts of America are killing the people who love them. In addition, if several family members get cancer, it doesn’t count toward the cluster evidence you need. Even if a cancer cluster is found in your neighborhood, they may not be able to determine the exact cause or do anything about it. Join us for a conversation with Kerri Arsenault on Maine Calling, at 11:00. My father’s death certificate is testimony to these things. In telling the story of the town where generations of her family have lived and died, she raises important and timely questions.” —Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. The nursing board determined there was no violation of the law and voted to dismiss my mother’s complaint a year after my father died in their care, and they considered the matter closed. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. I look at the article Arthur has copied for me. There are days when the smell hits you. I’ll never know the answers, or possibly even the right questions to ask about how he or anyone in my town died, especially if the documents were written by people who have their own story to tell. A River Runs Through It: PW Talks with Kerri Arsenault; Buy this book . Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. The price we all paid. *** I received an MFA from the New School, and studied in the Master Programme in communication for development at Malmö University, Sweden. You work in a paper mill like my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, you get cancer. I’d found no shortage of effects but determining causes was like catching pollution in plastic buckets in the wind as one environmental group tried to do. When Kerri Arsenault was growing up in Mexico, Maine, nothing loomed larger than the Rumford paper mill across the Androscoggin River, which gave her small town a measure of prosperity and security, even as mill waste polluted the river and locals nicknamed the area “Cancer Valley.” Arthur shows up for families, too. Our body burden—the total amount of toxic chemicals present in a person’s body—is exactly that: the burden an individual must bear because our regulatory organizations, science, and laws can’t or won’t. Everyone’s emotions were splintered and raw. In Kerri Arsenault's book "MIll Town: Rec... koning With What Remains," she explores the legacy of cancer in her home town of Mexico, her family's Acadian heritage and the plight of small industrial towns in America. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. When Arthur started working at the funeral home full-time as a young man, his father laid down the law: “If you want to go to a party, that’s fine. Spring is when the funeral business tends to pick up, Arthur says, when Meader & Son “serves” more families. Arthur runs a funeral home—Meader & Son—the same one his father and grandfather owned, first as a partnership and then as a wholly owned operation. Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working-class town of Mexico, Maine. Both giants memorialized and their acts equally significant, however, one deforested the woodlands and the other tried (in a way) to reclaim them, the rocky pools on the edge of the Androscoggin spanning the gap between them. By Kerri Arsenault. Arthur hired David Blouin, who is like a son, when he was thirteen. Kerri Arsenault narrates Mill Town, her examination of Mexico, Maine, the town she grew up in, uncovering stories of corporate greed and malfeasance, communities torn between needing mill jobs and struggling to stay healthy, and so much more. Mill Town by Kerri Arsenault. He pushed to overcome his shyness, a flaw he wore like a hair shirt, yet it vanished when he stood in front of a chalkboard or in front of the debate team, which he joined despite his reticence. Mill Town is for anyone who’s ever wondered about the Calvinistic calculus whereby the elect become truly wealthy while the damned (read: poor, dark-skinned, newly arrived) find early graves. Part personal story and part investigative reporting, Arsenault documents how her childhood in a typical Maine mill town illustrates the plight of the working class, and the hazards brought on by the very entities that support these working-class families. It is also our burden to decode the vernacular of toxicologists and environmentalists and academics and journalists who feed us the news; don’t we already have burdens enough? The name is still Meader & Son, but there’s no longer a son involved. We lean on science for proof but it rarely provides it. Proud at his longevity, Arthur said at the time he hoped his then three-and-a-half year-old son, James, would take up the profession after him. Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains Kerri Arsenault. When James was in high school, however, Arthur wanted him to do bigger and better things. During my father’s wake, funeral, and burial, we were shown where to stand, where to sit, where to stand and shake everyone’s hand. Against a resistant president and House of Representatives and industry inaction, he helped enact the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act by trying to answer a question he often asked himself: how do you create an environment people can enjoy while protecting it? In telling the story of the town where generations of her family have lived and died, she raises important and timely questions." For me, those legends are so big—Chisholm, Muskie, Bunyan, Black Mountain ski area, my father—that it is hard to see beyond their shadows. Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. That seemingly secure childhood “ no data, no market ” is their approach through... 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