A review by trentthompson
Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains by Kerri Arsenault
3.0
Excerpts that I liked:
When “organic recycling companies” who do “risk assessments” tell us something is acceptable or unacceptable, we generally go along. We pay them to furnish us with facts. Plus, who of us has the time or knowledge to chase such things around?… I wonder if we have become inured to this kind of discourse, a gaslighting of sorts in which the definitions of words are as slippery as the sludge itself. If we aren’t sure what things mean, our circuits get scrambled and we lose the thread, then we lose control. And if we lose control, someone else takes over, and where are we then? Whether it’s “winter stockpile” or “organic recycling company” or “acceptable risk” or “inconclusive studies,” it all starts to feel inconclusive itself. This contortion of language illuminates the gap between truth and perception until the two concepts converge and we no longer know what’s what. (p. 36-37).
We say in our homes and churches and halls of government we value human life, a species at the very top of the food chain, but even there, we insert a hierarchy that determines who among us are species of moderate concern: poor people live downwind and downstream more often than not; rich people can own the Woods more easily than others; one football team gets plastic turf while the other gets mud soaked grass. Who then will speak up for those of us at the bottom rung? (p. 191)
…Save the environment or save the forest-related jobs? Give the woods to the tourists who propose to guard them or to the locals who will use them for economic prosperity? Do we yield to government regulations or business pursuits? Loggers, coalitions, environmental groups, tourists, nature lovers, pinwheel-eyed liberals, hunters, hikers, and disenfranchised millworkers… we all wanted the same thing; we wanted the woods for ourselves. (p. 187)
Even though we are generally alike in our desire to be fed, closed, housed, loved, we zero in on differences—in political parties and dinner parties—perpetuating a cycle of divisiveness that does nobody any good. (p. 254)
When “organic recycling companies” who do “risk assessments” tell us something is acceptable or unacceptable, we generally go along. We pay them to furnish us with facts. Plus, who of us has the time or knowledge to chase such things around?… I wonder if we have become inured to this kind of discourse, a gaslighting of sorts in which the definitions of words are as slippery as the sludge itself. If we aren’t sure what things mean, our circuits get scrambled and we lose the thread, then we lose control. And if we lose control, someone else takes over, and where are we then? Whether it’s “winter stockpile” or “organic recycling company” or “acceptable risk” or “inconclusive studies,” it all starts to feel inconclusive itself. This contortion of language illuminates the gap between truth and perception until the two concepts converge and we no longer know what’s what. (p. 36-37).
We say in our homes and churches and halls of government we value human life, a species at the very top of the food chain, but even there, we insert a hierarchy that determines who among us are species of moderate concern: poor people live downwind and downstream more often than not; rich people can own the Woods more easily than others; one football team gets plastic turf while the other gets mud soaked grass. Who then will speak up for those of us at the bottom rung? (p. 191)
…Save the environment or save the forest-related jobs? Give the woods to the tourists who propose to guard them or to the locals who will use them for economic prosperity? Do we yield to government regulations or business pursuits? Loggers, coalitions, environmental groups, tourists, nature lovers, pinwheel-eyed liberals, hunters, hikers, and disenfranchised millworkers… we all wanted the same thing; we wanted the woods for ourselves. (p. 187)
Even though we are generally alike in our desire to be fed, closed, housed, loved, we zero in on differences—in political parties and dinner parties—perpetuating a cycle of divisiveness that does nobody any good. (p. 254)