Welcome to MILL, the new monthly arts, music and literature publication of The Carrboro Citizen. This publication is a response to our desire and your urging for better coverage of local arts and music.
And, like our newspaper and websites, developing this new section is an organic process that needs your thoughts and suggestions.
We know that part of the task is getting people to performances and openings, giving readers the where and when and, if possible, describing the what. But we want this to be a bit more than a few feature stories and a set of monthly calendars with appropriate photos and graphics. We also want to be a place where art and literature happen — a point of direct contact between those creating works and the thousands of people who read our paper. Discovery is a part of it all, for the artist and the observer. So along with the stories about artists, you’ll find a regular feature — MILLWork — about the objects themselves.
As for literature, well, ink on newsprint doesn’t do justice to many mediums, but it still works quite well for the printed word. Fiction and creative non-fiction are nothing new to papers here in the former colonies, and we take our cue from Benjamin Franklin on this one. In that department, we start with a personal history — a true Carrboro story about a house on North Greensboro Street many of you might remember.
And we can’t describe what a joy it is to work with Phil Blank. In The Citizen, we turn him loose each week on our Land & Table page. In future MILLs, we’ll give him a little more space to stretch out and, like you dear readers, anticipate wondrous results.
Special thanks as well to our good friend Liz Holm who stepped in to help us with the design, layout and feel of the publication.
I’m done. Feel free to MILL around.
— KIRK ROSS