Author Visit - Mel Allen

Mel Allen, author of Here in New England and former Yankee magazine editor, will visit the library at 1 PM on Saturday, September 12. This appearance is being co-sponsored by Altrusa of Meredith and the Friends of the Meredith Public Library. Mel will present a talk and sign copies of his book. “Listening to New England,” is a 45 minute talk with PowerPoint images by Mel Allen. Drawing from his nearly half century of reporting and writing about the unique people and places of New England for Yankee magazine, he will let you see and feel the region in a unique way. He will talk about Yankee’s past and how it has survived for 90 years since its founding in 1935. After the talk, he will answer questions and meet with audience members who wish to have him inscribe copies of his new book - Here in New England: Unforgettable people, places and memories that connect us all. Mel describes his book this way: “In Mystic Seaport in Connecticut there is an exquisite scale model of Mystic in the mid-19th century. Arthur Payne, worked on that scale model for more than 50 years. If you lean down and see it at eye level, it seems as if the whole town he has created comes to life—people working, playing, ships loading or unloading. I see the stories in these pages a little like that—miniature pictures of New England that reveal a larger life around them. To tell these stories, I have entered the lives of people for hours or days—and when they open their own lives, their hearts, the words they speak become intimate albums. They tell me details of their lives that they may not tell anyone else. And it is up to me to treat those words with deep respect. The most important words in this book’s title for me are “that connects us all.” We live now in a time where division has become the backdrop to our lives. But when I look at the stories here about people overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles, of others reaching out to help their neighbors, of entire communities pulling together when all seems lost, or of thousands of people searching a wilderness for a lost child, I see a common humanity that has always been part of the New England landscape."