Graham Kislingbury

After doing interviews Wednesday morning in the break room of the quieted Albany Paper Mill, I have just one Christmas wish:

May all the laid-off workers and everyone else in the mid-valley who became unemployed in this recession find good-paying jobs in 2010.

I also hope the mill will be used for something that produces jobs, but there’s no guarantee it will be. As I gazed at the 80 or so hardhats that had been tossed on the lawn as a gesture of contempt for International Paper, a more ominous thought went through my head. The orange hardhats looked like markers for what could become an industrial graveyard — something none of us want to see.

Here are videotaped interviews with four of the Albany Paper Mill workers — David Potter, Bill Rake, John Engelien and Mike Ortiz — who clocked out for the last time Wednesday. I wish the very best to them and all their fellow workers who operated a great mill.

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