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Upcoming Author Events for My Search for Meaning, The Myron Stories

A New Book from Hank Paper, Writer, Photographer, Former Owner of Best Video

Whether fighting an interloping bear in his basement, leading his irascible grandmother on a hair-raising tour of Old Jerusalem, or dreaming of alien body snatchers who may or may not be real, Hank Paper’s new book, My Search for Meaning, The Myron Stories, confronts the unexpected contingencies of life with humor, pathos, and, yes, even some speculative meanings for the reader.

Paper will be reading some of his favorite stories, signing books, and charming the audience with his wit and good humor at a series of upcoming Author Events including:

Thursday, April 27, 7:15 PM
Temple Beth Shalom
1809 Whitney Avenue (across from Best Video), Hamden

Saturday, May 6, 4 PM
The Institute Library
2nd floor of The Institute Library, 847 Chapel Street in the North Square Historic District, New Haven.

Thursday, May 25, 7:30 PM
Atticus Bookstore Cafe

1082 Chapel Street, New Haven.

My Search for Meaning, The Myron Stories is Paper’s first book of short stories, but he is no stranger to the craft. His stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The Sun, Pulpsmith, Portland Monthly Magazine, and New World Writing. His articles have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including Connecticut Magazine, The San Francisco Examiner and the L.A. Herald Examiner Sunday Magazine. He is also a photographer who, for the last 40 years, has exhibited widely at museums and galleries here and abroad. Both his writing and his photography have been featured in Italy Italy Magazine, Scottish Life, and Hadassah Magazine’s Jerusalem 3000 issue. Paper was the founder and, for 35 years, the owner of nationally renowned Best Video, now the nonprofit Best Video Film and Cultural Center. He was the video columnist for the Meriden-Record Journal, Portland Monthly Magazine, as well as the Journal for the Video Software Dealers of America, and he has given many talks on film, led many film series, and wrote many articles on film.

Paper has often read his stories in New Haven and has been featured numerous times on Connecticut Public Radio. He also spent eight years in Hollywood as a screenwriter, but that’s another story. (Oh wait — that story’s included in this book!)

Copies of My Search for Meaning, The Myron Stories (6x9 paperback, 162 pages, fiction/short stories, $15.00) can be purchased at the events, from Atticus Bookstore (1082 Chapel St, New Haven), from Best Video Film & Cultural Center (1842 Whitney Ave, Hamden) or by visiting www.hankpaper.com.

I'm Rick Crouse, a fourth year neuroscience graduate student at Yale and the co-president of Yale Student Science Diplomats, an organization dedicated to science communication, outreach, and advocacy. I'm writing this post to spread the word about Science Haven.

Science Haven is a collaboration between two Yale student-led science outreach groups: Yale Student Science Diplomats and Open Labs. We are interested in partnering with community leaders to bring science demonstrations and activities to neighborhood events. In addition to doing cool science activities with local families, Science Haven aims to foster a greater sense of community between scientists and their neighbors. 

This summer, we attended community management team meetings around New Haven and brought fun, hands-on science activities to events. Some examples of our activities include extracting DNA from strawberries, spinning on a stool with weights to illustrate angular momentum, throwing items in beakers of water to explain density, and listening to the nerve cells inside a cockroach's leg! We also have some cool temporary tattoos that we give to kids after completing a demo! 

If you are hosting an event--we want to bring a table, some scientists, and demos to be part of the fun! If the event has a particular theme, we can do our best to design a related special activity. If you're not having an actual event, we also have access to researchers that have prepared talks about interesting science topics geared for the public, that would love to come to your community center, church, etc. If you're feeling really adventurous, we could host a mini science fair where our graduate students and postdocs bring scientific posters they designed to explain their research to middle schoolers! And if none of this quite fits what you had in mind, let me know and we can figure something out because, more than anything, we want to bring science to where the people are. We want to put a face to the lab coat and hope to foster a sense of trust and communication between New Haven residents and their neighborhood scientific community.