Author Archives

Em Perper
Bookseller, writer, editor.

Resolving to Read, Write, and Travel More in 2016

Let’s be real: My 2016 resolutions are intentionally vague. I tend toward self-loathing, so settling on achievable goals is important for my mental health. But I’m still excited for a fresh year and a fresh start, even if time is a social construct. My intentionally vague, utterly achievable resolutions are as follows: Read more…

The Evangelical Scientist Preaching Climate Change

Photo: Nattu

The weather in the United States this “autumn” has been bizarre. I live in Maryland, and we’ve had seventy degrees fahrenheit one day, forty degrees the next, then sleet, then sunshine—and I’ve never been able to traipse around town sans winter coat in December before.

With that in mind, let’s revisit Ann Neumann’s 2014 interview with Katharine Hayhoe, “climate evangelist.” Flouting the stereotype of the anti-science Evangelical Christian, Hayhoe champions the reality and urgency of climate change. She is conservative in her politics and her spirituality, sure, but she’s deeply concerned for the planet’s welfare and sees environmental protection as a Christian imperative. Needless to say, her stance is threatening to many Evangelical Christians, including Republican politicians. For others, it’s the permission they need to face reality.

It’s a common perception that science and religion are mutually exclusive. But there are many scientists who would consider themselves to be spiritual people. Not only that, but in the case of climate change—a scientific issue with strong moral implications and difficult decisions to be made—it’s essential to connect the science to our values. And for many of us, our values come from our faith.

For Christians, doing something about climate change is about living out our faith—caring for those who need help, our neighbors here at home or on the other side of the world, and taking responsibility for this planet that God created and entrusted to us. My faith tells me that God does want people to understand climate change and do something about it.

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We’re Going On A Bear Hunt in New Jersey

Photo: GoToVan

As sunlight waned, Tom and I drove back to our hunt site to see if we couldn’t surprise a bear at dusk, when the animals tend to feed. But the bait pile was undisturbed. We found only the seating pads we’d left behind, and we set out to make a last pass over the trails. Tom’s mood was mellow. It had been, for the most part, a peaceful day in the woods, and it was time to consider other dinner options. Tom was thinking pizza.

Shotgun blasts, three of them, came at intervals. Echoing at a distance, they reminded me of nothing so much as what you hear in Westerns—reports from revolvers, fired at close range by unhurried men sure of their targets. “Sounds like somebody’s got a bear,” Tom said, cocking his head. “That, or else it’s a deer hunter who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

—Ursus americanus isn’t the first animal to come to mind when you think of New Jersey, but the black bear is native to the state. Their population, once depleted by colonial Dutch immigrants, has risen into the thousands. Chris Pomorski joins avid hunter Tom Slaughter (yes, that’s his real name) on a bear hunt, visiting the woods and a check station for hunters to register their “harvests.”

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Kudzu, an Invasive Plant, Is Not Going to Devour the South

In college, I had a professor who declared that every true work of Southern literature mentioned a dead mule. He was being facetious, of course, but he was not wrong—there are certain images that pervade regional literature over and over again, serving as signifiers or metaphors. Kudzu is one of those images. If you’ve never come across kudzu before, whether through literature or geography, it’s a plant. Specifically, it’s “a quick-growing eastern Asian climbing plant with reddish-purple flowers, used as a fodder crop and for erosion control.” And: “It has become a pest in the southeastern US.” (Thanks, Google Definitions.)

At Smithsonian Magazine, botanist Bill Finch slices through the mythos surrounding this meandering vine and its political and economic roots.

I’m not sure when I first began to doubt. Perhaps it was while I watched horses and cows mowing fields of kudzu down to brown stubs. As a botanist and horticulturist, I couldn’t help but wonder why people thought kudzu was a unique threat when so many other vines grow just as fast in the warm, wet climate of the South…

Still, along Southern roads, the blankets of untouched kudzu create famous spectacles. Bored children traveling rural highways insist their parents wake them when they near the green kudzu monsters stalking the roadside. “If you based it on what you saw on the road, you’d say, dang, this is everywhere,” said Nancy Loewenstein, an invasive plants specialist with Auburn University. Though “not terribly worried” about the threat of kudzu, Loewenstein calls it “a good poster child” for the impact of invasive species precisely because it has been so visible to so many.

It was an invasive that grew best in the landscape modern Southerners were most familiar with—the roadsides framed in their car windows. It was conspicuous even at 65 miles per hour, reducing complex and indecipherable landscape details to one seemingly coherent mass. And because it looked as if it covered everything in sight, few people realized that the vine often fizzled out just behind that roadside screen of green.

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It’s in the Stars: A Reading List About Astrology

In 2015, I started to copy my weekly horoscopes into my journal. I didn’t do it every week, but I did it often enough that it became something like a practice. I subscribed to several astrological-themed TinyLetters, which led to three hours researching tarot, which led to…well, you get the idea. 2015 was rough, and it feels right to start off 2016 on an optimistic, mystical note.

1. “Stars—They’re Just Like Us!” (The Editors, n+1, Winter 2016)

“As skeptics have long argued, part of what makes astrology appealing (and so easily proven “true”) is that each sign of the zodiac has a cluster of traits assigned to it that may be found in nearly any person. Astrology could thus be seen as a humanizing corrective to other, worse stereotypes. To consider that the shy person is sometimes wild, the considerate person sometimes duplicitous, is to practice something rather like empathy.”

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‘Do You Want to Be Matched?’

Jun Gak Han is a one-man matchmaking machine. He’s a solo operation working out of Queens, catering to single Koreans and their concerned family members. Perhaps even more fascinating than Han’s present career is his past—he and several of his brothers escaped North Korea for Seoul, then the United States, during the Korean War. At Narratively, Susan M. Lee encourages Han to tell his life story:

Han attributes his business tenacity to the harsh experiences of his early life. “When you have to survive, your mind lights up and you become bright,” he says.

As for the secret to finding love, he reveals none of his secrets—only that instinct and intuition seem to prevail. “Three seconds,” he says. “You know in three seconds.” When he met his wife, he recalls simply: “I instantly liked her. After talking to her a while, I found out that she was a good one.”

His advice for couples seeking harmony is equally straightforward: “There’s a thing that a man wants to hear from his wife. What is it? ‘You can do anything you want.’ And women want to hear ‘You’re beautiful, I love you.’”

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The Political Past of Adult Coloring Books

Today, bestselling “adult” coloring books boast scenes of aquatic life, gardens and flowers, mandalas and cityscapes. But in the 1960s coloring books were a bit more satirical, more political cartoon than leisure activity:

Not only did coloring books show adults a childishly simple view of a corrupt world, they also showed how a child could be corrupted in the process of learning. When the child is instructed to color the executive gray, she sees the absurdity of conformism, but ultimately learns to take part in it by following the instructions. For adults, the conceit of a return to childhood offered the chance to reject the system and embrace entirely new principles; this questioning of the norms of America society would also stoke the emerging civil rights, anti-war, and women’s liberation movements.

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Living With Depression: A Reading List

Photo: JìD

The holiday season isn’t easy. Even the most well-adjusted person has to deal with stressful family members, strained finances, and travel logistics. Mental illness exacerbate these stressors even more. Not every story here is about depression during the holidays, specifically; I’ve interspersed my own experiences with depression, anxiety and panic disorders. I made this list for you who might be struggling with the gloom of winter (hello, seasonal affective disorder!), and for me. I took notes—in an actual notebook!—on these stories, on definitions and symptoms and experiences. “We read to know that we are not alone,” so sayeth C.S. Lewis, via William Nicholson. I want you to know that this holiday season, you are not alone. Read more…

Five People Who Shaped 2015: A Reading List

Photo: Youtube

Here are five people who influenced the world in powerful ways in 2015.

1. The Pro Protester
“In Conversation with DeRay Mckesson.” (Rembert Browne, New York Magazine, November 2015)

Over the eight months that followed [the 50th anniversary of the march at Selma], DeRay’s fame grew in a manner unprecedented for an activist. From showing up at protests from Charleston to Baltimore to Minneapolis, to getting an audience with multiple presidential candidates, to increasingly having the ear (or eye) of those in many corners of the social-media-consuming public (from the followers to the haters to the famous), his impact in 2015 has been undeniable.

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We’ll All Float On: An Examination of the Sensory Deprivation Tank

Photo: Jon Roig

Onstage at the 2013 Float Conference—Float On’s annual gathering of float tank researchers, manufacturers, owners, and enthusiasts—next to a humongous pile of salt, a man asked the audience a simple question: “What do you think of Justin Bieber floating?”

—It’s called “floating.” Not just colloquially. There are franchises, retreat centers, books and consulting companies, all dedicated to the physical (and sometimes the New Age/metaphysical) benefits of a quick dip in an isolation tank. Proponents of floating say it’ll reach the ubiquity of yoga, massage or chiropractic, and soon. Luke Stoddard Nathan lampoons the typical first-person exploration of sensory deprivation and goes deep at The Awl.

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