April 28, 1925: T.S. Eliot accepts a job at Faber and Faber publishers Previous DayApril 28CalendarNext Day Poet T.S. Eliot accepts a position as editor at Faber and Faber publishers. The job allows Eliot, who is already recognized as a major poet, to quit his job as a bank clerk at Lloyd’s Bank in London. He holds the publishing position until his death, in 1965. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a well-established family. His grandfather had founded Washington University in St. Louis, his father was a businessman, and his mother was involved in local charities. Eliot took an undergraduate degree at Harvard, studied at the Sorbonne, returned…

APRIL 28, 2011, 5:00 AM Day by Day: A Personal Story From Japan By CHRISTOPH BANGERT When we asked Christoph Bangert to write a journal-style account of his trip through Japan in late March and early April, he hesitated at first, thinking that his life was not the story. However, because he is so frequently asked for details about his travels, he gave it a try. Uster, Switzerland. Friday, March 11. 8:35 a.m. My wife, Chiho, and I are both still wearing our pajamas. We’re staring in disbelief at our computer screens: 8.8. It’s massive. After several attempts, Chiho gets through to her 70-year-old mother in Mishima. She has never…

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 April 27, 2011, 5:58 PM By PATRICIA COHEN Harper Lee, the tight-lipped author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” issued a short statement through her sister’s law firm on Wednesday saying that she had nothing to do with a coming book written about her by a former Chicago Tribune reporter. On Tuesday, Penguin Press announced that it had acquired “The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee,” a memoir by the former reporter, Marja Mills, that was “written with direct access to Harper and Alice Lee and their friends and family.” Penguin’s announcement said, “The story of Mills’s friendship with the two women recounts all…

Y ANAHAD O’CONNORAND TIMOTHY WILLIAMS April 28, 2011 A deadly tornado stretching a mile wide tore through downtown Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Wednesday evening, killing at least 15 people, flattening homes and buildings, and bringing further damage and death to a region already battered by storms. Across the state, at least 50 people were killed by storms on Wednesday alone, according to officials. The Associated Press reported an additional 11 deaths in Mississippi, two in Georgia and one in Tennessee, bringing the total number of storm-related deaths in the South on Wednesday to at least 64. The late-day tornado, one of several that struck the state, ripped through Tuscaloosa after 5…

THE A-HED APRIL 27, 2011 Descendant of Sophia of Hanover, She Would Rule Britain if 4,972 Die By PAUL SONNE ROSTOCK, Germany—Karin Vogel wakes up in this graffiti-pocked east German city and drives to the hospital where she is a therapist who counsels elderly people in chronic pain. Karin Vogel is a direct descendant of an obscure German princess from the 18th century known as Sophia of Hanover. And that puts Vogel in line to inherit the British crown–after 4,972 other people. WSJ’s Paul Sonne reports from Rostock, Germany. a few thousand people would just disappear, Ms. Vogel would be leading a far more enchanting life. She would be the queen…

April 26, 2011 All Things Considered [ 3 min. 58 sec. ] Phoebe Snow had one of the most distinctive voices in pop music. It went silent Tuesday morning, more than a year after Snow suffered a brain hemorrhage. She was 60. By Tom Cole, Neda Ulaby April 26, 2011 All Things Considered   Snow was born Phoebe Ann Laub. She actually thought she’d never be a singer because she was so shy. She told NPR in 1998 that she’d made up a name for the hammy part of herself — the part unafraid to get up on stage in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. Snow was 22 when “Poetry Man” reached…

In Memory Of A Mentor: ‘So Long,’ William Maxwell By William Lychack April 27, 2011 William Maxwell was in his 80s when I first wrote to him. An award-winning novelist and short story writer, he’d also been an editor at The New Yorker for 40 years, had worked with everyone from Nabokov to Welty, had once sat on the porch of his house as Salinger read a draft of The Catcher in the Rye to him. Thank goodness I never stopped to appreciate any of this at the time. I was in my early 20s, had just started to write, and I remember Maxwell’s advanced age gave me a sense…

source  By PAT EATON-ROBB THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: 5:35 p.m. Tuesday, April 26, 2011   Hubert “Hub” Schlafly, a key member of the team that invented the teleprompter and rescued decades’ worth of soap opera actors, newscasters and politicians from the embarrassment of stumbling over their words on live television, has died. He was 91. Schlafly died April 20 at Stamford Hospital after a brief illness, according the Leo P. Gallagher & Son Funeral Home, which handled the arrangements. A funeral was held Tuesday at St. Mary Parish in Greenwich, where he was a longtime resident. He did not use a teleprompter himself until he was 88, while rehearsing his speech for induction into the Cable…