Non-fiction: The Fall of a Sparrow and three more titles
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By Steven Carroll
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Ann Pasternak Slater, Faber & Faber, $75
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T.S. Eliot’s marriage to his first wife, Vivien, has been the subject of much attention – often crudely reductive or unsubstantiated speculation. What needs to be understood, which this exhaustive and thoroughly researched biography documents, is that it was highly complex. Ann Pasternak Slater’s painstakingly compiled portrait, using diaries, letters, memoirs and Vivien’s original writings (which Eliot published), starts in 1914 when she is 26, having her first love affair, a year before she met Eliot. But the indicators of a delicate, unstable person are all there in the massive mood swings in her diary – which I have read in the Bodleian Library. It’s impossible to condense this, by turns, vivacious, talented, confronting, draining, trou
The findings of forensic science from DNA profiles and chemical identifications of illegal drugs to comparisons of bullets, fingerprints, and shoeprints are widely used in police investigations and courtroom proceedings. While we recognize the significance of this evidence for criminal justice, the actual work of forensic scientists is rarely examined and largely misunderstood. Blood, Powder, and Residue goes inside a metropolitan crime laboratory to shed light on the complex social forces that underlie the analysis of forensic evidence, says a review on the Princeton University Press website.
Drawing on 18 months of rigorous fieldwork in a crime lab of a major metro area, Beth Bechky tells the stories of the forensic scientists who struggle to deliver unbiased science while under intense pressure from adversarial lawyers, escalating standards of evidence, and critical public scrutiny. Bechky brings to life the daily challenges these scientists face, from the painstaking screeni
Common calendar, Packet papers, January 22
Common calendar, Packet papers, January 22
Ongoing
The AARP Foundation Tax-Aide Program will not be offered this tax season at any site in Mercer County because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, AARP is offering an alternative this year called the AARP Alternative Tax Preparation program (ATP). The ATP program provides direct taxpayer access to free online tax software for this year’s taxes as well as video and/or phone assistance with a certified AARP tax assister.
Rather than doing the tax return for taxpayers, certified AARP tax assisters help taxpayers prepare their own online returns.
The Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted in 1815, causing global climate change and economic disruption, which by 1819 had led new settlers to the Sangamon country. Sangamon County s humble beginnings seem so distant as we approach the bicentennial of the founding of the county on Jan. 30, 1821. Our founders owed their survival largely to the fertile soils created by glaciation, primarily during the Illinoian Period of 191,000 to 130,000 years ago. Native Americans introduced early settlers to corn and several varieties of squash, which became dietary essentials. And the utilization of corn in distillation of alcohol became one of the most traded items and facilitated economic exchanges when other forms of currency were scarce. Honey from wild bee populations substituted for cane sugars and was commonly traded. The Sangamon River and its tributaries, prairie grasses and stands of timber greeted new arrivals. Timber margins extended u