Access Utah

In his memoir, “The Weight of Shadows,” José Orduña chronicles the process of becoming a North American citizen in a post-9/11 United States. Intractable realities—rooted in the continuity of US imperialism to globalism—form the landscape of Orduña’s daily experience, where the geopolitical meets the quotidian. In one anecdote, he recalls how the only apartment his parents could rent was one that didn’t require signing a lease or running a credit check, where the floors were so crooked he once dropped an orange and watched it roll in six directions before settling in a corner. Orduña describes the absurd feeling of being handed a piece of paper—his naturalization certificate—that guarantees something he has always known: he has every right to be here. An exploration of race, class, and identity, “The Weight of Shadows” is a meditation on the nature of political, linguistic, and cultural borders, and the meaning of “America.”

Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) is a federally-funded program through the U.S. Department of Education that was designed to help students prepare for and succeed in college. GEAR UP is a highly competitive grant program that helps empower local partnerships comprised of schools, institutions of higher education, state agencies, and community organizations.

An ignored people who, despite all odds, were instrumental in the success of John Wesley Powell's Expeditions. Immortalized in the only existing collection outside the Smithsonian of John Hillers' 116 original 1872 albumen photographs. Now the photos are preserved and this people's incredible story of surviving and thriving in the most inhospitable place in North America can be told.

Today on Access Utah, author Margo Mowbray joins us for the hour to discuss two of her books: An Answering Flame and Havoc Red.

"What a novel my life has been!" Napoleon once said of himself. Born into a poor family, the callow young man was, by twenty-six, an army general. Seduced by an older woman, his marriage transformed him into a galvanizing military commander. The Pope crowned him as Emperor of the French when he was only thirty-five. Within a few years, he became the effective master of Europe, his power unparalleled in modern history. His downfall was no less dramatic.

Walter Link and Miriam Wollaeger, a young geologist couple in 1920s Wisconsin, set out to find oil to supply the surging U.S. demand. This exciting work will allow them to build their lives in South and Central America, Indonesia, and Cuba. But from the first posting in Columbia, they quickly discover that no women are working in the field in these places. While Walter faces the hardships and thrills of exploration in the jungles and mountains, and eventually becomes chief geologist for Standard Oil, Miriam is left behind in the colonial capitals during Walter’s often lengthy times away. She defines herself through the limited means left to a woman within their small societies: playing bridge or polo by day and dancing into the wee hours with early KLM pilots, diplomats, and the footloose sons of moneyed Americans and the European aristocracies. She also raises three children, has intimate involvements, learns the local languages, and takes up teaching. But she is not satisfied. And finally she does something

New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands’ latest book is “Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, The Second Generation of American Giants” It tells the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy.

Yoga is growing in popularity in the U.S. There were 36 million practitioners (or ~9% of the population) in 2016, up from 20.4 million in 2012, and 28% of Americans have participated in a yoga class at some point in their lives. (Yoga Journal 2016 U.S. Market Research Study). We’ll talk about Yoga, past, present and future on Tuesday’s Access Utah. Our guests include Emily Perry, Director of Yoga Studies at USU; Chantel Gerfen, Owner of Transcend Yoga Studio in Logan; Jennifer Sinor, USU Professor of English, who has been practicing yoga for ~20 years; and Michael Sowder, Poet, USU Professor of English, and affiliated faculty member in USU’s Religious Studies Program and its Yoga Studies Program, where he teaches a course on the History of Yoga.

On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness.

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

The Utah Women’s Giving Circle’s upcoming Spring Dialogue is titled “After #MeToo: A New Frontier.” The Utah Women’s Giving Circle says that their members want “to take the awareness generated by #MeToo to drive the conversation forward into solution and a new standard, answering the question,

Every year for Earth Day, we talk about the earth with writer and photographerStephen Trimble, author of “Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America,” and many other books. This time, we’ll also be talking to retired Westminster professor David Stanley and former National Park Service naturalist and planner Greer Chesher. All are editors of books in the ongoingNational Park Reader Series published by University of Utah Press. We’ll explore the literature surrounding the national parks and talk about overcrowding, crumbling infrastructure, national park policy and much more.

The world's largest land mammal could help us end cancer. The fastest bird is showing us how to solve a century-old engineering mystery. The oldest tree is giving us insights into climate change. The loudest whale is offering clues about the impact of solar storms.

We’re heartened by all the good being done in our communities by dedicated individuals and nonprofits. They sometimes don’t get the recognition they deserve, and you may want to help but don’t know where and how. Today we’re opening the phone lines, email and Twitter to give you the opportunity to spotlight a nonprofit or individual doing good in your community.

Though photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams were contemporaries and longtime friends, most of their work portrays contrasting subject matter. Lange’s artistic photodocumentation set a new aesthetic standard for social commentary; Adams lit up nature’s wonders with an unfailing eye and preeminent technical skill. That they joined together to photograph Mormons in Utah in the early 1950s for Life magazine may come as a surprise.

A terminal cancer patient rises from the grave. A medical marvel defies HIV. Two women with autoimmunity discover their own bodies have turned against them. Matt Richtel's An Elegant Defense uniquely entwines these intimate stories with science's centuries-long quest to unlock the mysteries of sickness and health, and illuminates the immune system as never before.

May 1943. The Battle of Attu—called “The Forgotten Battle” by World War II veterans—was raging on the Aleutian island with an Arctic cold, impenetrable fog, and rocketing winds that combined to create some of the worst weather on Earth. Both American and Japanese forces were tirelessly fighting in a yearlong campaign, and both sides would suffer thousands of casualties.

Generations of Ogdenites have grown up absorbing 25th Street’s legends of corruption, menace, and depravity. The rest of Utah has tended to judge Ogden—known in its first century as a “gambling hell” and tenderloin, and in recent years as a degraded skid row—by the street’s gaudy reputation. Present-day Ogden embraces the afterglow of 25th Street’s decadence and successfully promotes it to tourists. In the same preservationist spirit as Denver’s Larimer Square, today’s 25th Street is home to art galleries, fine dining, live theater, street festivals, mixed-use condominiums, and the Utah State Railroad Museum.

Here is the opening passage from Angelica Shirley Carpenter’s book “Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist:”

We’re compiling another UPR Community Booklist and we want to know what you’re reading. What’s on your nightstand or device right now? What is the best book you’ve read so far this year? Which books are you suggesting to friends and family? We’d love to hear about any book you’re reading, including in the young adult & children’s categories. One suggestion or many are welcome.