Access Utah

For nearly 2 decades, professional photographer Jim Herrington has been working on a portrait series of influential rock and mountain climbers. The resulting book, “The Climbers” documents these rugged individualists who, from roughly the 1930s to 1970s, used primitive gear along with their wits, talent, and fortitude to tackle unscaled peaks around the world. Today, these men and women are renowned for their accomplishments and, in many cases, are the last of the remaining practitioners from the so‐called “Golden Age” of 20th century climbing.

Join us on Monday at 9:00 a.m. for our annual live broadcast from the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City on the opening day of the Utah Legislature. Tom Williams will be talking with Governor Gary Herbert and majority and minority leaders from the Utah Senate and House of Representatives. We’ll take questions via email for the governor and legislative leaders. We want to know what’s on your mind as the 2018 Utah Legislature gets down to business. You can email us during the show or right now toupraccess@gmail.com and we’ll get your question or comment on during the program.

A majority (55 percent) of Americans support the death penalty, according to the latest Gallup poll on the subject, but support continues to decline. In 1994, 80 percent supported the death penalty.

We live more and more of our lives online; we rely on the internet as we work, interact with friends and loved ones, pay bills, stream videos, read the news, and listen to music. We operate with the understanding that data that traces these activities will not be abused now or in the future. But the data tracks we leave through our health information, the internet and social media, financial and credit information, personal relationships, and public lives continuously make us prey to identity theft, hacking and even government surveillance.

There was a tie atop the 2017 Digital Trend of the Year survey conducted by theUSU Digital Folklore Project. The top trends were: #MeToo and the phenomenon of fake governmentsocial media accounts like @AltUSNatParkService. Jeannie Thomas, co-director ofthe USU Digital Folklore Project and head of the USU English Department toldthe Logan Herald Journal that when they first started the project, She “thoughtit’d be memes all the time we’d be naming. One of the things this shows me ishow much people engage with political and social justice issues.” We’ll talkwith Jeannie Thomas and Lynne McNeill, the other co-director of the USU DigitalFolklore Project and USU assistant professor of English, about #TakeAKnee(second on this year’s list). We’ll also talk about “covfefe” and much more andwe’ll ask you for your selection for top digital trend of the year.

A Cache Valley elementary school art teacher was fired after he had his class pass around prints of classical art from a collection of postcards from the school’s library, which included prints of nude paintings. The teacher, Mateo Rueda said he didn’t know those paintings were part of the set and would not have used them. This story drew international press coverage. Rueda and Cache County School district have reached an agreement in the case. We’ll talk about it on Tuesday’s Access Utah. Our guests will include Mateo Rueda and the mother of one of the students.

“I’m not saying become homeless, but do understand it opens many doors, and helps us appreciate the doors we can close.” That’s Utah native Chris Ames, writing in his book, “An American (homeless) in Paris,” out from University of Utah Press.

Today we’ll explore all things tech with Jonathan Choate from SD7 Technology Group in Logan.

From lightwoodduo.com:

Recently a group called Our Dream organized a sit-in at the Federal Building in Salt Lake City to, as the group puts it, “pressure our representatives to include protection for DACA recipients in the Omnibus Spending Bill or vote against the Spending Bill should protection not be included. And the World Trade Center Utah recently hosted an immigration roundtable with local leaders from agriculture, business, education, tech, and faith as well as political leaders to show support for immigration reforms. The event marked the launch of the iMarch for Immigration Campaign, a national day of action in all 50 states. The World Trade Center Utah thanked Utah’s Congressional Delegation for their efforts and called on them to push forward with action on a solution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients--the “DREAMers”—quickly.

GENTRI: The Gentlemen Trio was established in June 2014 and is comprised of three highly trained tenors: Brad Robins, Casey Elliott and Bradley Quinn Lever. Pioneering a signature sound that can only be described as “Cinematic Pop,” the music of GENTRI is transfused with lush, epic orchestrations and rich, dynamic three-part harmonies all composed by the group’s producer Stephen Nelson.

Recently, USU philosophy professors Erica Holberg, Charlie Huenemann, and Harrison Kleiner participated in a panel discussion with the provocative title: “Are Students Snowflakes?” Next time on Access Utah they’ll join Tom Williams to explore the tension between the value we place on free speech on college campuses and how that value can sometimes collide with the desires of students and others to not be exposed to ideas they find offensive.This discussion has obvious parallels to ongoing issues in broader society.

David Schwartz, author of “The Last Man Who Knew Everything,” joins us for Wednesday’s Access Utah.

Announcing the actions in Salt Lake City, President Trump has removed some 2 million acres from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments and split the two monuments into five. Bears Ears was split into two separate areas: Shash Jaa at 129,980 acres and Indian Creek at 71,896 acres. Together the two comprise 201,876 acres, as compared to the 1.35 million acres that President Barack Obama named last December. Grand Staircase, named by President Bill Clinton in 1996, has been divided into three monuments: Grand Staircase at 209,993 acres, Kaiparowits at 551,034 acres and Escalante Canyon at 242,836 acres. The combined areas covered by monument status in the former Grand Staircase Escalante national monument is just over 1 million acres, down from 1.9 million acres originally designated.

The Broken Country uses a violent incident that took place in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2012 as a springboard for examining the long-term cultural and psychological effects of the Vietnam War. To make sense of the shocking and baffling incident―in which a young homeless man born in Vietnam stabbed a number of white men purportedly in retribution for the war―Paisley Rekdal draws on a remarkable range of material and fashions it into a compelling account of the dislocations suffered by the Vietnamese and also by American-born veterans over the past decades. She interweaves a narrative about the crime with information collected in interviews, historical examination of the arrival of Vietnamese immigrants in the 1970s, a critique of portrayals of Vietnam in American popular culture, and discussions of the psychological consequences of trauma. This work allows us to better understand transgenerational and cultural trauma and advances our still complicated struggle to comprehend the war.

There are many needs in our communities. And many groups and individuals step up to meet those needs. Periodically on Access Utah we shine a spotlight on non-profits and individuals doing good in our communities.

Heading into the Thanksgiving holiday, when you may have some extra time for books, we’re compiling our latest UPR booklist. I’ve recently jumped headlong into the history of the Civil War. I’ll tell you which books I recommend on that subject. Elaine Thatcher, our usual co-host for these episodes, always has several fascinating books on her nightstand. She’ll share her list with us. We’ll also get recommendations of interesting new books from booksellers in Moab and Ogden. Andy Nettle from Back of Beyond Books in Moab and Kent and Julie Ann Winward from Booked on 25th in Ogden, will join.

Our guest for the hour today is visual artist Sam Vernon. This episode is a part of our ongoing series of programs focusing on Utah State University’s Year of the Arts. Sam Vernon earned her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2015 and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2009. Her installations combine xeroxed drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptural components in an exploration of personal narrative and identity. She uses installation and performance to honor the past while revising historical memory. Vernon has most recently exhibited with We Buy Gold, Interstitial Gallery, Coney Art Walls curated by Jeffrey Deitch, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Fowler Museum at UCLA and Seattle Art Museum. Sam Vernon lives in Oakland, CA and teaches printmaking as an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts (CCA). She gave a presentation recently at USU as a part of the Communitas Lecture Series in the USU Caine College of the Arts.

Today we talk with scientific researcher and historian Gregory Prince, who earned his graduate degrees in dentistry (DDS) and pathology (PhD) at UCLA. He pursued a four-decade career in pediatric infectious disease research. His love of history led him to write three books: “Power on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood,” “David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism,” co-authored with William Robert Wright, and “Leonard Arrington and the Writing of Mormon History.” Gregory Prince is winner of the 2017 Evans Biography Award for this latest book. The Evans Biography Award is administered by Utah State University’s Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, a program and research area in USU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The extraordinary story of the Russian slave girl Roxelana, who rose from concubine to become the only queen of the Ottoman empire