Access Utah

For soldiers who have received a severe wound to the face, there is a moment during their recovery when they must look upon their reconstructed appearance for the first time. This is known as "the mirror test." Utah native J. Kael Weston spent seven years on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan working for the U.S. State Department in some of the most dangerous frontline locations. Upon his return home, he asked himself: When will these wars end? How will they be remembered? And what lessons can we learn from them?

Women capture Utah: They photograph fires, floods, crime scenes, politicians, sports, the arts, the outdoors, families, clergy and countless personal stories. "Through Her Eyes," a photojournalism exhibit at Salt Lake City Library's main branch is sharing Utah's stories as captured through the lenses of 20 of the state's female news photographers. The exhibit, in the Lower Urban Room Gallery, will be on display through June 24.

At the heart of Shawn Vestal's debut novel "Daredevils," set in Arizona and Idaho in the mid-1970s, is fifteen-year-old Loretta, who slips out of her bedroom every evening to meet her so-called gentile boyfriend. Her strict Mormon fundamentalist parents catch her returning one night, and promptly marry her off to Dean Harder, a devout yet materialistic fundamentalist who already has a wife and a brood of kids.

“I’m a person who listens for a living. I listen for wisdom, and beauty, and for voices not shouting to be heard. This book chronicles some of what I’ve learned in what has become a conversation across time and generations, across disciplines and denominations.” That’s Krista Tippett, host of “On Being” (heard on UPR Sunday evenings at 6:00) talking about her new book “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living” Tippett has interviewed many of the most profound voices examining the great questions of meaning for our time.

In the 1960s, humans took their first steps away from Earth, and for a time our possibilities in space seemed endless. But in a time of austerity and in the wake of high-profile disasters like Challenger, that dream seems to have ended. In early 2011, Margaret Lazarus Dean traveled to Cape Canaveral for NASA's last three space shuttle launches in order to bear witness to the end of an era. In her new book "Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight" Dean serves as our guide to Florida's Space Coast and to the history of NASA.

Community farms. Mud spas. Mineral paints. Nematodes. Barbara Richardson, editor of the anthology, “Dirt: A Love Story” says the world is waking up to the beauty and mystery of dirt. The anthology brings together essays by scientists, authors, artists, and dirt lovers --admiring the first worm of spring, taking a childhood twirl across a dusty Kansas farm, calculating how soil breathes, or baking mud pies. Essayists build a dirt house, center a marriage around dirt, sink down into marshy heaven, and learn to read dirt's own language. Whether taking a trek to Venezuela to touch the oldest dirt in the world or reveling in the blessings of our own native soils, these essays answer the important question: How do you get down with dirt?

John Luther Adams is a composer whose life and work are deeply rooted in the natural world. On Monday’s Access Utah, Adams joins Tom Williams to talk about political art versus art, listeners’ interpretations of his works, and composing music for outdoor performance, among other topics. We’ll also hear some of John Luther Adams’ music.

Justin Hocking, author of the memoir, “The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld,” writes: “Fifteen years ago, I first dove into the immense, dark waters of Melville's masterpiece...I became obsessed with a book about obsession. More so when I discovered some critical work that compared Moby-Dick's narrative trajectory with Carl Jung's concept of the night sea journey—the dark passages that we all embark on, where we find ourselves floating and directionless, frightened and alone. At age thirty, I relocated to New York City. With no job prospects, it was both the boldest and the most senseless move of my life…in the wake of a painful break-up and a traumatic robbery, I soon found myself on my own night sea journey. It was a time during which, to paraphrase Joan Didion, I lost my own life's narrative. Without my own script, I clung to Moby-Dick as a kind of postmodern survival guide.” “Wonderworld,” published by Graywolf Press, also takes us into the worlds of skateboarding and New York surfing culture, and Wedn

Richard Zacks’ new book “Chasing the Last Laugh,” chronicles a poignant chapter in Mark Twain’s life—one that began in foolishness and bad choices but culminated in humor, hard-won wisdom, and ultimate triumph.

The abduction of Elizabeth Smart was one of the most followed child abduction cases of our time.She endured a 9-month ordeal after being abducted from her home in the middle of the night in June, 2002, at age fourteen. She has become an advocate for change related to child abduction, recovery programs and national legislation and is founder of the Elizabeth Smart Foundation.

Today's episode of Access Utah originally aired in October 2015.

William J. "Dub" Lawrence says "I was elected county sheriff of Davis County in 1974. On the 22nd of September, 2008, the very SWAT team that I founded in the 1970s killed my son-in-law, in my presence, as I defended them to his father, and his mother, and my children, promising them that these men were trained and professional and knew what they were doing."

In 2015 the number of visitors to Yellowstone exceeded four million for the first time. David Quammen, writing in the May 2016 edition of National Geographic magazine, asks "Can we hope to preserve, in the midst of modern America, any such remnant of our continent's primordial landscape, any such sample of true wildness-a gloriously inhospitable place, full of predators and prey, in which nature is still allowed to be red in tooth and claw? Can that sort of place be reconciled with human demands and human convenience? Time alone, and our choices, will tell. But if the answer is yes, the answer is Yellowstone."

Consider the $20 bill.

French Photographer Caroline Planque was on the USU campus recently to present portraits of, and interviews with, individuals affected by capital punishment in Texas. The Utah legislature recently considered (and did not pass) a bill that would have abolished the death penalty in the state. Planque first became interested in people who are impacted by capital punishment while attending college in Austin.

Charles Bock's daughter was 5 months old when his wife was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. His wife died two and a half years later, just before their daughter's third birthday. Charles Bock has written a new novel that's based on that experience. It’s titled "Alice & Oliver."

The 2016 Utah Legislature passed SCR9 which describes pornography as a public health crisis. The resolution has captured attention of people around the world. There has been some push-back as well.

The West, especially the Intermountain states, ranks among the whitest places in America, but this fact obscures the more complicated history of racial diversity in the region. In his new book "Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West" (University Press of Colorado), Jason E. Pierce argues that since the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the American West has been a racially contested space.

Jane Mayer, who joins us for the hour today, says that rather than what we might have thought of as a recent popular uprising against “big government” leading to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement, what has really happened is the creation of a network of very wealthy people (led by the Koch brothers) with extreme libertarian views who have bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.

We have established an Access Utah tradition: On or near Earth Day each year we invite Utah writer Stephen Trimble and other guests to talk about the earth, the land, and the environment. Here is Trimble’s suggestion for this year: “For our Earth Day program, how about addressing the future of recreation on crowded and imperiled public lands in Utah?