Access Utah

Commemorating twenty years since the wolf’s return to the American West, Howl explores passions and controversies surrounding nature’s most fascinating predator. Susan Imhoff Bird travels the West, journeying from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah, through Yellowstone and Montana. Along the way, she interviews ranchers and park personnel, wolf watchers, biologists, and families, uncovering a range of emotions—from admiration and reverence to vitriol and anxiety—toward wolves and all that they have come to signify.

Emily Niehaus says she “founded Community Rebuilds to address an affordable housing need in my rural community with the larger goal of shifting the existing construction paradigm to have a lighter impact...It began as a simple idea to replace old, dilapidated housing (like singlewide trailers built prior to 1976) with homes that cost less to build and less to heat and cool for working families. The premise is to use volunteers to offset the cost of construction, utilize federal financing to offer participants a low interest rate and a reasonable payment plan, and build with sustainable materials that are dirt-cheap…literally build affordable, energy-efficient homes out of straw, sand, clay, and wood.”

In this off year election, turnout was predictably low in many areas, some areas saw a spike, but still many important were addressed. Jackie Biskupski appears to have unseated Ralph Becker for Mayor in Salt Lake City, Proposition 1 went down to defeat in the vast majority of counties, albeit narrowly in some cases. On the national scene, Ohio voters have rejected a marijuana legalization measure, Houston voters appealed an anti-discrimination ordinance and Kentucky seems to be following its neighbors in trending Republican. Today on the program we speak with Deseret News Commentator Frank Pignanelli and Michael Lyons, Associate Professor of Political Science at Utah State University.

CBS reports that the demand for butlers is on the rise, possibly because of Downton Abbey. Steven Ferry, Chairman of the International Institute of Modern Butlers, and a butler himself, says that butling can be an interesting, fulfilling and lucrative career. On Tuesday’s Access Utah, we’ll hear stories from Steven Ferry and UPR Commentator Richard Ratliff, who is special assistant to the Dean of the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University. Dr. Ratliff is professor of accounting Emeritus at USU and a trained butler. We’ll also hear how butling has been portrayed in the popular media. We’ll hear clips from Jeeves and Wooster, Gosford Park, Remains of the Day, Monk, The Andy Griffith Show, Upstairs, Downstairs, and, of course, Downton Abbey.

This broadcast of Access Utah originally aired in May of 2015.

Sherman Alexie is a major voice in contemporary American literature. He is the author of twenty books including Reservation Blues and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. The award-winning, and widely banned, young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian won him the 2007 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Just exactly where do we find the supernatural in the contemporary world? It's both pervasive--everywhere--and specific--a particular somewhere. Otherworldly traditions and stories still spread through oral narration. They pervade mass media and the digital world and often form the stuff of hypermodern folklore--the stew of folk, popular, consumer, and digital culture that constitutes much of contemporary life. People also imbue specific places--from the local haunted house or cemetery to whole towns or cities--with supernatural manifestations or significance.

Today we’ll revisit a conversation with Wyoming-based writer Craig Johnson. Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Walt Longmire mystery novels, which are the basis for Longmire, the Netflix original drama. Craig Johnson has received many awards for his books. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians.

Legendary lyricist Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof, She Loves Me, Fiorello!) visited Logan for events with the Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theater during their 2013 season. While he was in town, he sat down with Tom Williams for an Access Utah conversation.

How does the place we live inform our art? With its valleys and peaks, sagebrush and streams, the Great Basin inspires creative expression in forms as varied as its landscape. Join four distinguished artists—a filmmaker, a photographer, a novelist, and a poet—in a panel discussion about the unique inspiration discovered in the Great Basin.

Named by the Guardian as one of our top ten writers of rural noir, Bonnie Jo Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel, and funny. The strong but flawed women of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor, and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world. Such richly fraught mother-daughter relationships can be lifelines, anchors, or they can sink a woman like a stone.

Downwind: A People's History of the Nuclear Westis an unflinching tale of the atomic West that reveals the intentional disregard for human and animal life through nuclear testing by the federal government and uranium extraction by mining corporations during and after the Cold War.

Karen Armstrong, in her book “Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence” writes that: “In the West the idea that religion is inherently violent is now taken for granted and seems self-evident. As one who speaks on religion, I constantly hear how cruel and aggressive it has been, a view that, eerily, is expressed the same way almost every time: ‘Religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history.’” Armstrong asserts that: “The problem lies not in the multifaceted activity that we call ‘religion’ but in the violence embedded in our human nature and the nature of the state…”

With Bernard, her husband of fifty-five years, now in the grave, seventy-eight-year-old Harriet Chance impulsively sets sail on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise that her late husband had planned. But what she hoped would be a voyage leading to a new lease on life becomes a surprising and revelatory journey into Harriet’s past.

Dr. Douglas Johnston is a scholar, diplomat, peacemaker, and the youngest officer in the Navy to qualify for command of a nuclear submarine. He is founder and president of the Washington DC based International Center for Religion and Diplomacy.

Administrators at Copper Hills High School are getting a lesson in cultural sensitivity after a Disney-themed homecoming parade last week resulted in accusations of disrespect for American Indian history.In addition to little mermaids, Caribbean pirates, and beauties and beasts, Thursday's parade included a "Pocahontas" float complete with a tepee and cheerleaders dressed as American Indians as portrayed in the animated film.The next night, during the school's homecoming football game, members of the Copper Hills American Indian Student Association collected more than 190 signatures on a petition calling for cultural awareness and tolerance.

Community farms. Mud spas. Mineral paints. Nematodes. The world is waking up to the beauty and mystery of dirt. This anthology celebrates the Earth's generous crust, bringing together essays by award-winning scientists, authors, artists, and dirt lovers to tell dirt's exuberant tales.

Today on the program we're discussing food, starting with the latest food movement here in the U.S., food trucks. Serving food from mobile kitchens has turned into a 800 million dollar industry, as the National Geographic recently reported, citing various economic perks of food trucks rather than brick and mortar restaurants.

As part of Utah State University's Year of Water, Access Utah arranged a conversation about all-things water.