Access Utah

On Sunday, Israel’s parliament (Knesset) voted in favor of a new government, ending Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year reign as prime minister. The vote ushered in a “change government”—a coalition of eight different political parties that plan to use a rotation system to fill the prime minister’s seat. Naftali Bennett, leader of the New Right Party, will initially serve as prime minister for two years, followed by Yair Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid for two years. For the first time in Israel’s history, an Israeli Arab party will be part of the government.

Conservation groups have filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department to prevent a highway from being built through Red Cliffs National Conservation Area in Southwest Utah. The groups claim that paving over the protected land would be a violation of environmental laws which require agencies to analyze potential environmental harms before making decisions. Red Cliffs was established as a conservation area in 2009 to help recover a threatened species - the Mojave desert tortoise.

In her new book, “Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage,” Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us are grappling with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad news piles up—from climate crises to daily assaults on civility—how can we cope? Where, she asks, “do we start to get our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back . . . with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts?”

Bryan, Ohio's hospital, is losing money, making it vulnerable to big health systems seeking domination and Phil Ennen, CEO, has been fighting to preserve its independence. Meanwhile, Bryan, a town of 8,500 people in Ohio’s northwest corner, is still trying to recover from the Great Recession.

UPR broadcasts a weekly interview with Utah State University President Noelle Cockett, checking in on whatever is happening at the university that week. Earlier you heard the condensed version of this conversation. Today on Access Utah we’ll hear the full interview. We’ll talk about new rules at USU regarding face masks, vaccination rates, transitioning to a more-normal life, and we’ll look ahead to the fall.

Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As she learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis.

Almost one year ago in the midst of a global pandemic, we watched the death of George Floyd. Americans responded, protesting the realities of racial injustice in cities across the country. For many individuals, this may have been the first time they recognized the depth and breadth of discrimination in the United States, in their communities, and in their classrooms.

Gary Paul Nabhan is an Agricultural Ecologist, Ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the interaction of biodiversity and cultural diversity of the arid binational Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement.

On the eve of the Civil War, three American businessmen launched an audacious plan to create a financial empire by transforming communications across the hostile territory between the nation’s two coasts. In the process, they created one of the most enduring icons of the American West: the Pony Express.

When the state of Colorado ordered its residents to shelter in place in response to the spread of coronavirus, writers Pam Houston and Amy Irvine—who had never met—began a correspondence based on their shared devotion to the rugged, windswept mountains that surround their homes, one on either side of the Continental Divide.

Today we’ll talk with Sharon Shattuck, director and producer of the documentary film Picture a Scientist, which offers a sobering portrait of struggles women face in pursuing studies and careers in science. We’ll also be talking with Sara Freeman, USU Assistant Professor of Biology, and Sojung Lim, USU Assistant Professor of Sociology. We’ll also hear sound clips from the film.

In a recent article for Terrain.org titled “In Defense of Pinon Nut Nation,” writer and photographer Stephen Trimble says “Piñons and junipers are the size of humans. We don’t look down at them, casually, and we don’t gaze up in awe. We are equal in scale. ‘Tree’ usually means tall, vertical, but these trees often are round. They have the reserved warmth of a Native grandmother. When you live in piñon-juniper woodland, you live with the trees, not under them. You participate, you reside."

Today we bring you another live episode of DEBUNKED, a podcast combining evidence-based health practices with storytelling to challenge the stereotypes, and debunk the myths about harm reduction, substance use disorders and homelessness. We will be coming to you live from the 2021 Intermountain Tribal and Rural Opioid Wellness Summit: Bridging Harm Reduction and Recovery Communities.

In a commentary published recently at Mongabay.com, Paul Rogers, a forest ecologist and Director of the Western Aspen Alliance at Utah State University, argues that forest managers’ “goal should not be to stop wildfire but to reduce conflicts with it.”

“Sky Songs: Meditations on Loving a Broken World” is a collection of essays that takes inspiration from the ancient seabed in which Jennifer Sinor lives, an elemental landscape that reminds her that our lives are shaped by all that has passed through.

Kurt Bestor is a Utah-based composer and performer, known for his Christmas concerts, his film and television scores, and his haunting musical prayer for peace “Prayer of the Children.” He will be leading performances of “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber” in Logan on May 21 and 22.

You’ve been hearing about the violence in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and southern Israel. Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah is at his home just outside Jerusalem. He’ll join us for the next Access Utah to give us a report directly from the area. Here’s the Deseret News: “What started as a week of tense clashes in Jerusalem has escalated into violent unrest on the streets of Arab Israeli towns, as well as a deadly aerial conflict. More than 1,000 rockets lit up the skies of Israeli cities, while at least two high-rise buildings were leveled in the Israeli bombardment of the blockaded and impoverished Gaza Strip, home to 2 million Palestinians.”

Part memoir, part meditation on poetry, part conversation with her husband, friends, and the many animals that live with and around her, Katharine Coles’s The Stranger I Become probes the permeable boundary between inner life and outer, thought and action, science and experience. Coles begins this collection of lyric essays with a meditation on walking, and “the urge to move beyond, to understand myself as a stranger, estranged.”

Today our guest is Cache Valley resident Maren Johnson. She’ll tell us some fascinating stories from the world of dog sledding. For the past five years she worked for dog sledding businesses in Alaska. She lived on a glacier with 280 sled dogs. She also worked for four-time Iditarod winner Jeff King in his tourist business and assisted him in the 1,000-mile Iditarod race.

In 2019, Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal was commissioned to write a poem commemorating the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion. The result is “West: A Translation:” a linked collection of poems that responds to a Chinese elegy carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained. “West” translates this elegy character by character through the lens of Chinese and other transcontinental railroad workers’ histories, and through the railroad’s cultural impact on America.