Access Utah

Our guest for the hour today is Utah author David G. Pace whose debut novel Dream House on Golan Drive is published by Signature Books. It is the year 1972, and Riley Hartley finds that he, his family, community, and his faith are entirely indistinguishable from each other.He is eleven. A young woman named Lucy claims God has revealed to her that she is to live with Riley’s family.

When NPR’s Robert Siegel suggested that the harpsichord is viewed as old and not enormously popular, Iranian-American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani responded: “I think these things would only matter to Americans. As long as there's a place for sundials and gardening and beautiful things, there's a place for the harpsichord. I completely reject the idea that the harpsichord is old and I reject the idea that something old is therefore not good or not popular. Lots of things are old. Lots of traditions are old. I like it because it's beautiful.”

Photographer Jonathan Diaz says “I have always been fascinated by the power and poignancy of a child’s imagination. Children are not afraid to dream big: they believe anything is possible. They are innocent. With this innocence comes dreams and honest aspirations that, from the view of an outsider, might seem impossible. However, through the eyes of a child, such dreams are absolutely obtainable.” Diaz is creator and photographer of Anything Can Be and a book “True Heroes” which features the dreams of 21 children are or were fighting cancer. Each child is featured in a professional photo shoot depicting his or her dreams. And 21 authors (including such best-selling writers as Shannon Hale, Brandon Mull, Ally Condie, and Jennifer a. Neilsen) were commissioned to write a story, featuring one of the children as hero.

The holiday season is a time for celebration and family togetherness. It’s supposed to bring us joy. But Christine Moll, chair and professor of counseling and human services at Canisius College and a mental health counselor, says that for many the holidays are a time of stress, loneliness, anxiety, and dysfunction. On Wednesday’s AU, as we head into the holiday season, we’ll ask you what you do to make the season joyful. And how do you de-stress during the holidays? We’ll get advice from Christine Moll and Marriage and Family Therapist and Rage Against The Minivan blogger, Kristen Howerton. We’ll also turn to writers Sarah Cottrell and Michael Levin for humorous takes on holiday stress.

In "Frank: The Voice" (2010), James Kaplan told the story of Frank Sinatra's meteoric rise to fame, subsequent failures, and reinvention as a star of live performance and screen. Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentieth century-infinitely charismatic, lionized and notorious in equal measure. Kaplan examined the complex psyche and turbulent life behind that incomparable voice, from Sinatra's humble beginning in Hoboken to his fall from grace and Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity.

Alex Honnold exploded onto the climbing scene in 2008 after a free solo of Moonlight Buttress in Zion National Park. Now one of the most famous adventurers in the world, he climbs without a rope, without a partner, and without any gear to attach himself to the wall.

Brenda Tracy, writing for Sports Illustrated says "At first I couldn't say the following words without getting a lump in my throat and tears welling in my eyes. Today these jarring words roll off my tongue. 'I was gang raped.' I start a lot of speaking engagements with that sentence. You think you get nervous talking in front of a crowd? Try sharing intimate details of the worst event in your life with complete strangers. ... My gang rape happened 17 years ago, and statistically nothing has changed. How do we improve the numbers? How do we prevent my story from happening again?"

Writer and explorer Gretel Ehrlich is author of 13 books, including "The Solace of Open Spaces." She has written for National Geographic, The Atlantic, Orion, and other publications. Her recent writing has covered everything from her experience being struck by lightning, to essays about how climate change has been affecting the Arctic communities in Greenland that she has been visiting for the last 16 years. Writing in Harper's Magazine she notes that "the ways in which these Greenlanders get their food are not much different than they were a thousand years ago, but in recent years Arctic scientists have labeled Greenland's seasonal sea ice 'a rotten ice regime.' Instead of nine months of good ice, there are only two or three. Where the ice in spring was once routinely six to ten feet thick, in 2004 the thickness was only seven inches even when the temperature was -30 degrees Fahrenheit. 'It is breaking up from beneath,' one hunter explained, 'because of the wind and stormy waters. We never had that before.

Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several states are affected. For those without access to a generator, there is no running water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical supplies are dwindling. Devices we rely on have gone dark. Banks no longer function, looting is widespread, and law and order are being tested as never before. In his New York Times bestselling book “Lights Out,” longtime Nightline host Ted Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on America’s power grid is not only possible but likely, that it would be devastating, and that the United States is shockingly unprepared. Koppel reports that, the federal government, while well prepared for natural disasters, has no plan for the aftermath of an attack on the power grid. In the absence of a government plan, some individuals and communities have taken matters into their own hands. Among the nation’s estimated three million “preppers,” Koppel introduces us to one whose doomsday re

The amount of student debt across the country adds up to almost 1.3 trillion dollars. As a comparison, that is almost how much US currency is in circulation today. Last Thursday students across the country gathered on college campuses for the Million Student March, calling for free tuition at public universities, cancellation of all student debt, and implementation of a $15 minimum hourly wage for university employees.

Last week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released an updated handbook for lay leaders of Mormon congregations mandating church discipline for same-sex couples who marry and prohibiting their children from receiving baby blessings or being baptized until they reach age 18. Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said the new policies are designed to protect children from conflict, not to limit the opportunities for children in the church. According to the Deseret News, protesters in Salt Lake City on Sunday said the new policy perpetuates inequities and called on the church to reverse course.

In some polls, about 25 percent of Americans deny climate change is happening at all. Others know they should care, but want to be spared the details and believe they can’t do anything to affect the outcome anyway. Dennis Dimick, National Geographic magazine's Executive Editor, Environment, says, “These are the people that National Geographic thought about every day in putting together November’s...magazine...devoted to exploring climate change and timed to coincide with the global climate conference in Paris.” The special Climate Change edition is organized into three categories: How do we know it’s happening? How to fix it? and How to Live With It?

In his new book “The Generals” historian Winston Groom tells the intertwined and uniquely American tales of George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, and George Marshall - from the World War I battle that shaped them to their greatest victory: leading the allies to victory in World War II. These three remarkable men-of-arms who rose from the gruesome hell of the First World War to become the finest generals of their generation during World War II redefined America's ideas of military leadership and brought forth a new generation of American soldier. Their efforts revealed to the world the grit and determination that would become synonymous with America in the post-war years.

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.