Access Utah

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.

Rita Moreno is one of few people to hold the awards "Grand Slam" -- Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony. In her twenties, after her Oscar win for "West Side Story," she didn't work in Hollywood again for seven years, because she refused stereotyped roles. She's see as a trailblazer. And she's having, at 83, a well-deserved very good year.

Award-winning filmmaker Helen Whitney says “forgiveness is elusive, mysterious, primal...an idea and an ache that is rooted in existential concerns.” PBS describes her film Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate this way: It “provides an intimate look into the spontaneous outpouring of forgiveness: from the Amish families for the 2006 shooting of their children in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.

Writer David Quammen's working life bounces back and forth between topics such as grizzly bear conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, close to home, and the study of lethal viruses that emerge from bats and chimpanzees and rodents in places like the Congo. Quammen will present on Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world, at this year's Shift Festival in Jackson Wyoming. He joins us on Access Utah today.

In the spring of 2005, acclaimed environmental photographer James Balog headed to the Arctic on a tricky assignment for National Geographic: to capture images to help tell the story of the Earth’s changing climate. Even with a scientific upbringing, Balog had been a skeptic about climate change. But that first trip north opened his eyes to the biggest story in human history and sparked a challenge within him that would put his career and his very well-being at risk.

“Is suicide wrong, profoundly morally wrong? Almost always wrong, but excusable in a few cases? Sometimes morally permissible? Imprudent, but not wrong? Is it sick, a matter of mental illness? Is it a private matter or a largely social one? Could it sometimes be right, or a "noble duty," or even a fundamental human right? Whether it is called "suicide" or not, what role may a person play in the end of his or her own life?” These are questions posed and addressed in a new book published by Oxford University Press with the full digital version hosted online by the Marriott Library at the University of Utah. The book’s editor is Margaret Pabst Battin, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Medical Ethics at the University of Utah. Her comprehensive historical sourcebook, “The Ethics of Suicide: HIstorical Sources,” will be presented at an event on Monday, October 5th - 12:00 - 2:00 pm at the J. Willard Marriot Library, Gould Auditorium, level 1.

The 21st Annual Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture will take place in the Logan Tabernacle, 50 N. Main Street, on Thursday, September 24, at 7 p.m. The title is "Narrating Jane: Telling the Story of an Early African American Mormon Woman." Jane Elizabeth Manning James was among the early African American converts to Mormonism. After joining the church in the early 1840s, James remained a faithful member until her death in Salt Lake City in 1908. Although she was well-known among church members during her lifetime, James was largely forgotten after her death. The lecture will be presented by Quincy D. Newell, a specialist in the religious history of the American West. After more than a decade on the Religious Studies faculty at the University of Wyoming, she now teaches in the Religious Studies department at Hamilton College. Newell is currently writing a biography of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, which will be published by Oxford University Press.

This is an encore presentation of "Access Utah."