Access Utah

Saturday, September, 21, will mark a historic moment for members of the LGBT community in Utah: the first Provo Pride Festival is planned for that day. Utah has held an annual, 3 day long, pride festival in Salt Lake City since 1983. Utah Pride started quite small but has grown to include national headliners and recent attendance has reached to well over 20,000 people.

Dorthea Lange and Ansel Adams are two of the most well-known photographers of the 20th century. Lange humanized American's struggle for economic and social justice through her documentary photography, while Adams' landscapes spurred environmental protection of the wild places of the American West. These two household names had already defined Western portraiture and landscape when Adams and Lange undertook a joint venture to document the changing ways of life in three Mormon towns (St. George, Toquerville, & Gunlock.)

In the spring of 1985 the Museum of Modern Art held an international exhibition of the year's most significant artists. Out of 169 artists showcased, only 13 were women. Infuriated, a group of women found themselves protesting the museum and created The Guerrilla Girls.

Several days a year Cache Valley’s air quality is worse than the air in big cities such as Beijing, China. Today on the program Utah State University environmental engineer Randy Martin, joins us to talk about what’s causing the pollution in cache valley and the State strategies to clean it up so everyone can breathe easy.

Frontiersman, colonizer, missionary to the Indians, and explorer of the American West, Jacob Hamblin has long been one of the most enigmatic figures in Mormon history. In a new biography “A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary” Todd Compton disentangles many of the myths and controversies surrounding Hamblin and presents a portrait of a true pioneer who lived life at the geographical, cultural, and spiritual boundaries of his era.

“Self” has many definitions. Science has demonstrated that 90 percent of the cells in our bodies are bacteria—we are in many respects more non-self than self. In “Lousy Sex: Creating Self in an Infectious World” Gerald Callahan explores the science of self, illustrating the immune system’s role in forming individual identity. Blending scientific essay with deeply personal narrative, he uses microbiology and immunology to explore a new way to answer the question, who am I? Through stories about the sex lives of wood lice, the biological advantages of eating dirt, the question of immortality, the relationship between syphilis and the musical genius of Beethoven, he creates another way, a chimeric way, of seeing ourselves.

Last week, in part one of our three-part series on K-12 education, we talked about State Senator Aaron Osmond’s proposal to end compulsory education in Utah. Today, in part two of the series, we talk to Senator Osmond himself. He says that parents, not schools, are ultimately responsible for their children’s education.

Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit—which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. According to investigative journalist Radley Balko, Nixon’s War on Drugs, Reagan’s War on Poverty, Clinton’s COPS program, the post–9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, always at the expense of civil liberties.

On August 28, 1963, thousands marched on Washington in support of civil rights. The assembled crowd of more than 250,000 heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On Access Utah (on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom) we ask: has the dream articulated by Dr. King been realized? What progress has been made? What remains to be done? What is your dream? How are we progressing towards it? What does this anniversary mean to you?

State Senator Aaron Osmond recently argued that teachers are being forced to become surrogate parents, expected to do everything from behavioral counseling to providing adequate nutrition, to teaching sex education and that some parents act as if the responsibility to educate, and even care for their child, is primarily the responsibility of the public school system. He is proposing that we end compulsory education in Utah. We’ll get reaction from Lily Eskelsen Garcia, former Utah teacher and current National Education Association Vice President.

Terry Tempest Williams’ mother told her, “I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won’t look at them until after I’m gone.”

Enchanted by electricity as a boy, William Kamkwamba wanted to study science in Malawi's top boarding schools. But in 2002, his country was stricken with a famine that devastated his family's farm and left his parents destitute. Unable to pay the eighty-dollar-a-year tuition for his education, William was forced to drop out and help his family forage for food as thousands across the country starved and died. But William refused to let go of his dreams. He embarked on a daring plan to bring his family a set of luxuries that only two percent of Malawians could afford--electricity and running water.

When it was published in 1997, The Wall Street Journal called Terryl Givens' “The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy” "one of the five best books on Mormonism." Now, in the wake of a tidal wave of Mormon-inspired artistic, literary, and political activity--ranging from the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon, to the HBO series Big Love, to the political campaign of Mitt Romney--Givens has updated the book to address the continuing presence and reception of the Mormon image in contemporary culture. “The Viper on the Hearth” shows how nineteenth- and twentieth-century American writers frequently cast the Mormon as a stock villain in such fictional genres as mysteries, westerns, and popular romances.

According to a study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 28 percent of Americans have no confidence they will have enough money to retire comfortably -- the highest figure in the study's 23-year history. 41 percent do say they are at least somewhat confident. How confident are you? Until recently most of our attention has focused on accumulating assets for retirement; now as baby boomers retire, there is a lot more emphasis on managing money IN retirement to make it last. How much do you need for your retirement? Can you rely on the stock market to safely leverage your savings? How will recent changes in health care and other laws affect your retirement? What if you are self-employed or relying on a pension?

Moab resident Steph Davis is a superstar in the climbing community. But when her husband made a controversial climb of Delicate Arch, the media fallout and the toll on her marriage left her without a partner or an income. Accompanied by her beloved dog, Fletch, she set off in search of a new identity and discovered sky diving. Though falling out of an airplane is antithetical to a climber’s control, she discovered new hope and joy in letting go.

For decades, Walter Cronkite was known as "the most trusted man in America." Millions across the nation welcomed him into their homes, first as a print reporter for the United Press on the front lines of World War II, and later, in the emerging medium of television, as a host of numerous documentary programs and as anchor of the CBS Evening News, from 1962 until his retirement in 1981.

A mother talks about the gap between when her son is seen as "normal," and when he's seen as "not normal." She's talking about his invisible disability - a disability which at first glance isn't readily apparent, and includes intellectual impairments such as autism. Given the misperceptions and mistaken judgments people with invisible disabilities frequently encounter, a film, “Invisible Disabilities:

Are GMOs or Genetically Modified Organisms beneficial or dangerous to global health? Are GMOs critical to sustainability or a danger to the environment? Should companies have the right to patent seeds? Can GMOs co-exist with organic farming? We’ll seek answers to your GMO questions from Jennifer Reeve, USU Associate Professor of Organic and Sustainable Agriculture; David Hole, USU Professor of Plant Breeding/Genetics; and Amelia Smith Rinehart, U of U Associate Professor of Law. You can join the discussion by email or on our Utah Public Radio Facebook page.

Eastern Utah’s Uintah Basin has seen sharp increase in economic development in recent years with oil and gas extraction leading the way. Uintah County has grown by 29% in the last decade. With this growth has come an increasing air quality problem. A coalition of public health and conservation groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency last year, saying the agency is failing to protect the Uintah Basin from high levels of air pollution. Can industry and cars coexist with good air? Do we face a choice between jobs and a healthy environment? And what about climate change? Is oil and gas extraction in eastern Utah contributing to climate change? What can and should be done?

Young people in the United States are entering the youth justice system in shocking numbers, and many seem to come out worse than when they went in. More than half of incarcerated kids are likely to re-commit crimes after being released. Some wonder whether exposure to the system itself could be perpetuating a life of crime. On the other side of the world, a New Zealand youth court has incorporated restorative principles of justice adapted from Maori culture, bringing victims and offenders together to resolve disputes. In Maori history, a crime put the community out of balance. Traditional Maori justice seeks to restore that balance. Focusing on rehabilitation more than punishment, New Zealand has seen great success and set a precedent for youth justice around the world.