Access Utah

Homesickness today is dismissed as a sign of immaturity: It's what children feel at summer camp. But in the nineteenth century it was recognized as a powerful emotion. When gold miners in California heard the tune "Home, Sweet Home," they sobbed. When Civil War soldiers became homesick, army doctors sent them home, lest they die.

It was 2004, and Sean McFate had a mission in Burundi: to keep the president alive and prevent the country from spiraling into genocide, without anyone knowing that the United States was involved. The United States was, of course, involved, but only through McFate's employer, the military contractor DynCorp International. Throughout the world, similar scenarios are playing out daily. The United States can no longer go to war without contractors. Yet we don't know much about the industry's structure, its operations, or where it's heading. Even the U.S. government-the entity that actually pays them-knows relatively little.

On the opening day of the 2015 Utah Legislature, we’re live at the State Capitol.

Utah State environmental officials are proposing a seasonal wood burning ban in seven Utah Counties, in an effort to reduce particle polution during Utah’s winter inversions. If implemented, the proposal could become the strictest wood burning ban in the country. Residents in the affected counties (Cache, Box Elder, Salt Lake, Davis, Utah and Weber) have all been invited to attend public meetings held by the Utah Division of Air Quality, to offer input on how the proposed ban can affect their winters and impact the health of Utah's citizens.

In her latest book “The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us” Diane Ackerman writes that “our relationship with nature has changed radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad. Our new epoch is laced with invention. Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable.”

As a loving father, Paul Holton found it hard to reconcile his innate goodwill with his role as an interrogator for the Army National Guard. Until one day, deep in Iraqi territory, surrounded by the horrors of war, he realized how he could make a small but significant difference in the lives of the children all around him.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced the practice of plural marriage in 1890. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, however--the heyday of Mormon polygamy--as many as three out of every ten Mormon women became polygamous wives.

The Great Salt Lake is so big, it is visible from outer space. This so-called "Dead Sea" is a Utah gem and is teeming with life. It hosts millions of migratory shore birds, hordes of aquatic insects, algae and of course brine shrimp.

For Don Tillman--a brilliant, if socially awkward, genetics professor--order is a way of life. Methods, schedules, and data are his language. Until recently, Don had never had a second date.

Mining is part of Utah’s history and culture, and mining resources and safety are key themes in the West. The Morning Edition Book Club has selected for January: Hector Tobar’s “Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free.” The book address faith, safety, economics, technology and the survival of humanity under difficult circumstances. Utah Public Radio is beginning a UPR Chapter of the Morning Edition Book Club. We invite you to join us in reading and discussing each month’s book at www.upr.org

Stand-up comedian and “Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me” panelist Paula Poundstone will be performing in Logan on Saturday.

The latest World Health Organization weekly data showed the epidemic has killed 8,235 of the 20,747 infected people worldwide. Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia contain the vast majority of cases.

On Access Utah today we have Dr. Hope Jahren, Professor of Geobiology at University of Hawaii Manoa.

On Thursday’s AU Charles Hawley will join us from Alaska to talk about Kennecott and the history of mining.

In the words of Michael Pitre:

For our Access Utah Holiday Special, we bring back guitarist and Utah State University Professor Emeritus of Music Mike Christiansen, and University of Utah Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and playwright Tim Slover, to bring you great holiday guitar music and holiday readings on today's program. For more information on Mike Christiansen and Tim Slover, please visit their websites. From the Utah Public Radio family, we hope your holidays are filled with great music and stories, and we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

During this holiday time of year, charitable giving seems to come to the forefront. But there is a lot of good being done in our communities throughout the year. We hope to encourage this good by spotlighting several non-profit groups on Wednesday’s AU.

In a time of excess for many, some are living with less. A lot less! Tiny living has become increasingly popular in the past few years and today on Access Utah we’ll talk about this thirst for simplicity, how it’s changing the lives of those who live this way, how it’s affecting the environment around them, and if Tiny Houses could be in the future for more of us.

In his early 20s, Benjamin Franklin embarked on a “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection,” intending to master a list of thirteen virtues. He soon gave up on perfection but continued to believe that these attributes, along with a generous heart and a bemused acceptance of human frailty, laid the foundation for both a good life and a workable society.

Paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter is the museum director of the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum and author or co-author of several books on dinosaurs and Mesozoic life. His main research interests are armored dinosaurs as well as the Early Cretaceous dinosaurs from the Cedar Mountain Formation in eastern Utah. He joins us on Friday’s Access Utah.