Access Utah

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 retreat includes a newly excavated three-acre lake, stocked with fish, and a Wyoming homesteader so self-sufficient that he crafted the thousands of adobe bricks in his house by hand. Koppel also reports on the unrivaled disaster preparedness of the Mormon church, with its enormous storehouses, high-tech dairies, orchards, and proprietary trucking company – the fruits of a long tradition of anticipating the worst. But how,Koppel asks, will ordinary civilians survive? Ted…

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.