Access Utah

The producers of the new documentary film "The True Cost" note that there has been a 500% increase in clothing consumption in the past two decades, and that the U.S. has gone from producing more than 90% of its clothing in the 1960s to just three percent today. They say that the price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically.

Welcome to Access Utah. Small farmers are increasingly women these days. They are currently raking in roughly 13 billion dollars in produce every year. Today on the program, Sheri Quinn talks to Audrey Levatino, a female farmer, who left her teaching job to start a small sustainable farm selling cut flowers, pretty much all by herself. She is the author of "Woman Powered Farm."

We'll dive into some great Mariachi music and learn its history on Thursday's AU. We'll talk about how Mariachi music conveys Mexican culture, in Mexico and around the world, and we'll hear music performed by Lila Downs, Selena, and Vicente and Alejandro Fernandez, among others.

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. Such images don't fit with our national mythology, which celebrates the restless individualism of immigrants who supposedly left home and never looked back.

A joint initiative of Utah State University and the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress will conduct a field-school project, beginning next week, for a field project called Voices: Refugees in Cache Valley. Designed to collect the stories and life experiences of refugees, the project will seek voices from Karen, Burmese, Eritrean, and other refugee communities in Cache Valley, Utah. We'll talk about the project and hear stories of refugees who've settled in Utah on Tuesday's Access Utah.

What does it mean to feel? The study of emotions has emerged as a central topic in the new discipline of affective neuroscience. In their new book, "The Feeling Brain," Elizabeth Johnston and Leah Olson trace how work in this rapidly expanding field speaks to fundamental questions: What is the function of emotions? What is the role of the body in emotions? What are "feelings," and how do they relate to emotions? Why are emotions so difficult to control? Is there an emotional brain?

Before launching her popular blog, "One Good Thing by Jillee," Heber City resident Jill Nystul was a newscaster battling a long list of demons. Suffering from postpartum anxiety and struggling to care for her four children, including a young son with celiac disease and diabetes, Nystul turned to food and alcohol for comfort. Her alcohol consumption eventually spiraled into an addiction that nearly cost her her family. Finally, after a yearlong marital separation and a hard look at herself in rehab, she realized that she needed to turn her life around. She began simply: blogging about one good thing each day.

In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great enticed German farmers to settle in Russia. The German communities remained distinct from the Russians linguistically and culturally. Julie Mangano is descended from such German settlers in Russia, as is the modern-day protagonist, Linden St. Clair, of her new novel “Braha.” The contemporary side of the novel revolves around Linden trying to uncover the truth behind the death of her beloved grandfather, Franklin, a wealthy rancher in rural Somerville, California. The second story comes from the memoirs of Linden’s great-great grandmother, Leena Lagerlöf, née Weiss, an ethnic German born in Russia, who fled in the last days of the czars. Both tales speak of lost loves and of truths dangerous and hidden.

Recently, tens of thousands of workers protested across the U.S. demanding a $15.00 per hour national minimum wage. Many say that even working full time or more they can't provide for their families. We'll examine income inequality on Tuesday's AU.

UPR listeners are curious about everything. We're always wanting to learn something fascinating. That's why we're avid readers. Periodically we come together on Access Utah to build a UPR Book List, and we're going to do it again on Monday. So we're asking: What are you reading? We're looking for everything from fiction, non-fiction, and classic literature to young adult and children's books. It might even be a textbook or manual that you can recommend. You can email your list to us right now at [email protected].