Access Utah

St. Anne’s Retreat, located in Logan Canyon, is well-known to Cache Valley residents due to the folklore of the place: tales of demonic nuns, evil witches, murdered babies, and more. Often referred to as “The Nunnery,” the site is a hub for thrill-seekers who trespass onto the property to see for themselves if the stories are true.

Part memoir, part meditation on poetry, part conversation with her husband, friends, and the many animals that live with and around her, Katharine Coles’s The Stranger I Become probes the permeable boundary between inner life and outer, thought and action, science and experience. Coles begins this collection of lyric essays with a meditation on walking, and “the urge to move beyond, to understand myself as a stranger, estranged.”

Quoting the Salt Lake Tribune: “In response to the uproar over critical race theory, the Utah Board of Education has approved a new set of standards that spell out what teachers can — and especially what they cannot — say to their students about ethnicity, inclusion, equity and culture.” The Utah Legislature has also passed resolutions on the topic. Today we’ll try to define what Critical Race Theory is and isn’t and talk about what should and shouldn’t be taught in Utah’s K-12 schools.

In 2019, Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal was commissioned to write a poem commemorating the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion. The result is “West: A Translation:” a linked collection of poems that responds to a Chinese elegy carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained. “West” translates this elegy character by character through the lens of Chinese and other transcontinental railroad workers’ histories, and through the railroad’s cultural impact on America.

Today we’re doing another non-profit spotlight. There are many needs in our communities and many step up to help. We’d love to shine a light on your favorite non-profit or individual doing good in your community.

In his new book, Last Best Hope, award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic George Packer explores the four narratives that now dominate American life and describe our divides: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression.

It sometimes seems like life is nothing but conflict these days, with heated disagreements on Social Media and around the dinner table. And you may be dreading a high-stakes conversation in your near future. Next time on Access Utah we’ll talk with consultant and USU lecturer Clair Canfield.

Jean Lowe is an American pop/conceptual multimedia artist whose work carefully and humorously unpacks the ironies and challenges of our 21st-century culture. Lowe employs wit and satire to create work that is both entertaining and seductive as well as intellectually provocative. Her work revolves around the intersection of popular culture, environmentalism, commerce, politics, and art history.

Next time on Access Utah, we’ll present another live episode of Debunked, the only Utah podcast combining evidence-based health practices with storytelling to challenge the stereotypes, and debunk the myths about harm reduction, substance use disorders and homelessness. This time we’re debunking the myth, “There are plenty of resources but people just don’t want the help.”

Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him.