Arts + Culture

Back in 1985 Idaho's teacher in space Barbara Morgan was at the Johnson Space Center in Texas. She was one of ten finalists for the Teacher in Space program.  Meanwhile, in Idaho, her husband Clay was a smokejumper.  He says a few days before Barbara would learn whether she'd become the first teacher in space, he faced his own survival story. 

Los Angeles actress Lauren Weedman is thinking about moving to Boise. At least that’s the premise of her new one-woman play that opens Saturday at Boise Contemporary Theater (BCT.) It’s called Boise: You Don’t Look A Day Over 149 and it’s part of Boise’s 150th anniversary celebrations this year.

William March Jr. served in the U.S. military for 26 years, and spent two tours in Vietnam.  Later in life he became a circus clown and took his son Paul and the rest of his family around the country performing on the road.  They have a close relationship.  Paul March was thinking about their relationship when he asked his dad about the saddest moment in his life. 

Former NFL great Steve Young will be one of the keynote speakers at a three-day conference in Salt Lake City exploring how the Mormon faith is dealing with gays and lesbians.

The 32nd annual Affirmation International Conference begins Friday and runs through Sunday. Affirmation president Randall Hacker says he's expecting about 300 people at the gathering.

Steve Young and his wife, Barb, are scheduled to speak Saturday night. Young is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He played collegiately at Brigham Young University.

Ever since wolves were re-introduced in Idaho in 1995, they’ve been in the spotlight. No matter where you stand on wolves, their re-introduction remains a story unto itself.

Suzanne Stone remembers the day the first four wolves were released in Idaho. She was there. Stone, who's been an advocate of wolves for 25 years, told her story to Debbie Courson Smith inside the StoryCorps booth in Boise.

Actor Aaron Paul gave his fans plenty to tweet about Monday. The Idaho native says he’s rented out Boise’s Egyptian Theatre and wants everyone who can to come watch the next episode of Breaking Bad with him on Sunday. 

While the event is free, you'll need to get a ticket to get through the door. 

Art in the Park gets underway in Boise’s Julia Davis Park Friday and runs through Sunday. The event is an annual fundraiser for the Boise Art Museum (BAM). Art in the Park got its start 59 years ago when artists started hanging their work for sale on a clothesline.

Boise resident Dawn Burke wasn’t thinking about rats when she went looking for new pet.  “I always thought of rats as dirty, filthy, disease carrying…like, people have them as pets?”   She shared this with her husband Don during a visit to the Idaho Storycorps mobile recording trailer this summer.

Burke did end up with a pet rat and later founded the Rat Retreat, a non-profit sanctuary for abandoned rats. 
 

There’s been a baby explosion at Zoo Boise. Eight different species given birth in the last eight months, leading to one of the most prolific procreation years ever at the zoo. 

It all started in March when this Serval kitten made her debut. She was born March 27, 2013. Servals have tan fur with black spots. They have long legs and very big, expressive ears.  They eat rodents, small reptiles, and birds. They're native to Africa. Two other Serval kittens, Scout and Mzuri, were born in September 2012. 

About 100 people gathered at the Anne Frank Memorial Park in Boise Wednesday afternoon to remember this day 50 years ago when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech.

One of the Boiseans who attended the historic March on Washington in 1963 was Yvonne McCoy. McCoy grew up in Virginia, and was 15 at the time. She says that even as a young girl, she was involved with the civil rights movement.

The Oregon Trail passed through Idaho for hundreds of miles 150 years ago. In some places you can still see the ruts from the wagons that brought people west.

Last week archaeologist Suzann Henrikson drove a local historian and a local Boy Scout leader out to see a well-preserved part of the trail near the Snake River. Henrikson works for the Bureau of Land Management in Burley. She and her guests found something unexpected.

“Hundreds and hundreds of holes dug directly in the corridor of the trail, the ruts themselves. It’s just ghastly,” Henrikson says.

Amy and David Lorenzo thought they were prepared five years ago when their daughter was born. But they quickly found that perception and reality are two different things when it comes to children. 

The couple sat down in the StoryCorps booth in Boise recently to share their thoughts on parenthood. Amy Lorenzo describes her daughter Morgan as full of energy and love.

The typical image of Mormon missionaries going door-to-door with pamphlets is antiquated. Colby Denton says in Boise they only do it if they have a few minutes to kill between appointments. Denton is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Boise mission.

At 23-and 21-years-old Colby Denton and Davis Jones introduce themselves as Elder Denton and Elder Jones. That’s traditional for young men serving as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Both are relentlessly cheerful. Both say they wouldn’t trade their two years in the Boise, Idaho Mission for anything.

Migrant workers move from place to place to find work. In agriculture, that means going where the crops are. This was true for Estella Ozuna Zamora and her family in the 1950s and 60s. Her parents and her 12 brothers and sisters lived in Texas, but crisscrossed Idaho every year, following the crops.

Inside the mobile StoryCorps booth in Boise, Zamora told her good friend LeAnn Simmons  about what her early life was like.

Ketchum's annual Wagon Days celebration will go on as planned, despite firefighting efforts on the Beaver Creek Fire.

The news release issued Tuesday says the event is scheduled for Aug. 28-Sept. 2.

An archaeological dig conducted ahead of a northern Idaho highway project has resulted in nearly 600,000 artifacts from the late 1800s to early 1900s found at Sandpoint's original town site.

The Bonner County Daily Bee reports that officials unveiled some of the artifacts Friday from the dig conducted from 2005 to 2008.

The dig preceded the $100 million U.S. Highway 95 realignment project called the Sand Creek Byway.

The woman who starred in such films as the Miracle on 34th Street and Parent Trap celebrates her birthday today in Boise. You can see some of Maureen O’Hara’s most popular films at the Egyptian Theatre throughout the day and then dine with the actress at a benefit dinner.

O’Hara’s biographer and manager Johnny Nicoletti says her 93 birthday celebration came together after a trip in May to visit the John Wayne Birthplace Museum in Winterset, Iowa.