The Best of Talent Should Never Lack for a Stage

   The best of talent should never lack for a stage. No, rather, the community should see the talent as one of its greatest resources and showcase the entertainers to visitors. When the airline drops off a load of passengers, greet them with invitations to step two feet to the right (so to speak) and hear one of the greatest violinists in the world.

   That would be Lindsey Stirling. She is actually from Arizona, I believe, but is part of the Utah culture, and it is here where much of her creative work is done. Not just her violin playing, but her videos are fantastic, viral sensations on the Internet.

   Let her have a stage near the airport. When the visitor touches down, make it easy and accessible to take in one of the quick such entertainment values such as Lindsey Stirling. Even make it so someone on a layover can catch a quick show.

   In turn, this would greatly benefit the careers of the entertainers. Regardless how good they are, if they are not given a place to showcase their talents, it is much for naught. They will go nowhere in life on talent alone if that talent is not placed before the public. Talent is no bigger than its stage. You might be the greatest in all the world, but if you are never given a chance to perform, who will know?

   What is the biblical expression? That we shouldn't hide our talents under a thimble, but place them on candlesticks? That is good direction for the entertainers, themselves, but it is also wise advice for the community. If the community wants to reap the benefits of its people's talents, it should seek for ways to place them on candlesticks.

Have the Area Around the Airport Give a Welcome Like None Other

    The land around an airport should have a value like none other, but doesn't. Instead, we place such things as industrial parks next to them.
   Would that Salt Lake did it differently. Would that Salt Lake saw the land as opportunity, and treated the land as a jewel. Why not place next to the airport those who use it most, to the extent that that is possible?
   Large corporations fly folks in and out. Why not leave land available near the airport for them to locate there, should they ever want to? Tourists fly in and out. Why not locate near the airport some of your tourist attractions? Convention-goers fly in and out. Why not have convention facilities there?
   The sky is an entrance gate to your city, and in some cases to your state. Why not roll out the red carpet in the land around the airport? Make it a jewel. Make it a showcase. Why not say "Welcome" by putting your best foot forward right when you greet those arriving from the skies?
   Put on your best face. Put on all your make-up and rouge, for you don't get a second chance to make a first impression.
   Have everything well-landscaped, of course. But, that is just the start.
   Some of the businesses you seek to attract might end up being tourist attractions, themselves. I think of Hershey's, and how it attracts tourists to Pennsylvania. So, seek to place around your airport businesses that people might be excited to visit.
   Bring all the entertainment venues you can into your airport district. Concerts from national and international stars are a plus, but also curry and showcase your own entertainment. The best of your local musicians should never lack for a stage, as you are putting them forward as if to say, "Look what we've got!"
   Kind of a Branson, Missouri, or Austin, Texas, approach.
   But, you put some twists on it. Say, bring in the best high school or college choirs from across the land, and always have one performing. It occurs to me that many colleges have wonderful performing groups, yet there perhaps is no venue in all the country that caters just to them. Or, seek out the best child singers, and have a venue just for them. Or, showcase the best violin players, and/or best organists, and/or best banjo players in all the land.
   Make yourself the capital of the world for whatever does not already have a place that showcases and caters to it. Chess? Become the capital. Always have a grand master on hand willing to play the tourist in a blind-folded game. Make this the place to come to if you want to get a game against a grand master or to see how you fare on a ladder-board with the best chess talent in all the land. If the best chess players need a town to move to where they can perform daily, make this the place.
   Establish a destination-worthy museum. Maybe have a world-class amusement park. Have a circus that never leaves town.
  Have a smorgasbord- or potpourri-of-Utah visitors center, which showcases and teases all the outlying attractions in the state, and provides travel arrangements to get there.
    All nations flowing here? There are a lot of things Utah could do to capitalize on the tourist industry, and creating a welcome district near the airport seems to me a wonderful idea. Fortunately -- if only for the moment -- we still have a lot of land there that could be used for these things. Maybe it's best that we not let the land go to industrial parks and prisons.

 

Sift the Bad Out of the Prisoner's Life, and Leave the Good

    When you send a person to prison, you should not tear from his life the things he is doing that are good. Rather, you should remove the bad activities and leave the good.
   Is he going to church? Let him continue. Is he going to school, or studying? Let him study in prison? Is he working? Don't take work away from him. Don't slap a TV in front of him and teach him to be idle.
   Is he doing good things for his wife and children? Let that continue. If there are things that are wrong about his relationship with his family, you will want to correct or remove those things. But, let the positive aspects continue.
   There is an inventory that should take place as the convict enters prison. All the good activities he is doing, and all the good characteristics he is displaying, should be encouraged. There should be room made for them with him in prison.
   And, the bad? The bad friends, the bad habits, the wasteful hobbies? Those things should be removed, as much as possible.
  A good prison should be a sifting center, sifting the bad out of his life, and leaving the good.

If You Want Him to Become a Working Class Person, Work Him

  If you were trying to rehabilitate a person, would you take out of his life the things he was was doing that were good? If you had an image of who you wanted him or her to be, would it not include being a working-class person, taking care of his family, and engaging in meaningful activities?
  In separating the prisoner from society, sometimes we also separate him from activities we should want to foster, not remove from his life.
   So, why do our prisons take work away from the criminal?
  Enter, the work prison. Many prisons already have work programs. I understand Utah's Point of the Mountain facility has a wonderful work program. But, I wonder if more could be done. I'd rather guess that no prison, anywhere, has all its prisoners working eight hours a day.  But, if, per chance, there already exists such a prison, I hail it.
   The work prison then. In this prison, the person puts in an eight-hour day the same as he would on the outside. In this prison, the idea is to teach them to be productive members of society. Rather than slapping a TV in front of their faces for five years, or however long they are in prison, and training them in how to watch a TV, they are trained to work. And, not only to work, but to love work.
   If you want him to be a working class person once he gets out, work him while he is in there.
   Start him on ditch digging, perhaps. If you like, have them dig trenches and fill them right back up. Teach them that sometimes this is the type of work they get stuck in in life, and if they find no other work, to be satisfied in it, to be grateful for it, for it pays for them to make their way in life.
  Pay them for it, and watch as their families come visiting, and they turn the money over to the family.
   Have an assembly line business right within the prison. After they have experienced the ditch digging, graduate them to the assembly line.
  But, here's the trick. Be searching for more. Be searching for their talents, searching to get them doing something they will enjoy. Maybe they will become soda pop makers. Maybe they will become care givers. Find a way within those prison walls, to let them do things of interest to them. Develop their talents and skills, and let them do work that gives them a sense of accomplishment.
  All that you want the prisoner to be when he gets out, should be instilled in him while he is in the prison. And, this includes being a working-class person.

Don't Build a Prison There; Save Land Near the Airport for Other Uses

   While government might choose the site near the airport for the prison, it is that site that has the most potential for other uses. Land near an airport has a value like none other, as large corporations appreciate (well, they should) locating next to airports, since they are prone to fly people in and out. Land near an airport has potential for hotels and for convention centers. Salt Lake might not grow into needing the land near for these purposes for many years to come. Still, there is some wisdom to leaving that land for those uses, so it will be available when needed.
   Other uses for the land near the airport? If we could persuade entertainment endeavors to locate there, that would be helpful, as conventions often like having food and entertainment nearby. Corporations entertaining guests also appreciate food and entertainment endeavors being close by.
   Other uses? Locate a destination-worthy amusement park there, or a world-class museum of some sort. Right, now Salt Lake benefits from having so much land near the airport yet available, that it could be used for all these tourist-friendly things.
  Right now, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints benefits from having conventions so close, as the visitors can spill over and visit Temple Square. Should the church want to, though, it could develop a visitor's center right near the airport, plugging into visitors it is not reaching now. In turn, having the church represented there fits in with offering visitors tourist-type attractions to visit.
  A prison? I have a much grander vision of what the land near the airport should be used for.

(Blog slightly changed 6/7/15.)

The Model for a Good Prison is the Home

   The home is the best thing to model a prison after. It is in the home that values are learned, that character is molded, and that principles of right and wrong are stamped. It is the home that we, as society, have always relied on to teach people the difference between being a good person and being a bad person.
   So, how does our model translate when we operate a prison? For one thing, we will need one-on-one attention. Parenting is such a concentrated effort that one parent usually does not take a job, but instead stays at home because of the need to be constantly with the children. A nursery might have 20 children, but not a home (at least not usually). At any rate, if you got too many children, the parent would have difficulty attending to them all.
   So it is with a prison: We need someone with them constantly during waking hours, and there needs to be enough of these workers that the prisoners are getting one-on-one attention.
   What else does a home provide? While watching her children, the parent is on constant watch for misconduct. If the child swears, picks on another child, steals another's toy, or whatever, the parent is all over it, immediately telling the child that what he is doing is wrong.
   So it should be with a prison. The workers should monitor every interaction the prisoner makes with other prisoners and with visitors, correcting the inmate every time another person is belittled, every time a voice is raised in anger, and every time a cheating action is taken in a game of cards.
   The rules of conduct have ever been learned this way, by someone watching every move and offering a voice of direction each time the person does something wrong. Home taught us how to correct people, but we never learned, never got far enough to apply it to our prisons.
   There is one more element of home life that needs applied to prison life: love. It is the essence of what homes are about. The child learns as he is nurtured in love. He wants to learn because of the love. He wants to please the person who loves him.
   Do we suppose we can reform the prisoner if we don't teach him the values he needs? Do we suppose we can reform the prisoner without providing him a loving environment? Mother has ever been the master at teaching good from bad, and she has ever been known for her love. We should tip our hat to her, and learn her ways.

Note: Blog updated, added to, that is, 6/3/15.

Location, Location, Location also Bears Value with Prisons

   High-tech industries need location. Headquarters for large corporations need location. Malls and shopping centers need location. But, prisons? Shuffle them off to the side. Put them in out-of-the-way places. Give them the spots left over when every other place has been spoken for.
  Or, does prime real estate have just as much value to a prison as to a business?
  Make no mistake, off top, part of why I want the prison to have a prime site is, I believe we can do a number of things to make prisons more effective, but those things will require more volunteers and workers. And, they will need to be the best of volunteers and workers. Having the largest pool possible from which to select your workers, to me, is as important to a prison as it is to a business.
   And, having the best prison we possible should be of utmost importance to us. If we could rehabilitate our prisoners, would that not be about as great of thing we, as a society, could do?
   So, tell me again why location makes no difference for a prison?
   Prisoners need examples and they need love. Is is so easy to find those traits, that we do not need to select from a large pool of people? Do we not want to make it as easy for workers and volunteers to get to the prison? Do we not want to have every advantage in persuading them to work at the prison?
   Teaching the prisoner good principles of family life should be important. Do we not, then, not want the prison to be as close and accessible as possible so family members can visit?
   Oh, there are other things which make a prison important. You need to be close to the courts, the psychiatrists, and such. You need to have adequate infrastructure,such as roads and utilities. You need to have a large enough site for all your needs.
   But, being situated convenient to attract the best workers and volunteers is the real reason for landing a prime site. Just as it important to most businesses, so is it important to a prison.