American Consulate, Hermosillo
April 13, 1988
Elder Tom Perry1
Council of the Twelve
Church Office Building
Dear Elder Perry:
We live in Mexico so we don't always get Conference on the radio or TV. While others were enjoying Easter Conference, my wife and I were listening to last October Conference on tape.
I was much impressed by your thoughts last fall regarding the Jubilee concept. Reflecting on the activities surrounding John Taylor's First Jubilee of this Dispensation, similar thoughts had crossed my mind when the Church celebrated its sesquicentennial. While there were some marvelous commemorative activities, there was to my disappointment, and so far as I am aware, no announcement of a Jubilee Year.
In 1996-97 we will be celebrating a double Jubilee: in 1996 the Centennial of the State of Utah, and in 1997 the 150th Anniversary of the arrival of the Pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. I don't think it too early to begin planning for these two-barrel events.
The State celebration will, of course,properly be essentially a civil affair. But I hardly see how the Church can be totally excluded from putting forward ideas and participating, if peripherally in the activities. Presidents of the Church customarily ride in the Pioneer Day Parade in SLC. Anyway, as a kindred soul, let me share with you a couple of ideas I think might be considered in planning for this joint-jubilee (which I'd love for the Church formally to announce as a Jubilee -- perhaps offering some special type of reaching-out to inactives, excommunicates, dissidents, and possibly even a special offer of reunion to Reorganites and other (non bomb throwing) splinter groups.
But, back to less controversial matters.
The State Flag
Corporations periodically update their slogans and logos to bring them more into line with prevailing attitudes and interests. The Utah state flag is cluttered, undistinguished, and hard to identify. When one enters the Hall of Flags in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. one can readily pick out the state flags of Wyoming with its silver bison on a blue field, California with its grizzly bear, and Texas with its lone star. Most others are less easily identified. I think that Utah's beehive flag, somewhat simplified, offers a splendid opportunity for similar easy recognition. I'd recommend eliminating the crossed flags and other clutter, leaving simply a large golden beehive on a blue background, with at most the motto "Industry" below it (I'd prefer "The Glory of God is Intelligence" to emphasize the state's reputation for scholarly excellence, but that might be hard to get agreement on, given present attitudes towards Church/State relationships. I've sent these suggestions to Governor Bangerter, but he's apparently too preoccupied with the budget and other housekeeping chores to give thought to a celebration which will take place beyond his term of office.
Highway Beautification
Back in the days of Governor Blood, willows were planted along many state highways. As the roads were widened between Salt Lake and Ogden, first one side and then the other was bulldozed. The trees were never replaced.
I've seen three types of highway beautification in other areas of the world which I think are applicable to Utah.
1 See also related letters in Political papers
1. Israel has used drip irrigation to water plantings of shrubs and trees all the way from Tel Aviv to Carmel. Very little water is required since only a few drops are released exactly at each planting. I'd suggest using this application at major Interstate interchanges for plantings of trees and shrubs to beautify these spots of attention, especially at the approaches to major cities such as Logan, Ogden, Salt Lake, Provo, Cedar City, and St. George.
When I was a Boy Scout many years ago we used to participate in planting trees, clearing roadsides, gathering scrap paper and scrap metal, helping usher Twenty-fourth of July Parades, counting cars moving up the canyons on holidays, and other public service-type activities. Scouts don't seem to do much of this anymore and have lost a good deal of their public image. I think that if troops along various sections of the Interstate were to apply to the National Forest Service for some five cent pine trees and then plant them (under supervision) in the interchanges in their sector of the Interstate, this beautification program could be accomplished at minimal cost while giving the Scout program a great public relations shot in the arm. All the state would have to pay for would be the installation of the drip irrigation system. Companies might even be prevailed upon to donate equipment in return for the publicity the media would give.
2. Texas has planted large areas to wild flowers, especially in the center strip area of their Interstate near Houston and San Antonio. While in Texas recently I was astonished to hear on the radio that seed for these plantings came from Utah! While I doubt that wild flowers could survive in the dry southern stretches of the state, I'm quite sure they'd do well between Salt Lake and Provo, and Salt Lake and Tremonton, up Weber Canyon to the Wyoming border, and up Parley's Canyon to Kimball Junction -- possibly as far as Heber City to the East, and perhaps in part of Tooele County to the West.
3. For the drier and more dreary stretches, France has come up with an interesting approach. At intervals of perhaps 60 kilometers, examples of outdoor sculpture have been erected alongside the autoroute between Reims and Strasbourg. Some of these consist of half a dozen spheres, perhaps three feet in diameter, at fifteen foot intervals. These are painted in varying pastel colors, some of them in runny Easter-egg colors. Further along there is a series of 40 inch pyramids, again in various colors. Yet further there are some barber pole-like structures, and again some flat concrete discs, a bit like wagon wheels.
In a pre-Centennial contest, art students up and down the state should be able to come up with even more imaginative ideas for relieving the less spectacular stretches of the Utah Interstate System. A modest Centennial Year prize with national media recognition should draw forth ample participation and help launch some young Utah artist careers. With Time, Newsweek, CBS, NBC, and CNN reporting a new sight to be seen in the American West, the art program should attract additional tourism during Utah's double Jubilee, which would be good both for the economy and the Church's efforts to draw favorable attention to the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the Pioneers. Perhaps the beautification program could be tied to the theme of "the dessert blossoms as the rose for the second time as the sons of the pioneers return to the task of their forebears" -- or somesuch.
A Best Seller to Publicize Utah and Church History
For the sesquicentennial in 1980, the Church brought out several new and well-received histories. Nineteen ninety-six and nineteen ninety-seven would be ideal for a best-seller type novelistic history of the State and the LDS Church which created it. WE have waited a long time for one of our own to do the job. And it hasn't been done yet. Arrington's Great Basin Kingdom was a worthy effort, but it is scholarly, deals primarily with the period of early colonialization through the Twenties, and is at best a rather dull read.
James Mitchener has done best-sellers on five states; Hawaii, Colorado, Maryland, Texas, and Alaska -- not to mention his novelistic histories of Israel and Mexico. While he's been somewhat antipathetic to Mormonism whenever he's touched on us in previous works, he does have a cousin who's LDS, and it seems to me that if he lived in the state for a year, as he's done in preparing his other novels, he'd inevitably develop some sympathy for our history, culture, and achievements. It'd be assured of wide readership. And it'd probably garner more attention for the Church and the State of Utah than any other single event. It might even turn into a TV mini-series like Centennial.
I'm sure he'd dwell on some of the negatives to give his novel color -- he always does. So we'd inevitably see chapters on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Godbeyites, Port Rockwell, and "The Twenty-seventh Wife". Nut all in all, if Mitchener were to be approached in time that a novel could be ready for publication in late 1995, it'd do us enormously more good than harm. I suggested this to Governor Bangerter some time ago without results. I think the Church or someone else with some influence may have to take steps to approach Mr. Mitchener.
Sincerely,
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