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greetings from the eve of the Olympics



(my apologies, from the outset, to the archives list and its long-
suffering members.  There's no real connection with this purpled
prose and the purpose of the list, save that "I are a archivist"; my
archives happens to be located in the very middle of the Olympics,
and I've in fact become an A.A. (Accidental Archivist) of skiing and
winter sports history even though I last (and first, too) downhill
skied in 1966; and it's Friday for me because tomorrow, the day of
the Opening Ceremonies, the whole campus is totally locked
down, and we are to stay home (not that I'm complaining about the
latter!).  I've written some thoughts down during the course of the
last year, thinking to send them off, but they got too long (this one
suffers the same fault, so beware) and turned into rants.  I've
hopefully avoided that here.  At the risk of boring everyone or,
heavens forfend!, starting a flame war, here are some thoughts from
the dark heart of the Olympics.  It is quite the experience.)

On the very eve of the Olympics, Greetings from Fort SLOC, as it's
come to be known, formerly known as Salt Lake City metropolitan
area, and the University of Utah, and outlying redoubts here and
there across the countryside. It must be the Libra side of me,
always wanting balance, but I find myself thinking on the one hand
of those people for whom the XIX Olympic Winter Games (to give
them their due; officially, you always have to say it that way:
O.W.G.; any other use risks their regiment of attorneys calling in a
strike on you) are the culminating moment of their lives, of years of
training, of hopes for a medal; or it might be a bureaucract who
sees his advancement built on a successful job managing food
services at the Games; or a businessman hoping to rake in the
dough (although it's not quite happening as most hope, so I hear).
On the other side of the Libra balance are those who (like me, I
must confess) see the whole thing as a great bother; are offended
that $40million is being spent on tomorrow night's party--almost
$2billion for the whole she-bang--when there are plenty of hungry
kids and shivering homeless in Utah, let alone the rest of the
country/world; whose favorite quote to come out of the whole thing
is from a writer in a local alternative newspaper a few days ago:
"The Olympics are almost here; we only have a few days to learn
how to say "GO HOME" in forty different languages."  Or my 9-year
old daughter, who said the other night, "I don't want to share Salt
Lake City with the world."  As always, the Libra in me knows that
the truth of the whole Olympic experience lies somewhere in
between but unlike the comparative clarity of the fringes it's murkier
in the middle, like the typical, deep winter inversion that's greeting
the arriving world with a murky blanket of smog.

Some reporter the other day wrote that if you live south of 21st
South and west of I-15, and stayed away from newspapers and TV,
you wouldn't even know this is going on.  While I don't quite agree
with that--the E Center and Olympic Oval in West Valley City are
outliers of Fort SLOC--it is true that save for an occasional
volunteer uniform or top-of-the-line SUV with SLOC on the door, the
average citizen isn't that impacted.  Up here at the University of
Utah, site not only of the opening and closing ceremonies, but the
Olympic village, it's very visible; indeed, we are at the heart of it.
Starting last fall, fences started to go up, in seemingly random
patterns.  Now they seem just as random, but there are a whole lot
more of them, and most of them are closed up.  Almost all of the
entrances to the campus are guarded by armed National Guard
troops who are diligent in their duties, and already there are those
on the staff who have been rousted; walking the wrong direction,
not wearing ID, having a forgotten taser in your purse (although I
had to think, when she was telling me that, c'mon!  There's no
excuse for forgetting a weapon!); or the guy downstairs, a skeet
shooter, honest, forgetting he had his shotgun in his trunk.  He
made a U-turn in front of the guards and got away with it, although
he's lucky he didn't get a round through the back windshield.
Crossing the Zone of Security (if you say that in an echoing, 50s
sci-fi movie kind of voice, it makes it much more understandable)
I've felt that itch that combat veterans describe: right between the
shoulder blades, unseen eyes watching you.  But at least I have
yet to be "magged and bagged," or searched by security personnel
with metal detecting wands and hand searches.

It's like being in an occupied country; or working on a military base,
although I think even there you wouldn't have the same feeling for
it's not just MPs or cops; it's Secret Service; FBI; ATF; DEA; all of
the various military agencies including some no doubt that no one
has heard of; and of course state and regional cops from a
thousand small-town sheriff's departments, all wanting to share the
O-lympic glory.  Like any occupied country, there are equal parts
fear and intimidation, mixed with a strong dose of resentment
toward the occupiers.  Anyone with a gun and authority, no matter
how well-intentioned, to use it causes fear in me, I'm the first to
admit; and when I saw a whole convoy of military jeeps with cages
in the back bearing the warning: Military Work Dog: DO NOT
APPROACH, I felt intimidated.  In fact, driving in this morning I was
musing, as I always do, and imagined a slim man in a European
officers uniform, tapping a cigarette on a silver case, saying "If you
have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."  My resentment
comes from having my home and place of work suddenly taken
over by strangers; I'm an unwelcome, indeed inconvenient occupant
of my own home and office, here at the sufferance of SLOC and it's
supporting agencies, including the entire federal government from
the President on down. (He'll be here tomorrow, by the way).  Why
didn't I just take vacation and go somewhere or even just stay
home?  I can't say, honestly; I can't really go anywhere because
the kids are in school; February isn't the best time to travel; I want
lots of comp time to go on the river this summer; I'll be darned if
this makes me use up all of my vacation; and if the truth be known,
I always have this urge to see things from the outside, to be in, but
not of, to use a phrase that fits well in Utah.

All of that said, I've never had an easier time getting on campus,
even during the six-week summer breaks of hallowed memory,
back before they switched to semesters.  Last week was a traffic
jam, when the students and faculty were still here, although I know
the back roads well enough that I wasn't inconvenienced.  But this
week the place is deserted, and if you look like you know what
you're doing and have a University parking pass, and know the
back paths, parking--that perennial issue on campus--is free and
easy.  I came in today, on the eve of the opening ceremonies,
when I can look out the west windows and see a sea of tractor-
trailers, even though I have plenty of vacation, just to experience it
(after first taking the big bag of clothes, tool kit, rope, odd engine
parts, shovel, etc out of the back of my Trooper and leaving the
back cover off).  To use the old movie cliche, it's quiet; too quiet.
There's a feeling like an impending military operation.  There have
been big events on campus and in the city before--the 1997 150th
anniversary of the Mormon church brought in tens of thousands--
but not like this, with its feeling of coiled menace, not only from the
troops but from those shadowy types who might be out there
planning just the sort of mischief the police are here to prevent.  I've
been on this campus in one capacity or another for over 25 years,
dang'near 30 years come to that, and this is a unique period.  This
afternoon the torch will pass through the upper campus on its way
to the state capitol, and it's expected to be a zoo.  I keep saying
it's easier to get off campus than on, but we'll see tonight.

Interestingly enough, we haven't been as busy as I thought we
might be, although we've had quite a few requests.  And therein lies
the oddity: they've all been for non-ski stuff, like pictures of Philo
Farnsworth (inventor of TV); Willem Kolff (inventory of the artificial
kidney and heart); Barney Clark, recipient of the first artifical heart;
the grisly shot of Joe Hill after he was executed (what's up with
that?); the odd Mormon ancestor, and on and on.  We are still
doing lots of ski archives work, with exhibits out all over the place
like up in Park City in the Norway House (the swift completion of
which was rewarded by an invitation to an ambassador's reception
for the Crown Prince of Norway next week, for the boss at least if
not to us troops); one outside the department in the Rare
Books/Book Arts Gallery (my favorite, I'll admit, like a father feels
for his children); up at the state capitol that's also quite good, if I do
say so myself, and might be viewed by all the dignitaries who pass
through there today and tomorrow, and to think I didn't get any ski
archives brochures up there before the security lockdown, darn'it!
But even my boss, one of the founders of the Utah Ski Archives,
admits to being cautiously weary of that particular branch of the
state's history, or as one of my staff put it, "If I have to look at
many more pictures of people on skiis I'm going to scream."  We
are officially the repository for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee
(SLOC, if you haven't guessed that) records of the XIX OWG; but
with the scandal and the recent shift toward hiding records who
knows what we'll end up with; hopefully not the knick-knacks and
McDonalds french fry containers, each of which had to be dutifully
submitted, in triplicate, to SLOC before it could bear the rings.

Speaking of, and back to that Libra balance: my wife is an
enthusiastic and committed SLOC volunteer; a "Pioneer Volunteer"
I think they've called her, as she has been working with one
department or another for more than a year.  She worked during the
unveiling of the mascots early last year, helping to save them from
a sneaky photographer, trying to scoop the world on what the
mascots would be, by throwing her body across the pile of T-shirts
she was folding and yelling for security.    Their archivist was once
my colleague here in the Marriott Library, but SLOC hired him
away by offering Fun, Travel, Adventure and about three times what
we were paying.  The fun and the travel went the way of all the
earth with the bid scandal, and the adventure has turned into loads
of work, he says.  But back to my wife: a retired librarian, last
spring she volunteered to work in the SLOC archives.  She helps
out cataloging records, doing data entry, and describing, in minute
details, those McDonalds french fry containers that wish to display
the rings; and the cups, both cold and hot; the paperweights, the
sweaters, the pen and pencil sets, the beer steins, the skiis, the
pins, oh the thousands and thousands of pins (that's one thing
I've learned from this, the devotion and energies of pin collectors);
the, as it was termed in the paper the other day, VIK stuff: Value In
Kind.  SLOC would rather have cash, since green goes with
anything, but they get pins, cups, jewelry, cars, etc, and beer from
Annheuser-Busch, to the tune of $42million worth of beer.  A pretty
irony for our yearning-to-be-dry state.  But she is now working her
real assignment, at the Olympic Village, greeting athletes from
around the world, officials important and self-important, troops and
agents and specialists from everywhere, and loving every
inconvenient, frigid moment of it.  It's an experience she will always
treasure and you can't help but admire that kind of devotion.   And
for my own part I am the first to express my own gratitude for all
the Olympics have done for my own operations: as my boss put
recently, we are 3-5 years ahead of where we might have been
without the Olympics and the Ski Archives.  The exposure, the
good publicity, not to mention the funds raised by the willingness of
the Ski Archives members, have bought us equipment, staff, and
space, and have really made us into the first-class (so I like to
think!) regional archives that we are today.

So that's it from Fort SLOC for now; I do have real work to do,
things that have been put off until ATO, as the Mayor says: After
The Olympics.  Here we are, almost ATO, and now it's time to
catch up on all those things I kept saying I would get to ATO.....







Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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