Every four years the spectacle is the same: vast quantities of resources, both human and environmental, are squandered in the construction of brand new Olympic venues, only to have them lie partially (or totally) unused after the games. Inevitably the contracts to build these facilities are mired in corruption, involving bribes and payouts to local officials and questionable gifts to Olympic dignitaries, while the venues themselves are often so shoddily built that they fail even before the games begin. The latest Olympics in Rio have brought all these problems to the fore once again in an even more glaring light: from athletic housing built on public land later to be sold to wealthy condo buyers to malfunctioning swimming pools filled with sewage water to the 150,000 poor displaced by the new venues and perhaps most insultingly, to the huge colorfully painted concrete walls hastily built to hide the slums from wealthy visitors on the way to the airport — all this, while on the other side of the wall, everyday Brazilians suffer from a dysfunctional government that leaves its citizens in squalor, unable to provide even the most basic services. As one resident summed it up grimly to the New York Times: “The wealthy play, and we die.”
When the modern Olympic games were first held Athens in 1896, they were a resounding success, and the intention of many of the founders of the new International Olympic Commission (IOC) was that the games would be held permanently in Athens. Certainly George, then King of Greece, thought so, urging the games to remain in speech after speech, even offering financial inducements to the IOC. So did the first ever American delegation, writing in a letter: “The existence of the stadium as a structure so uniquely adapted to its purpose; the proved ability of Greece to competently administer the games; and above all, the fact that Greece is the original home of the Olympic games; all these considerations force upon us the conviction that these games should never be removed from their native soil.” However, Pierre de Coubertin, the French intellectual who had conceived the idea of reviving the games in the first place, was unconvinced. As quoted in a recent article in the Atlantic, Coubertin noted in his memoirs that such ideas were mere “nationalistic fervor” on the part of Greece. “No one could seriously believe for a moment that Athens would be able to go on indefinitely every four years making the supreme effort required for the periodic renewal of the organization and the financing.” Ironically, “nationalistic fervor” is precisely what really motived Coubertin, and rather unsurprisingly the 1900 games moved to his beloved France. Thus the disastrous cycle of changing venues every four years was set in motion, all under the false banner of promoting “peace and international spirit.” This might have made some small sense in an age before television, as it gave citizens of various countries a once-in-a-lifetime chance to view the games. However, today in an era when 99.9999% of the Olympic audience is not physically present at events, the actual location of the games is irrelevant.
Then of course there is the matter of ruinous cost. Russian president Putin spent 50 billion dollars on the winter Olympics in Sochi, the most for any games ever. Much of it was siphoned off into the pockets of cronies, and today the site sits virtually abandoned with many of planned buildings still incomplete. Montreal didn’t finish paying for the 1976 Olympics till 2006, and only two games — both held in Los Angeles — have ever came close to covering the costs for their host cities, and then only because LA reused the Olympic venues from 1932. So murky have the economics become that Boston, proposed for the 2024 games, withdrew itself from consideration after voters wisely woke up to the threat of cost overruns and service disruptions caused by the proposed new construction.
Enough is enough. It is time to return the summer games to Greece permanently. Anyone who has read any news in the last year knows that Greece could desperately use the tourism and international exchange that the Olympic games would provide. Like LA, Athens could profit from the games, as they already possess the venues from the 2004 Olympics, most of which are sitting abandoned and falling to ruin according to a 2014 Daily Mail article. If we truly care about sustainability, if we truly want “peace and international spirit,” then its high time we admit that expending billions of dollars on constructing new venues every four years when so many around the world remain in want is not only criminal but sinful. Let the Olympic flame return to its home in Greece once and for all, reminding us that it is meant to represent the best of human spirit and endeavor, not the fire of human greed and corruption.
Every morning I find a reminder from E-Bay in my mailbox. “X (being a number) NEW: Harvard!” And sure enough, one click reveals previously unseen items of Harvard memorabilia. Most of the offerings don’t interest me, but occasionally something pops up that either completes the Suite’s collection, or is a better example of an item we already possess. Some days, when my box is particularly full or I’m in a rush, I’m tempted to just delete this email and move on. But I normally don’t, because in the end, The FDR Suite is in fact the house that E-bay built.
Now, granted, there are items in the Suite that didn’t arrive on-line. The furniture, for example was either custom-built for us or found in New England antique shops. The rugs too are local; the draperies were hand-sewn to period designs; the piano arrived by a circuitous 100-year route from Newburyport. However, the majority of the other 2000-odd moving parts in the Suite possess separate provinces, each having arrived at our door via post from places as far away as Hong Kong and originating in more than a dozen countries. It’s really amazing to think about: 20 years ago there is no way that the Suite’s collection of early 20th century antiques and Harvard ephemera could have been assembled in a few short years. It would have taken a lifetime of searching through yard sales and antique shops to find a mere fraction of it. This is truly the power of the Internet — allowing users to find, sift and triage information — and for those of us who remember a day without it, it is an awesome power indeed.
Recent developments in scanning techniques have aided our efforts immensely as well. We have been able to reproduce a large number of original personal pictures both from the FDR Collection at Hyde Park, and from the family albums of FDR’s Harvard roommate Lathrop Brown, that rival the originals and in some instances vastly improve them. And then there is the case of things we simply can’t afford, yet can still possess through the marvels of modern technology. This wonderful signed postcard is a perfect example, sent from the Suite by FDR in his sophomore year. It recently sold at auction for over $1000, but the auction house was kind enough to share a high resolution scan with us before the sale, which we then duplicated for the Suite. A bit of a parlor trick, you object? Not really, because our purpose at the FDR Suite is to interpret, not slavishly duplicate, the Gilded Age at Harvard, which means that the real importance of this card to us is not the authenticity of the signature itself, but rather what it can explain to our visiting guests.
In itself the postcard is a clever Victorian design showing the front page of the Crimson, but what’s really interesting is that these cards were in fact the e-mail of FDR’s Harvard. The post was delivered and taken from the Suite three times a day, and such postcards were the communication life-blood of the University. Club notices, concert announcements, athletic event schedules, even a dreaded summons to the Dean’s office all arrived by postcard, which if mailed by 9PM had every expectation of arriving to its destination the next morning. This rapid movement of the post was considered one of the wonders of the day, and had as transformative an effect on 19th century society as the Internet has on ours today. Given the remove in a mere hundred years of paper post cards manually carried from place to place to electrons zipping through fiber optics then magically reassembled a world away, no doubt tomorrow will bring equally vast changes… What’s next? Perhaps a halo-FDR Suite that can be toured by anyone, anywhere, anytime… Now wouldn’t that be something! (But wait, wouldn’t that make me superfluous? A halo-Suite with a halo-Michael…. Hmmmm. Let’s reconsider that…)
In the meantime though, I remain immensely grateful for E-Bay!
Fireside Chat with Marisa Futernick in the FDR suite on September 7th, 7 PM Marisa has been working on a project called 13 Presidents, which is an artist’s book that combines photographs with a set of short stories. Mixing fact and fiction, each President from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush is a protagonist in this collection of unexpected portraits. The book will be published in September by Slimvolume (London).
The FDR Foundation Outside the Ivory Tower:
Aiding Information Professionals in Finland
Disinformation is dangerous. In the United States we’ve seen disinformation campaigns denying the dangers of smoking and the existence of climate change. We’ve seen popular, utterly false narratives circulate about the measles vaccine causing autism and the federal government establishing “Obamacare” “death panels.” There are real consequences to disinformation: it can affect policy decisions, distract or disgruntle the electorate, even alter the outcome of elections.
Generally, “disinformation” refers to distributing information that one knows is false. “Propaganda” is an older term that used to mean “propagation of the truth” but lost positive connotations, especially after WWII. Disinformation could be part of a propaganda or “public diplomacy” campaign but is generally a more specific term.
Globally, the past couple of years have seen an increase in systematic disinformation campaigns worldwide. Finns, along with citizens of many if not most countries, are targets of disinformation campaigns. That’s why, in January 2016, the Finnish government partnered with the FDR Foundation to educate more than 100 officials from 20+ ministries and departments in responding to foreign “Information & Influence.”
