THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 16, 1996 TAG: 9610160036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LAWRENCE MADDRY
LENGTH: 69 lines
DEPRESSED BY their candidate's standing in the polls, critics in the Republican party say Bob Dole needs a new issue to attract swing voters and dominate the TV news.
Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if Dole announced during tonight's debate that, if elected, one of his first acts would be the appointment of a Book Czar.
Although it's not generally known by the public, the international academic community has been aflutter over the news that if you spend enough time around old books and decaying manuscripts in dank archives. . .
YOU CAN HALLUCINATE!
This is no joke. Experts on the fungi that feed on the paper are increasingly convinced that you can get higher than a space shuttle by sniffing old books.
The story of the Snort-of-Socrates Effect spread with the rapidity of Hollywood gossip through the antiquarian books community late last year. It was caused by publication of a paper in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, by Dr. R.J. Hay.
Hay's observation about book-mold hallucinations was confirmed, in part, by Monona Rossol, a New York chemist and consultant to Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History who published the newsletter ACTS FACTS.
Relying on information gathered from newsletter readers who read old books in libraries, Rossol says there's no doubt moldy old volumes harbor hallucinogens.
As if to add an exclamation point to Rossol's observation, late last month - I kid you not - the Las Cruces, N.M., public library was closed indefinitely because of health concerns after a fungus outbreak in the old books found in its reference section.
What - you may ask - has this to do with the Dole campaign?
Well, Dole has made the rising rate of teen drug use a major issue. And he favors elimination of the Department of Education and an overhaul of public-school education.
But to date, Dole's war on teen drug use has been to repeat the mantra ``Just Don't Do It.'' This is a takeoff of the Nike slogan that echoes Nancy Reagan's solution to the use of drugs by young people.
``Just say no!'' she told them.
But teens have been saying ``yes'' in greater numbers. That's because it is the nature of teens to show their independence by a) experimenting, and b) doing the opposite of anything an adult suggests.
Dole should pledge to appoint a Book Czar who will do two things. First, the czar will put signs in the libraries and classrooms of every public school which say ``Just Say No To Old Books'' and ``Don't Get High on Herodotus.''
That will create an immediate and overpowering demand for the product. Next, the Book Czar will be responsible for secretly shipping old books to our city streets to be marketed by drug dealers. (The CIA team that was responsible for putting drugs in the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles to make money for the Contras in Nicaragua could oversee the operation.)
Here's how a typical drug transaction between a drug dealer and a teen might sound:
``Nah, kid, I don't have any Pindar today. But you could try sniffing a little of this Aeschylus. Good stuff, just came in from Columbia (University). And if you're looking for something really moldy, try this leather-bound volume of Euripides. I can letcha have it for half a C note.''
A Book Czar could not only drive down the demand for hard drugs, but would also do more for improving young minds than the teachers union, Dole could argue. He might even want to go further by predicting:
``Within a few years we could turn America's teens away from hard drugs and make the typical school playground the equivalent of the Great Books programs at St. John's University.''
Talking about taking us back to the future. Those old books just might do it. by CNB