Houghton Library Blog

Moloch speaks: why I’m voting yes on 4

8 November 2016 houghtonmodern Collections in Focus

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.

Measures to legalize recreational marijuana are on five state ballots this year, including Houghton Library’s home state of Massachusetts. The Santo Domingo Collection naturally includes significant historical matter supporting the movement to legalize, but it also offers the following thundering dissent. Pictured here are two works by Robert James Devine, a reverend who published several vehement tracts warning of the drug’s lethal dangers in the first half of the twentieth century. Devine draws parallels between marijuana and Moloch, the ancient Ammonite god: both are false idols, and both demand the sacrifice of children. Lending potency to this metaphor is J.N. Curry’s cover illustration of The Moloch of marihuana, in which devilish drug peddlers fling hapless figures onto the burning hands of Moloch’s brass statue, while a scholar, a policeman, and other complacent citizens avert their gazes.

The text is a series of news items, anecdotes, and relations of Devine’s own crusading efforts against marijuana; throughout, those who smoke it suffer murderous or suicidal urges, accidental deaths, and other such grim fates. Devine asks: “If it has the power to drive cattle ‘loco’ or crazy (who has not heard of a ‘locoed steer’?) or to make an elephant “run amok” – what will it not do to adolescent youths?” (25) (Here he may have conflated marijuana with the swainsonine-producing “locoweed” family of plants, which can cause neurological damage in cattle that graze on them.)

Perhaps unable to improve on artwork so striking, Devine repurposed his cover image of dread Moloch for a second publication, Assassin of youth!: marihuana. This volume is largely an expanded and rearranged edition of Moloch of marihuana, and includes a frontispiece picturing several “reefers” or “muggles” and a marijuana leaf for the vigilant reader’s edification.

Of the many degradations he describes in its pages, Devine at one juncture exclaims:

After listening to such a sordid story freely given by a mere boy of fifteen nonchalantly describing (from behind prison bars) his gamut of debasing escapades, I felt that I needed to wash out my ears and eyes; indeed my whole being cried aloud for an internal bath. (39)

Collected with these works is this unattributed poster, an enlargement of the Moloch image block-printed in several colors of ink, probably decades later. Whether it hung on the wall of a supporter or an opponent of the drug is left to conjecture.

Moloch of marihuana: HV5822.M3 D48 1938

Assassin of youth!: HV5822.M3D48 1943

Moloch of marihuana (poster): AB9.C9374.975m

Thanks to bibliographic assistant Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

But wait, there’s more: Many faces of Hawaiian Butterfly

7 November 2016 Cawelti Collections in Focus

Our recent Hidden Collections sheet music project has continued to produce treasures from the Historical Sheet Music Collections of Houghton and the Harvard Theatre Collection. (Yes, as Susan Sarandon would say in Bull Durham, we need a nickname.) We have now identified 29 different issues of Hawaiian Butterfly. Even as familiar with the vagaries of special collections as I am, have never seen quite this many variants of one song publication.

Sheet music 159 (CC)

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Living on Love

3 November 2016 adharris Collections in Focus

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.

Ever wondered how you can live like a hippie in the 1960s? The hippy’s handbook : how to live on love could be just what you need.

This tongue in cheek guide tells you how to save money on rent- hint live in a a 10-person commune with a $60 per month rent. To save on laundry just don’t wear underwear, if you want to buy beads that is a one time expenditure of about $3 and you can simply pick flowers yourself. How can you save on food costs? They recommend implementing economy measures such as “sleep late so you can skip breakfast; writers who are doing hippy stories will be happy to interivew you over lunch ; wait tables- provides an income plus all you can eat free : go home for a meal once a week (your parents will be happy to see you even if they don’t act it) ; free food from digger stores can cut food bills to almost nil.“

There is even a handy fashion guide for both men and women within its pages.

Do you possess hip-hugger pants, a flowered shirt, tattoos, long hair and a beard? If you a man that said yes and can borrow a flute you are good to go! The women’s outfit appears both dos and don’ts, telling her to NOT wear lipstick or a bra but to definitely include ankle bells, silver rings, beads and of course a micro skirt.

The volume also includes a glossary of common words used by hippies such as:

BOO n. marijuana

ELECTRIC adj. having psychedelic powers; as in electric banana or electric Kool-Aid

UP TIGHT adj. in a state of extreme anxiety.

To learn more and see a few digitized pages you can find The hippy’s handbook : how to live on love / by Ruth Bronsteen. New York, N.Y. : Canyon Book Co., c1967 in Widener’s collection.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager for contributing this post.

Tags: 1960s, 20th century, America, cheap, Drugs, fashion, food, hippies, Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection, life, love, rent

New on OASIS in November

2 November 2016 John Overholt Collections in Focus Now Available for Research

Finding aids for six collections have been significantly updated or newly added to the OASIS database this month:

Processed by: Michael Austin

Daniel Aaron papers, circa 1774-2015 (MS Am 2951)

Processed by: Adrien Hilton

Franz Liszt letters, 1848-1886 (MS Ger 323)

Theodore Roosevelt Senior letterpress copybooks, 1869-1878 (MS Am 3067)

Additions to the John Updike papers, 1940-2009 (MS Am 1793)

Processed by: Jen Lyons

W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan collection (MS Thr 1333)

Processed by: Melanie Wisner

Albert Murray papers, circa 1939-2003 (2016M-14)

Don’t Eat That Mushroom!

20 October 2016 one response adharris Collections in Focus

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.

Mushrooms- they are cheap and legal, but how do you ensure that you don’t eat the wrong one? Hallucinogenic Mushrooms contains information on identification, buying and eating mushrooms, different species, current laws, as well as poisonous mushrooms in Britain.

This handy guide counsels that there is no one test to figure out if a mushroom can be safely eaten. A common myth is that poisonous ones will blacken a spoon, while edible mushrooms peel easily, and “magic” mushrooms turn blue after they are uprooted. Be warned this publication states that None of these tests can be relied on!

They suggest that you should go with an experienced identifier until you know your stuff. And getting a comprehensive fungi guide such as Collins Guide to Mushrooms and Toadstools is a good idea or if you are looking for “magic” mushrooms they recommend A Guide to British Psilocybin Mushrooms (both can be found in the Botany Libraries for reference.) Once you have your identification books with you it will be easier to identify fungi in the field. The physical features of the mushroom hold the key, step one is to look at the cap and observe its shape and color, then determine if the surface is shiny or dull and if there are lines. To get a look at the flesh break off a bit, smell it, and note the color of the gills and how they are attached to the stem. What shape and color are the stem? Are there rings on it? Is there a bulb at the bottom? Always make sure that it is a mature specimen because a great deal of fatal cases of mushroom poisoning happen when people pick a mushroom before it is fully developed because characteristics revealing its poisonous nature may not yet be present.

Mushroom poisoning can be observed as quickly as 20 minutes after eating or as late as 40 hours, the later it takes symptoms to show the more serious the situation because the poison has had time to circulate within the body. Medical advise should be sought immediately even if you begin to feel better because is a characteristic of the poison to have periods of recovery followed by eventual demise.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms : a Release guide / written by the Release Collective ; illustrations by Grant. London : Release, 1979 can be found in Widener’s collection.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager for contributing this post.

Tags: foraging, fungi, Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection, magic mushrooms, mushrooms, poisonous