Nation/World
7A
Monday
October 20,1997
Dangerous mercury use on the rise
The Associated Press
When Alicia DeLeon wished for better luck at Lotto, she sucked a pot of herbs and liquid mercury under her bed in Chicago.
In New Orleans, Priestess Miriam created a lucky amulet by pouring mercury into a nutmeg kernel and plugging the hole with candle wax. Such charms, the voodoo practitioner said, give people hope for tomorrow.
And until recently, if a client was plagued by evil, Mr. George, a spiritual adviser in New York City, prescribed a cocktail of wine, the ashes of a prayer and mercury.
"I used to work with mercury to protect people and give it to them to drink," said Mr. George, whose first name is Orlando and first language is Spanish. "Used to. No more. I used to. I used to."
"The spirit let me know to stop."
The spirit may have heard from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The federal EPA tops a growing list of agencies perturbed to learn some Americans think that toxic metal is their friend. Believers swear by mercury, adhering to religions and customs familiar in Mexico and around the Caribbean. They carry, sprinkle and swallow mercury, trusting it will bring fortune, love and good health.
But how to shake that faith?
In June, a nationwide alert from Washington warned against such cultural uses of mercury. Chicago's health department has a campaign to tell people the risks. At least three studies will look closely at New Yorkers who use mercury.
It's unknown how many people in this country rely on the tin-white
metal. It's also unknown whether such practices do any harm.
In any case, they deserve attention, said Alexis Cain, an environmental scientist at the EPA's Chicago office.
"As of yet, we're not talking about poisonings," he said. "So I think everyone should calm about it."
Users buy quicksilver — "azogue" (ah-SEW-gay) in Spanish — from botanicas, folk pharmacies common in Hispanic and Haitian communities.
Such shops cater to the soul as well as to the body. In addition to herbal nostrums, botanicas sell the trappings of Santeria and voodoos, faiths that blend Christianity and African religions, and of "espiritismo," or spiritualism, an older, European version of channeling. Alongside shelves of bottled potions such as "Jinx Remover," special colored
beads and statues of Jesus, patrons may find mercury in gelatin capsules or tiny bottles priced at $2.
But mercury is poison.
Mercury is not limited to religious worship; it's woven into Caribbean and Latin American cultures, said Clyde Johnson, an environmental scientist at the City University of New York who does research on mercurvuse.
Liquid mercury is the element in its pure state. It's not as lethal as compounds such as methylmercury, which can accumulate in fish and sicken people, or dimethylmercury, which killed a research chemist this year when a drop seeped into her latex glove.
When swallowed, liquid mercury usually passes safely from the body, but not always. Exposed to air, mercury gives off unseen, odorless — and toxic — vapors.
This will only hurt for a second
Jennifer Mellard, Meade freshman, paid half price for a fliat shot at Watkin's Health Center on Friday. The Health Fair is going on again today and students can get their flu shots for $2.50. Eric B.
Howell/KANSAN
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The wooden beams and floorboards of the house that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about so lovingly sag a little these days, and the windows are boarded up.
LITCHFIELD, Conn. — Once, the rambling gray house had a magnificent arched attic with garrets that were "splendid grounds for little people" and a view of Bantam Lake's "girldle of steel-blue pines."
The 222-year-old house where the writer-abolitionist was born in 1811 has been moved twice, renovated and now sits abandoned, paint peeling, on the grounds of the private Forman school.
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The threat did exactly what it was intended to do, creating a local outcry and a flurry of interest from prospective buyers.
Forman is considering a handful of proposals and was expected to choose one today.
School officials said the Beecher homestead was too costly to renovate.
"It sounds wonderful to keep the building as a museum on the school grounds, but it's not realistic," said the school's headmaster, Mark Perkins. "We are not a historical society. As a school, we have to stay focused on our mission."
Recently, the school put the house on sale for $1, eager to replace it with a new residence hall.
They acknowledge that the $1 price tag was a gimmick and the actual cost of moving and rebuilding the house could be as high as $1 million.
To many in this picturesque New England town of stately mansions and lavish country homes, cost should come second to history.
The move has landed the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" back at the center of a fierce debate about her place in U.S. history and literature.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" sold 10,000 copies in the first week and established Stowe as a literary and intellectual phenomenon. When Abraham Lincoln met her 10 years after the book was published he allegedly remarked, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that caused the big war."
Stowe is, after all, the country's most famous abolitionist, the woman whose 1852 novel moved readers to weep for slaves.
The school, which used the house as a residence hall for years, dropped the price from $50,000 a few weeks ago and threatened to demolish it by Nov. 1 if no one came forward to save it.
Stowe described the house, where she lived for 13 years, as "a wide roomy, windy edifice that seemed to have been built by a successor of afterthoughts." It has been or the market for a year with no takers.
Costs of fixing home may prevent purchase, renovation as museum
Harriet Beecher Stowe's childhood cabin faces demolition by school
The Associated Press
"Can you imagine the hue and cry that would result if Lincoln's birthplace had been on the Forman campus and that house were scheduled for demolition?" Keifer said. "It wouldn't matter if that it were only a couple of logs and a window sash, it would be saved and restored."
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These days, tourists ask for directions to the house and traipse into Bill Keifer's used bookstore looking for copies of Stowe's autobiographical novel, "Poganuc People." The book has colorful passages describing the Litchfield house.
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The Willis A. Waas Memorial Scholarship was established in 1990 to assist KU students in obtaining a private pilot license. One award of $500 is given in February every year to a KU student who meets all eligibility requirements and is chosen by a selection committee based upon the student's future plans and reasons for wanting to fly.
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