OFF-Timothy Leary

[shillada at GATWICK.GECO-PRAKLA.SLB.COM]

As Hawkwind used to play benefits for Tim Leary, I thought this may be of interest ....

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Date:          Fri, 19 Apr 1996 22:09:56 -0600
To:            Ye Olde Severed Heads List <severed-heads at next.com.au>
From:          volt16 at primenet.com (Mike)
Subject:       Timothy Leary article from "The Oregonian" (part 1)


>>>What did the Oregonian quote as a source? Did they interview Tim?
>
>The following article was published in The Oregonian, April 17, 1996,
>and is reproduced here without permission.
>
>Make of it what you will.
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>LEARY PLANS LIVE INTERNET DEMISE
>by Tom Bates and Kristi Turnquist (of the Oregonian staff)
>
>Timonthy Leary is about to kill himself--live on the Internet--and
>his friend Ken Kesey, for one, is planning to watch.
>
>"It will be stimulating," says Kesey, a Pleasant Hill author.  "It
>will be about something.  So much of this Internet stuff is kids
>playing with paper cups and strings."
>
>A former Harvard professor who advised '60s students to "turn on,
>tune in, and drop out" with the help of LSD, Leary is about to die of
>prostate cancer.  But he plans to go out in typically controversial
>style, committing suicide on camera for the benefit of a global
>audience of computer nerds.
>
>Kesey, whose association with Leary goes back 30 years to his days as
>leader of the footloose Merry Pranksters, attended Leary's 75th
>birthday party recently in Los Angeles and played host to a recent
>visit from the psychedelic relic at Kesey's farm near Eugene.
>
>The Internet stunt is "all he talks about," Kesey says.  "I told him,
>'Tim, this is your best act so far.'  He said, 'Yeah, but what do I do
>for an encore?'"
>
>A repeat spectacle by anyone isn't what assisted-suicide activists
>are looking for.
>
>Oregonians led the world in 1994 by passing an initiative, now mired
>in appeals courts, making doctor-assisted suicide legal.  News of
>Leary's plans drew reactions from suicide watchers ranging from
>amusement to disgust.
>
>Whether he goes through with it, Leary's desire to cybercast his
>demise has the Internet e-mail all abuzz.
>
>Steve Silberman, editor at large of HotWired
>(http://www.hotwired.com) and author of "Skeleton Key: A Dictionary
>for Deadheads," says he heard about Leary's plan earlier.  But he
>still was surprised to see the proliferation of e-mail messages about
>it Tuesday.
>
>Silberman thinks this all makes sense.  Part of the '60s dream, he
>says, was about cutting through govermental party lines in search of
>a "global transformation of consciousness."
>
>Leary himself has called it the first "visible, interactive suicide."
>
>His live personal computer audience will not be large.  Fewer than 10
>million Americans are using the Internet.  Many of them are getting to
>the Web through on-line services that do not have the tools for live
>video.
>
>Silberman describes the current technology as "like a series of video
>snapshots.  It wouldn't look like TV.  It would be more like watching
>a security camera."
>
>(to be continued)

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Fri, 19 Apr 1996 22:10:37 -0600
To:            Ye Olde Severed Heads List <severed-heads at next.com.au>
From:          volt16 at primenet.com (Mike)
Subject:       Timothy Leary article from "The Oregonian" (part two)


>Meanwhile, Leary is promoting "hi-tech designer dying" via his home
>page on the Web (http://www.leary.com), which is readily available to
>those with Web access.
>
>"Mademoiselle Cancer has moved in to share 'my' body," states his
>most recent health summary, dated April 9.  "So far she is taking
>Room and Board in 'my' prostate and 'my' back bones.  I feel minimal
>pain."
>
>Even if Leary receives assistance in the form of lethal drugs, two
>recent appellate court rulings favoring assisted suicide make
>prosecution unlikely.
>
>As Leary makes his plans, Dr. Jack Kevorkian is on trial again in
>Michigan on charges that he aided in the death of two people.
>
>"What the 9th Circuit said is he has the right to determine the time
>and manner of his death," says Barbara Coombs Lee, a chief petitioner
>for Oregon's Measure 16 assisted-suicide law.
>
>But Lee and other assisted-suicide supporters say Leary's sensational
>scheme bears no resemblance to "death with dignity" as they see it
>being practiced.
>
>"Public activity is not what we anticipate," Lee says.  "Our
>expectation is that not more than 1 or 2 percent will take advantage
>of the option, and those we expect will exercise the choice in the
>privacy of their homes, surrounded by loved ones."
>
>Derek Humphry, an Eugene activist who founded and later left the
>Hemlock Society, says what Leary is doing "is in pretty poor taste,
>but then you would expect that from a flamboyant character like
>Timothy Leary...He's not doing anything for our cause."
>
>"This troubles me, to think that people will grandstand death in this
>way," says Jim Hoefler of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and author
>of the book "Deathright: Culture, Medicine, Politics and the Right to
>Die."
>
>"This is not really any different from standing on the Golden Gate
>Bridge and calling people out to watch you jump," he says.  "It kind
>of a desperate act of somebody who wants to go out in a blaze of
>glory."
>
>Kesey says he doesn't see what Leary proposes as suicide.
>
>"As (Neal) Cassady (who drove "Further" in Merry Prankster days) used
>to say, 'Don't get caught on the horns of a false dilemma.'  These
>people want to stop hurtin'.  They will die on their own if you give
>them enough opiates.  If it takes so much painkillers, and you die in
>the course of that, it's different from suicide."
>
>But Herb Gold, a San Franciso novelist, suspects that Leary's scheme
>reflects not just the desire for a painless death but an unsatisfied
>longing.  "He is already mythic, and he wants to be even more."
>

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