Timothy Leary

ABC launches another family sitcom tonight -- which isn't exactly news, except that this one is watchable.* "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." (8-9 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45) -- To quote directly from one of the songs in "Hair": "Answer my weary query, Timothy Leary, dearie." What I want to know, Mr. Leary, is this: Were you eager to play Dr. Milo in this strange TV Western, or were you a little Leary? Fox.* "Sister, Sister" (8:30-9 p.m., 9:30-10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Yes, it's a dumb premise: Twin sisters, separated at birth, reunite, and the respective single parents who adopted them decide to live under one roof for the good of the girls.

Dr. Gerald D. Klee, a retired psychiatrist who was an LSD expert and participated in its experimentation on volunteer servicemen at several military installations in the 1950s, died Sunday of complications after surgery at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center. The longtime Timonium resident was 86. Dr. Klee made headlines in 1975 when he confirmed published reports that the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Psychiatric Institute had been involved in secret research between 1956 and 1959, when hundreds of Army soldiers were given LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide.

Timothy Leary, who effectively introduced many Americans to the psychedelic 1960s with the relentlessly quoted phrase "tune in, turn on, drop out," died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 75.HTC However indelible his connection with another era, Leary was very much a man of the moment, and he made his death a final act of performance art by having video cameras record it for possible broadcast on the Internet. He had planned a celebration, and Web sites had collected Leary memorabilia -- texts of his books and lectures, tributes from friends, a listing of his daily drug intake, legal and illegal -- from the time he was told last year that he had prostate cancer.

Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, by Alston Chase. W.W. Norton. 352 pages. $26.95. Take America's fascination with sociopathic murder and pair it with the intellectual mystique surrounding Harvard, and you should have a great tale to be told. And Alston Chase, a Harvard graduate and a former civilization fleer to Montana himself, has told it -- but with a twist that carries his new book over the edge of reasonability and readability. Chase, often through wildly subjective interpretations of how the literature on Ted Kaczynski's cabin bookshelf influenced the Unabomber's antisocial mind and deeds, argues that Harvard subtly planted the seeds of discontent.

RECENTLY I found myself in a deep nostalgia wallow as a result of two occurrences:(1) Timothy Leary went up to that Big Volkswagen Microbus in the Sky.(2) I turned 49. This means I'm almost 50, which is halfway to the stage in life where a person can wind up on the Willard Scott Birthday Segment of the "Today" show, the one where they show a picture of an extremely senior citizen who looks like "Juanita," the semi-preserved 500-year-old frozen Inca woman unearthed last year, and Willard says: "Happy birthday to Mrs. Claudia A. Smoogent!

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The first of the entourage to arrive at the Beverly Hills Hotel was Camilla Grace, wearing a short blue dress, fluffy blue slippers and a dog collar studded with flashing, battery-operated lights.Next came Trudy Truelove, in a dress cut just low enough in the back so that the top of her extensive tattoo work could be seen. She also wore one of the flashing collars, as did Craig Inglis, whose tuxedo shirt was so ruffled it would have embarrassed a matador.Half a dozen more twentysomethings emerged from cars near the front entrance of the fabled landmark, all wearing the collars.

Life in the remote-control lane keeps getting weirder.Take Dana Carvey of "Saturday Night Live." This guy sounds more like Ross Perot than Ross Perot. The already-blurred line separating reality and entertainment is now turning to Silly Putty.How else to explain the call from the NBC publicist pitching an interview with Timothy Leary? That's right, the LSD enthusiast and '60s counterculture guru wants us to tune in and turn on "Blossom" Monday night.Why? Because Mr. Leary is making a guest appearance on the popular NBC sitcom about the teen-age ups and downs ofBlossom Russo (Mayim Bialik)

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Timothy Leary, the one-time LSD guru who became the 1960s' most famous adventurer in chemicals, has a new sort of mind-altering trip in mind these days.Leary's latest interest is so-called "virtual reality," a computer-simulated experience he believes could transform the way most of us live."The human race," he proclaimed at a press conference yesterday in Minneapolis, "has not learned how to use electrons. I predict that 20 or 25 years from now people will look back at us in 1992 and say, 'Those poor, confused barbarians, they didn't know how to operate their brains.

Dr. Gerald D. Klee, a retired psychiatrist who was an LSD expert and participated in its experimentation on volunteer servicemen at several military installations in the 1950s, died Sunday of complications after surgery at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center. The longtime Timonium resident was 86. Dr. Klee made headlines in 1975 when he confirmed published reports that the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Psychiatric Institute had been involved in secret research between 1956 and 1959, when hundreds of Army soldiers were given LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide.

Private schools' popularity not due to racismAs a father of a recent graduate of a parochial high school, I always believed the choice of a private school for my daughter was based on a careful consideration of what was best for her. But according to Michael Olesker's June 11 column, ''As private schools build, public foundation shakes,'' the underlying motivation behind such a choice is actually quite sinister.Despite acknowledging the serious shortcomings of the public school system, Mr. Olesker contends that racism and irrational fear are largely responsible for the surge in private school enrollment.

President Bush says he plans to spend part of his vacation reading David McCullough's new biography of John Adams, but it was his fleeting reference to another book that sent it climbing the sales charts this week. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's dystopian classic, rose to No. 135 on Amazon.com's sales chart Monday, four days after Bush mentioned the book in his nationally televised speech on stem-cell research. Bush said, "We have arrived at that `Brave New World' that seemed so distant in 1932, when Aldous Huxley wrote about human beings created in test tubes."

"The Source," playing through Wednesday at the Charles, doesn't so much document the Beat generation as immerse the viewer in it -- a non-traditional method the determinedly non-traditional Beats would have applauded. Director Chuck Workman, best-known for his rapid-fire movie montages that tend to show up on Oscar telecasts, uses much the same approach here. Film clips, snippets of dialogue, still photographs and lots of images that have nothing to do with the Beats but everything to do with the times in which they lived, all are strewn throughout "The Source" in a way that seems more organic that calculated.

SEATTLE -- It is Sunday night and the faithful are assembling, dressed in sweats, baseball caps and the classic Northwest mix of hiking boots and shorts over thermal underwear.The young people hurry to the 9: 30 p.m. service at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, to meet up with friends and get a seat, even if it is on the floor.People were turned away at least five times last year when the cathedral, which seats more than 600, reached capacity.Signs on the doors prohibit talking before, during and after the service.

RECENTLY I found myself in a deep nostalgia wallow as a result of two occurrences:(1) Timothy Leary went up to that Big Volkswagen Microbus in the Sky.(2) I turned 49. This means I'm almost 50, which is halfway to the stage in life where a person can wind up on the Willard Scott Birthday Segment of the "Today" show, the one where they show a picture of an extremely senior citizen who looks like "Juanita," the semi-preserved 500-year-old frozen Inca woman unearthed last year, and Willard says: "Happy birthday to Mrs. Claudia A. Smoogent!

Private schools' popularity not due to racismAs a father of a recent graduate of a parochial high school, I always believed the choice of a private school for my daughter was based on a careful consideration of what was best for her. But according to Michael Olesker's June 11 column, ''As private schools build, public foundation shakes,'' the underlying motivation behind such a choice is actually quite sinister.Despite acknowledging the serious shortcomings of the public school system, Mr. Olesker contends that racism and irrational fear are largely responsible for the surge in private school enrollment.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The first of the entourage to arrive at the Beverly Hills Hotel was Camilla Grace, wearing a short blue dress, fluffy blue slippers and a dog collar studded with flashing, battery-operated lights.Next came Trudy Truelove, in a dress cut just low enough in the back so that the top of her extensive tattoo work could be seen. She also wore one of the flashing collars, as did Craig Inglis, whose tuxedo shirt was so ruffled it would have embarrassed a matador.Half a dozen more twentysomethings emerged from cars near the front entrance of the fabled landmark, all wearing the collars.

President Bush says he plans to spend part of his vacation reading David McCullough's new biography of John Adams, but it was his fleeting reference to another book that sent it climbing the sales charts this week. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's dystopian classic, rose to No. 135 on Amazon.com's sales chart Monday, four days after Bush mentioned the book in his nationally televised speech on stem-cell research. Bush said, "We have arrived at that `Brave New World' that seemed so distant in 1932, when Aldous Huxley wrote about human beings created in test tubes."

"The Source," playing through Wednesday at the Charles, doesn't so much document the Beat generation as immerse the viewer in it -- a non-traditional method the determinedly non-traditional Beats would have applauded. Director Chuck Workman, best-known for his rapid-fire movie montages that tend to show up on Oscar telecasts, uses much the same approach here. Film clips, snippets of dialogue, still photographs and lots of images that have nothing to do with the Beats but everything to do with the times in which they lived, all are strewn throughout "The Source" in a way that seems more organic that calculated.

Timothy Leary, who effectively introduced many Americans to the psychedelic 1960s with the relentlessly quoted phrase "tune in, turn on, drop out," died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 75.HTC However indelible his connection with another era, Leary was very much a man of the moment, and he made his death a final act of performance art by having video cameras record it for possible broadcast on the Internet. He had planned a celebration, and Web sites had collected Leary memorabilia -- texts of his books and lectures, tributes from friends, a listing of his daily drug intake, legal and illegal -- from the time he was told last year that he had prostate cancer.

ABC launches another family sitcom tonight -- which isn't exactly news, except that this one is watchable.* "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." (8-9 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45) -- To quote directly from one of the songs in "Hair": "Answer my weary query, Timothy Leary, dearie." What I want to know, Mr. Leary, is this: Were you eager to play Dr. Milo in this strange TV Western, or were you a little Leary? Fox.* "Sister, Sister" (8:30-9 p.m., 9:30-10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Yes, it's a dumb premise: Twin sisters, separated at birth, reunite, and the respective single parents who adopted them decide to live under one roof for the good of the girls.