1. A couple of friends (Christian Crumlish and Briggs Nisbet, editors of Enterzone) went to the San Francisco poetry reading I mentioned below, featuring Gary Snyder, Michael McClure and others, and also attended a similar indoor reading the next day. They wrote a pretty cool report on these events; check it out.

2. I recently heard from a friend of the important counter-culture journalist Al Aronowitz, who was a part of the Beat/hippie scene that flourished decades ago. Aronowitz has suffered health problems recently, but he’s also put together his own web site, including several Beat-related articles: here it is.

3. If you haven’t seen Timothy Leary’s website yet, it’s worth a look. Though Leary is not generally thought of as part of the Beat world, it was Allen Ginsberg‘s enthusiastic endorsement of Leary and his ideas about LSD that set him on the path to fame in the early 60’s. Leary is now seriously ill with cancer, and has set out to explore the fact of his impending death in an optimistic and highly public way. I
have mixed feelings about many of the things Leary has done and said in his life, but his approach towards death is proving to be one of his more authentic moments.