Owsley Stanley, LSD Supplier/Grateful Dead Sound Engineer Dies

I'll admit that I had no idea who Owsley Stanley was until I came across this article in today's WSJ. What a guy! Mr. Stanley directly influenced the 1960s acid rock culture by distributing shit tons of, well, high purity acid, often times for free, at concerts with the goal of introducing a new form of consciousness. Over the course of his travels, which included the UVA School of Engineering and the Air Force, he wound up becoming the Grateful Dead's audio expert: creating their sound system, introducing live recordings and even coming up with the trademark skull and lightning-bolt logo. As described in the journal:

Mr. Stanley was the rebellious scion of an eminent Kentucky family. His grandfather, Augustus Owsley Stanley, was a U.S. senator after serving as governor. The younger Mr. Stanley was described by a former schoolmaster "almost like a brain child," but was kicked out of the Charlotte Hall Military Academy in 9th grade for "getting the whole campus intoxicated" on smuggled booze, he told a biographer of Jerry Garcia, the late guitarist for the Grateful Dead.

Owsley died last Sunday at 76 after a car accident in Queensland Australia. The whole article is here.

The Story of Christian the Lion

I was introduced to this story a few months ago by one of my younger brothers, also named Christian, who was likely deep into a Googling his own name session. Anyway, this is the story of a lion, Christian, originally purchased by John Rendall and Anthony Bourke at a Harrods dept. store in London in 1969 - Just your standard Harrods purchase. Of course a lion gets too big to keep at home, so Christian was released to the wild with the help of Kenyan conservationalist George Adamson. In 1971, Adamson told Rendall and Bourke of Christian's successful integration into the wild. Missing their old friend, Rendall and Bourke set off for Kenya to track down Christian with Adamson cautioning that Christian may not remember them. The video below captures the reunion of Christian with Rendall and Bourke.

Things could have got ugly at 1:15 but I'm glad they didn't. For the full story, check out the Born Free Foundation.