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‘Down in the Dirt’ display at museum

‘Down in the Dirt’ on display at Texas Tech museum

“Down in the Dirt: The Graphic Art by Terry Allen” is now on exhibit at the Museum of Texas Tech University through March 2022.

The exhibit features more than 70 original works of art by Lubbockraised visual artist and musician, Terry Allen.

Born in Kansas in 1943, Allen was raised in Lubbock, and has worked as an independent artist since 1966 in a wide variety of media including sculpture, painting, drawing, video, installations, and musical and theatrical performances.

Allen has suggested that growing up in West Texas under the tutelage of his impresario father and piano-playing mother provided early momentum for his narrative adventures.

Down in the Dirt is an unparalleled opportunity to encounter the scope of Allen’s artistic persona and embraces more than 40 years of life experiences.

G N & BLADE SHOW

Sat. 9-5 Sun. 10-5

LUBBOCK CIVIC CENTER

Admission: $7 adults, under 12 FREE CASH ONLY

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Mayor’s Fitness Council announces grant recipients

The Lubbock Mayor’s Fitness Council awarded grants to 11 local organizations from the proceeds of the 2021 Mayor’s Marathon. A total of $23,500 was awarded. The marathon was on Oct. 31.

Mayor Dan Pope presented the grants to each recipient, and the Fitness Council recognized United Supermarkets for its continued contributions and support as the title sponsor of the Mayor’s Marathon. 2021 grant awardees were ● Catholic Charities ● Lubbock Children’s Health

Clinic ● Lubbock-Cooper Elementary Run Club ● Lubbock HomeschoolAthletic Association ● Lubbock Memorial Arboretum Foundation ● Mike & Marti Greer Foundation (Charity Chaser

Recipient) ● Preston Smith Color Run ● Preston Smith School Garden ● Preston Smith PE ● USAFit ● Volunteer Center of Lubbock

The next Mayor’s Marathon is set for April 24, 2022.

For more information about the Lubbock Mayor’s Fitness Council and upcoming events, visit fitcitylbk.us.

The Lubbock Mayor’s Fitness Council was launched in 2017 as a collaboration between Healthy Lubbock and the City of Lubbock, working to create a more active and healthy city by showcasing local events, promoting healthy eating, and active living.

Healthy Lubbock is a program of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and the Garrison Institute on Aging.

Need assistance, help or information, and don’t know where to look?

View the directory online: www.WordPub.com/grd1.html.com

Or have a Golden Resource Directory mailed to you. send $3 to: Word Publications 2022 82nd St. #101 Lubbock, TX 79423

Include an address to mail the directory to.

Ingredients:

1 15½ oz. can black‐eyed peas (rinsed) ½ cup pickled jalapeño peppers, chopped ½ cup onion, chopped ½ cup tomato, diced ½ cup olive oil ¼ tsp. garlic powder ¼ tsp. salt ¼ tsp. pepper

Instructions:

1. Mix the black‐eyed peas, jalapeño peppers, onion, tomato, and olive oil together in a bowl. 2. Add garlic powder, salt and pepper. 3. Mix well and chill 10‐15 minutes before serving. 4. Serve with whole grain tortilla chips.

In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived. How well we have loved. How well we have learned to let go.

- JACK KORNFIELD

The two words information and communication are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through. - SYNDEY HARRIS

Effective communication is 20 percent what you know and 80 percent how you feel about what you know. - JIM ROHN

Page 6 • January 2022 • Golden Gazette

‘American Pie,’ Don McLean, & a loss of innocence

In the early-morning hours of Feb. 3, 1959, a small private plane slammed into a cornfield in north-central Iowa. The accident took the life of pop-music superstar Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holly, age 22. Fellow touring stars Ritchie Valens, 17, Jiles Perry “the Big Bopper” Richardson Jr., 24, and the pilot, Roger Peterson, 21, died also in the still-unexplained catastrophe.

While millions of teenage rock fans were undoubtedly devastated by the news, few probably felt more pain than 13-year-old Don McLean, who learned of Holly’s demise from headlines in the newspapers he delivered.

“Buddy Holly was the first and last person I ever really idolized as a kid,” McLean said. The loss that he felt would inspire his multi-million-selling touchstone that, to him, lamented “the day the music died.” (Of course, it didn’t really die. What died was the innocence of the times; the music, as always, continued to evolve.)

McLean, born in New York in 1945, dropped out of Villanova University to follow his muse as a folk singer/songwriter. Mentored by pal Pete Seeger, McLean drifted around the East Coast

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club circuit for years but never became a headliner.

He spent two years creating “Tapestry,” a 1969 album of original tunes. A small label—Mediarts—released it to good reviews but few sales. Mediarts was eventually absorbed by United Artists Records, a major

company that had the clout to aggressively promote McLean’s second LP, the 1971 multi-platinum-selling “American Pie.” “American Pie” wasn’t just another nostalgia-fueled 45; in reality, it was an 800word epic poem in musical form. McLean would later explain, “I wanted to write a song that summed up everything I felt about America and music.”

As with many complex poems, deeper meanings lay beneath the surface of “American Pie.” Its dense, often confusing lyrics grow increasingly more somber as McLean’s tune unfolds amid religious references and enigmatic characters that begged several questions: Was Bob Dylan the jester? Did the crown once belong to Elvis Presley? Was the marching band the Beatles? Was Mick Jagger the Devil incarnate?

McLean has always divulged little about “American Pie,” but it’s easy to see that he bemoans the loss of the carefree times of his, the first rock ‘n’ roll generation. While his sing-along single may appear to be rollicking, even carefree, there’s actu-

ally little to cheer about here.

To Don, America was moving inexorably toward adverse times, due in part to inner-city riots, Vietnam war, protests and political assassinations. “In ‘American Pie,’ things are headed in the wrong direction…becoming less idyllic…,” he once confessed. “It is a morality song, in a sense.”

On April 7, 2015, in Christie’s auction room in New York, McLean’s 16page working manuscript for “American Pie” sold for an astounding $1.2 million. It became the third-highest price ever paid for an American literary item.

The normally closedmouthed McLean has often used a wry retort when people press him too hard about his song’s meaning: “It means,” he would answer, “I don’t ever have to work again if I don’t want to.”

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