During the years she dealt with a stalker, former 89.3 The Current DJ Mary Lucia stopped talking about her dogs on the air. A man she now calls “S— Bag” used Lucia’s love of pets as a way to attempt to worm his way into her life, totally against her will. The famously outgoing media personality clammed up, on air and off, thanks to a terrifying stranger.

In her new memoir “What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To,” Lucia opens the floodgates and tells all, revealing often jaw-dropping and intimate details about her career, her addictions and her life in general.

(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)

Lucia began her time in radio at the much-loved but short-lived alt rock station REV 105 and spent 17 years serving as essentially the face of The Current. She dramatically left that job in 2022 and is now the program adviser at the University of Minnesota’s Radio K, where she hosts her own show from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays.

In her book, Lucia shares the horrifying tale of not only what it’s like to have a stalker, but the struggles she faced from friends, co-workers and even her own mother who sought to downplay her dire situation. She weaves in other tales, both funny and sad, from her life and proves, time and again, why she is one of the highest-profile DJs in the Twin Cities.

Here are seven takeaways from the book, which she’s promoting with upcoming events in Minneapolis and St. Paul:

She had an unconventional childhood

Lucia writes that she grew up in a household that cherished nothing and had no Christmas traditions. She called her parents by the first name and said her mom threw away Lucia’s birth certificate during a move, which she didn’t learn until she attempted to find it as an adult to get a passport.

There were a pair of photo albums in the house, which Lucia said stopped getting updated around 1969, so there are few shots of her childhood.

“There is so little physical documentation of my growing up, perhaps it’s allowed me to create my own version of history and take some creative license,” she writes.

Lucia remembers a show-and-tell day where students were asked to bring in a treasured item from an older family member. Others brought their grandparents’ Ellis Island entry papers or old photos. Her contribution was a vinyl copy of Mott the Hoople’s album “All the Young Dudes.”

She abused all the substances

Lucia goes into great detail about her history of using drugs, prescription and otherwise, and alcohol. And as she does throughout the book, she recalls the old days with self-deprecating humor.

“My drug buddy and dear friend at the time, who is now a substance abuse counselor, hopped on the sad bastard train with me that summer to consume pills like Keith Moon and Judy Garland’s love child. We had a dealer, we had code language, we had deep conversations, laughs, we threw up in people’s yards,” she writes.

She acknowledged hitting the lowest of lows when she dipped into the meds of a “distant friend” who was dying of cancer.

But after her stalker intensified his pursuit, she quit everything but tobacco.

“It would be safe to assume that for most people a traumatic time in one’s life might also be the moment the self-medicating goes into action. Me? No. I stopped everything cold turkey and I didn’t tell anyone. It sounds almost masochistic as if I wanted to feel the pain more deeply with no interference.”

She has a great Liam Gallagher story

In late 2008, hopped up on Ativan and “whatever booze was handed to me,” she attended an Oasis concert at Target Center. After hearing the band was headed to First Avenue after the show, she hit the nightclub and made her way to the VIP booth where Gallagher was holding court. She drunkenly asked him if he thought his opening act Ryan Adams was a fraud.

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His response: “A frog?”

“Next thing I knew we were smashing faces. I am dying of embarrassment in present time as I recount that.”

In an attempt to make a quick, post-makeout departure, she fell down the venue’s steps. She has no idea how she got home that evening.

“Funnily enough it was the only time I ever had to call in sick to work with a hangover,” she writes.

The next day, she received an email from a photographer friend with the subject: “I have some photos you might like to see.” It wasn’t blackmail or anything, she writes, “just a reality check that you are not invisible at your most boorish.”

One of the pics hangs on her fridge to this day.

She has a great Prince story, too

Lucia devotes the fifth chapter of her book to Prince, opening with: “Am I the only person alive who has adored Prince my entire life but wants him to remain a mystery?”

She goes on to bemoan people’s “quest to get to the bottom of Prince’s accidental overdose … I feel very strongly that there needs to be a deeper level of understanding and mercy regarding addiction.”

Lucia writes that she’s never toured Paisley Park and prefers to keep her memories of the Purple One focused on his music, not on the personal details of his life. Like a lot of people in the Twin Cities, she knows people who worked directly with Prince and said she enjoys hearing their stories, but not retelling them.

“They feel sacred. I even have my own Prince story, which I will never tell.”

She drops some names

After she escorted comedian and actor Michael Ian Black through The Current’s office, he asked: “Is this a rock radio station? All I see is spreadsheets and sadness.” (“Believe me, we got a lot of mileage out of that, muttering under our breath that it should be the new station slogan,” Lucia writes.)

In one of the station’s recording studios, singer/songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello once rolled joints on a Steinway gifted to MPR by a wealthy donor.

Trent Reznor and Studs Terkel were both great interviews, she writes. Charles Bradley didn’t know the names of the members of his band. Lou Barlow requested vegan sausage and tofu dogs for a morning session. She recoils discussing a live interview with Alt-J, a British band she writes “seemed to me to be only taking up unnecessary space.”

One interview with an obnoxious, unnamed duo from Los Angeles — most likely the long-forgotten group She Wants Revenge — ended abruptly when one of the guys refused to answer a fairly innocuous question and stormed out of the studio.

Lucia also had difficulty playing certain artists. “I will admit that, on rare occasions, I have done the unthinkable and pulled the fader down midsong on a tune that was doing me great bodily harm. I’m sorry, Joanna Newsom. It was nothing business — it’s strictly personal.”

Her famous brother is there for her, in his own way

Lucia has never used her older brother — Replacements leader Paul Westerberg — to further her own career. In a recent interview with Mpls. St. Paul magazine, she said half-jokingly that there are still people out there who don’t know they’re related.

So it’s not too surprising that she refers to Westerberg only as “my older brother Paulie” in the book. She describes him as “a one-of-a-kind thinker, somewhat unreliable and a loose cannon in the best way, and has a knack for knowing when to rally and come out of his rabbit hole for me.”

When she first opened up to him about her stalker, he sat back and listened. When he did speak up, he said: “Do you know what you need? You need a better TV, the one you have is s—.”

Then, after learning Lucia had the stalker’s phone number, he called and left a voicemail. He never told Lucia further details, “It’s not what I said, but how I said it.”

Later, when she needed help cleaning up her backyard trees, she called Westerberg, who showed up with no tools.

“He impulsively began shimmying up the tree like a monkey. His well thought-out idea was to simply hang from the dead branches until they broke off. Immediately my internal Google map was trying to figure out which hospital emergency room was closest.”

She doesn’t know what happened at The Current, either

In April 2022, Lucia surprised both her co-workers and listeners when she announced she was leaving The Current. In the book, she details her many issues with the station’s management, former program director Jim McGuinn in particular, that led to her decision. (She calls McGuinn “Potsy” in the book and writes: “He had managed to convince upper management he was Bono by attending company meetings with a predictable rock T-shirt under a suit coat.” McGuinn did not respond to a request for comment.)

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During her memorable final broadcast, she played a series of hand-chosen songs — they’re listed in full in her book — and wrapped up by saying she knew she made a difference and “it doesn’t matter if the company or management doesn’t feel the same way. Thank you for everything, I love you.” She then played the Rolling Stones’ “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It)” and followed it with an uncomfortable stretch of dead air.

Moments later, MPR president Duchesne Drew sent an email to staff announcing that McGuinn, who was Lucia’s boss, was no longer with the company.

Just like her listeners at the time, Lucia writes that she didn’t see that coming, didn’t understand why they let her quit and that she was confused by the timing of it all.

“I can honestly say corporate decisions are not for me to understand.”

Mary Lucia discusses her new book

In conversation with Lizz Winstead: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 9, at the Granada Theater, 3022 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; granadampls.com.
In conversation with Andrea Swensson: 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10, at the Ramsey County Historical Society in Landmark Center, 75 West Fifth St., St. Paul; rchs.com.

There are black-rimmed eyeglasses of various sizes all over Lubbock, Texas – some are large enough to climb into for a creative selfie, others are small symbols on magnets and postcards at breweries and gift shops around the city, and some are painted onto the asphalt to form a crosswalk border. The iconic symbol is a tribute to Lubbock’s favorite son, musician Buddy Holly.

Many Minnesotans can understand Lubbock’s obsession with all-things Holly. I mean, we have our own Prince memorabilia with painted murals, Paisley Park museum and purple paraphernalia throughout the Twin Cities. In Lubbock, the adoration is equally strong. I recently spent three days in the northwest Texas town of approximately 250,000 residents on an invitation from Visit Lubbock and saw firsthand how important Holly was to the area and to the music community in general. The man born Charles Hardin Holley in 1936 pioneered the popularity of rock ’n’ roll before his tragic death at age 22 in an airplane accident in Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1959 that also killed Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson. Lubbock’s love of Holly and his musical genius is just one pleasant surprise I discovered during my visit. Here’s a look at some of the highlights.

Back to the beginning

Signage at the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo courtesy of Amy Nelson)

Our group of travel writers saved a tour of the Buddy Holly Center until the final day of our trip, but I would suggest starting here to get an immediate sense of Lubbock’s vibe. Located on Crickets Avenue (named after his famous band), this museum is not to be confused with the new Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences concert venue (more on that later). At the museum, we caught a 15-minute film documenting Holly’s life and influence for his songs, including “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.” I experienced a very meta moment while watching Paul McCartney discuss on film how Holly impacted him and everyone else in the Beatles (allegedly named after the Crickets) while reading a text from a friend who was inviting me to McCartney’s spectacular concert at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis the next night. Of course I went; it was karma.

After the film, I toured the compact but well-curated gallery of Holly’s personal items, including those famous eyeglasses and the 1958 Fender Stratocaster guitar, the last guitar he ever played. I chatted with very passionate docents about the memorabilia, and one led me to a display case that included the tour schedule for Holly’s final performance. I knew that my mother-in-law had seen Holly perform in Wisconsin a few days before his death, and there it was – proof that he had played Green Bay’s Riverside Ballroom just two days earlier. I got a bit of a chill realizing how fortunate she was to have seen that concert.

Symbolic guitar picks that represent investors in the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences in Lubbock, Texas. At the center is Sir Paul McCartney. (Photo courtesy of Amy Nelson)

And the day before that performance, a young Bob Dylan (then Bobby Zimmerman) attended Holly’s concert in Duluth, which he cites as “the dawning of it all.” After our time exploring the center, we walked next door for a guided tour of the Allison House, a remarkable re-creation of the house that Crickets drummer Jerry Allison grew up in and where he and Holly first formed a band.

On a different day, our group toured the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, a $158 million performance venue that opened in 2021. With two theaters, a restaurant and a ballet school adjacent to the center, the gorgeous building attracts big names and events, from Broadway musicals to the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra to Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Our guide showed us a hallway decorated with signatures and decals of the acts who have come through, sharing a bit of lore that Bob Dylan is one of only a few performers to decline signing the wall when he performed there in March 2022 (but he did sign a register). Paul McCartney’s name popped up again as a micro-investor who helped support the hall’s construction, and our guide pointed out the guitar pick inscribed with his name on the artistic wall of symbolic picks. Look closely, and you’ll see these picks are arranged to form a torso of Holly and his guitar. It’s a neat little trick once you spot it.

Beyond Buddy

Agave Dreams, a statue on the Texas Tech campus in Lubbock, Texas. (Courtesy of Amy Nelson)

Music and performing arts aren’t the only artistic expressions in Lubbock, however. One part of the tour took us to the Texas Tech campus, right in the heart of the city, where we spent the afternoon learning about the commissioned sculptures and public art across the sprawling grounds. I was surprised to learn Texas Tech’s Lubbock campus is 1,839 acres in size, compared with the University of Minnesota’s estimated 1,150 acres across both the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas.

As college students zipped around on scooters and scurried to their various classes, we boarded the program’s art bus to explore campus and learn more about the nearly 150 pieces of art by more than 140 artists across the system’s eight campuses. The Lubbock location is the largest, and we saw more than a dozen works, all site-specific to their location. For instance, outside the Experimental Sciences Building, a stainless steel and aluminum sculpture titled Astrolab by American artist Owen Morrell reflects the research students and professors are conducting inside. A striking and magnetic sculpture titled Agave Dreams by German artist Juilan Voss-Andreae sits in a cactus garden outside the Biology Building. It’s a point of pride that Texas Tech’s collection has been named one of the top 10 public art collections in the United States by the prestigious Public Art Review. I was thankful we had the bus to transport us around, because walking to the various pieces we saw would have been at least several miles on a hot Texas day.

Branding irons at the National Ranching Experience in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo courtesy of Amy Nelson)

Ranching also plays a big role in Lubbock and throughout Texas, which we learned about at the National Ranching Experience, a 27-acre museum and outdoor historical park. All but five of the 53 historic structures in the park are between 100 and 200 years old, showcasing the history of ranching. The day we visited, several school groups were touring the outdoor structures as well as the new Cash Family Ranch Life Learning Center, an interactive museum where we learned the difference between ranching and farming and the many types of prairie grasses.

And with ranching comes Lubbock’s other obsession: fantastic food, especially barbecue. We had it for lunch at Evie Mae’s BBQ, in exotic form at The Nicollet and with the famous fried chicken at Dirk’s. The only place I didn’t try some form of barbecue during the visit was at breakfast at Cast Iron Grill. But that’s because there, it’s pie for breakfast, which we certainly sampled. It’s the perfect place to start the day — for the pies, and because it’s located right next to the Buddy Holly Center and those oversized frames.

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Today is Sunday, Dec. 7, the 341st day of 2025. There are 24 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Dec. 7,1972, America’s last crewed moon mission to date was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral.

Also on this date:

In 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

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In 1941, the Empire of Japan launched an air raid on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,300 Americans. The United States declared war against Japan the following day.

In 1982, convicted murderer Charlie Brooks Jr. became the first U.S. prisoner to be executed by lethal injection, at a prison in Huntsville, Texas.

In 1988, a major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia, killing at least 25,000 people.

In 1993, six people were killed and 19 wounded in a mass shooting aboard a Long Island Rail Road train in New York.

In 2004, Hamid Karzai (HAH’-mihd KAHR’-zeye) was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president.

In 2018, James Alex Fields Jr., who drove his car into a crowd of counterdemonstrators at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Virginia, was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Heather Heyer, an anti-racism activist. He was later sentenced on that and other convictions to life in prison plus 419 years.

In 2024, the newly-restored Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was reopened to the public after a devastating blaze nearly destroyed the beloved Gothic masterpiece in 2019. World leaders attended the reopening ceremony amid great fanfare and celebration.

Today’s Birthdays:

Linguist and political philosopher Noam Chomsky is 97.
Actor Ellen Burstyn is 93.
Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Bench is 78.
Singer-songwriter Tom Waits is 76.
Republican Sen. Susan M. Collins of Maine is 73.
Basketball Hall of Famer Larry Bird is 69.
Actor Jeffrey Wright is 60.
Actor C. Thomas Howell is 59.
Football Hall of Famer Terrell Owens is 52.
Football Hall of Famer Alan Faneca is 49.
Actor Shiri Appleby is 47.
Singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles (bah-REHL’-es) is 46.
Actor Nicholas Hoult is 36.
MLB All-Star Pete Alonso is 31.
Olympic swimming gold medalist Torri Huske is 23.

Jesper Wallstedt is human.

That was the hard lesson Minnesota Wild fans learned late Saturday night, as the red-hot rookie goalie cooled off just a bit, and suffered his first regulation loss of the season.

Victimized for a trio of goals in the second period, Wallstedt and the Wild fell 4-2 in their lone visit to Vancouver this season, dropping their second consecutive game.

Matt Boldy and Mats Zuccarello scored for the Wild, who dominated early but failed to build on their first period lead. Wallstedt, now 8-1-2 as a starter, had 16 saves in the loss.

“The story of this game is we didn’t capitalize on the chances that we had,” Wild coach John Hynes said to reporters at Rogers Arena in Vancouver. “We carried play most of the night. We didn’t get rewarded for the effort we put in offensively, and then we had a couple self-inflicted wounds.”

Aatu Raty had a pair of goals, and another disallowed, for Vancouver, which had been winless in its previous four games.

Just seconds into the game, Wallstedt found himself under pressure, thwarting a Vancouver scoring chance, but upending a Canucks player in the process. Wallstedt was whistled for tripping on the play, which was the second penalty of his NHL career.

The Wild’s penalty killers, who have been on a hot streak lately, negated the Canucks advantage, then Minnesota took the lead shortly after getting back to 5-on-5. Zuccarello – who had served the Wallstedt penalty – grabbed the puck at center ice, kicking off a 2-on-1 rush to the net. His cross-ice pass set up Boldy’s 16th goal of the season.

Zuccarello’s assist on the play was the 242nd he has recorded in a Wild uniform, moving him into fourth place in franchise history, one better than Pierre-Marc Bouchard in the team’s record book. He nearly had another first period assist, with a long lead pass that caught Kirill Kaprizov behind the Vancouver defense, but his breakaway attempt was stopped.

After the Wild spent the first six minutes of the middle frame pushing to double their lead, the Canucks looked, briefly, like they had tied the game. After a lengthy review, officials determined that Raty had kicked the puck into the net and it was no goal.

But Vancouver tied the game for real on a broken play before the second period was half over, via a long-range shot through a crowd in front of Wallstedt. It was the first career goal for Canucks rookie defenseman Tom Willander. A few minutes later, another shot from the blue line fooled Wallstedt, and the Wild found themselves trailing despite all of their early scoring chances. The Canucks also scored on a 2-on-1 rush to make it 3-1, as Vancouver cashed in on three of their first nine shots on goal.

“I thought they just got a couple good bounces. They scored good hockey goals,” said Wallstedt, who had won seven in a row prior to Saturday. “That kind of just switched the momentum we just couldn’t get the puck in today.”

Minnesota made another push to start the third, but instead of cutting into the Canucks’ lead, Wallstedt’s misplayed puck behind the net ended up making it 4-1.

With Wallstedt on the bench and the Wild on a power play, Zuccarello put a wrist shot in to pull Minnesota back within a pair in the final minutes.

Canucks rookie goalie Nikita Tolopilo, making his third start of the season, had 28 saves as Vancouver moved to 1-1 versus Minnesota this season. They will finish their season series with the Wild on April 2 at Grand Casino Arena.

Coupled with Thursday’s 4-1 loss in Calgary, it is only the third time this season that the Wild have had back-to-back losses in regulation, and the first time since Oct. 25.

“We had a good run of winning a lot of games. For us, the message is just getting back to that as quick as possible,” Wild defenseman Zeev Buium said. “Not letting ourselves get down and kind of get out of this.”

The Wild conclude their four-game western road trip on Monday, facing the Kraken for the first time this season, in Seattle. The opening faceoff is scheduled for 9 p.m. CT.

Briefly

After missing the road trip’s first two games with a lower body ailment, rookie center Danila Yurov returned to the lineup and took his place as the middle man on the top line between Kaprizov and Zuccarello. His return meant a healthy scratch for bottom six center Ben Jones.

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