Often, when Sheena Harrison stood on downtown Minneapolis streets with her 1-year-old son Joseph, she counted. The then-homeless mom assigned the value of one to every person who walked past her instead of stopping to give her a dollar.

One hundred fifty-five such dollars meant a hotel room for the night.

She dared not dream for anything more. She was overjoyed when the occasional passerby bought her a bite to eat and something to drink. A downtown neighbor of hers got her pizza and orange juice one day, consoled her, and stayed to pray with her.

“He prayed with me a lot,” Harrison said. “That one day he asked me what was wrong because I was really hungry, and the baby was hungry, he was crying and screaming.”

Ben Steine disappeared from Harrison’s life for two months, also clueless about how the woman’s life could be improved in more tangible, permanent ways.

But Steine happened to fall in with Josh Liljenquist, a Minnesota TikToker who films himself helping the needy in Minneapolis and St. Paul, with financial help from his viewers. Such a content creator is sometimes called a “kindness influencer.”

Steine signed on as Liljenquist’s videographer. The two (with Australian influencer Samuel Weidenhofer and his videographer Luka Jackway in tow) went in search of people who were down on their luck. And there, tucked against Whole Foods in downtown Minneapolis, were Sheena and Joseph.

Liljenquist bought them a sandwich and watermelon. Weidenhofer handed Harrison $500.

And “I think it was Sam who told her, ‘We’re going to start a fundraiser for you to get you off the street,’” Liljenquist said.

This is the initial video sequence that would make Harrison internet-famous.

@joshlilj

Blessing a Homeless Mom! (GoFundMe 1N B1O)

♬ original sound – Joshlilj

“We were moved by her strength, her heart and the love she has for her son,” Liljenquist wrote on the GoFundMe page. “No one should have to sleep on the streets — especially not a mom and her one-year-old baby. Together we can change that.”

Harrison explains that she traveled to Chicago to help take care of her father, who had dementia. When he died, her mother kicked her and Joseph out. Since then, her priority was to “be a good mom” by landing an apartment and a job. But finding either during two months on the streets proved impossible.

Surprising success — and stress

Among the GoFundMe campaign’s now-laughably-modest goals: “Rent and utilities (we hope to secure a full year of housing).”

Before they knew it, Liljenquist and Weidenhofer had raised more than $600,000.

“I didn’t think it was going to be this crazy,” Liljenquist said. “I lost sleep. I was so stressed. You know, like I have more than half a million dollars and it’s not even my own money. … I was scared, I was really scared.”

The suddenly panicked Liljenquist did what he already does several times a day: He called his mother. Liljenquist already knew his team would be looking into buying a house — and Julie Liljenquist happens to be a Realtor.

Before long, she scoped out a property in Fairmont, Minn., two hours southwest of the Twin Cities and five blocks from where she lives and where she raised Liljenquist. She sweet-talked the current occupants into vacating early so Harrison could move in. That couple left behind toys for Joseph.

“I didn’t charge Sheena anything to do this,” Julie Liljenquist said. “I wanted a house that had the major things done. I wanted a (geographical) location where she would be safe.”

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The team took other steps, such as hiring an accountant and a financial planner for Harrison. The latter, Justin Grossinger, of Northwestern Mutual in Edina, came recommended by Steine.

“It’s a fact that when people come into large sums of money, sometimes it doesn’t last and then their life’s turned upside down from something so good,” said Grossinger, who, like Julie Liljenquist, sees himself as Harrison’s protector.

“When people come into large sums of money regardless of it being a lottery winner or an inheritance or anything, sometimes the people around them come out of the woodwork,” Grossinger said. “I don’t know how else to say that cleanly, right? But sometimes people that weren’t there for us when we needed them want to be now.”

Big reveal

Josh Liljenquist made a potentially controversial request of Harrison — he asked her not to monitor the GoFundMe page even though the money accumulating there belongs to her. “Just let it be a surprise,” he told her, and she agreed.

Liljenquist and Weidenhofer wanted dramatic “reveal” video, and they got it.

Harrison was led blindfolded to the front of the house. Instructed to remove the blindfold and turn around, her mouth became an “O” as the realization hit. Entering the front door, she saw photos by Jackway on all the walls.

@joshlilj

“It’s the greatest family I got!” @Samuel Weidenhofer

♬ original sound – Joshlilj

“It was when she looked at a poster on the wall of her holding up her son that she burst into tears,” Jackway recalled.

“The picture says, ‘Welcome home,’” Harrison said. “I broke down crying. I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never had people who are strangers come into my life and change it in a weekend and a half.”

Julie Liljenquist had stocked the house with furniture from her home, including a favorite couch of her son’s.

Sheena Harrison cooks Thanksgiving dinner in her new Fairmont, Minn., home. (Courtesy of Luka Jackway)

Harrison settled in — though sometimes waking with a start in the middle of the night, wondering where she was.

Harrison was thrilled to be able to host the Liljenquist family, Weidenhofer, the two videographers and others for Thanksgiving.

She went to church. “Everyone there was so loving and so welcoming,” she said.

Harrison discovered that she and Josh Liljenquist share a birthday, Dec. 29.

“So now Josh is a permanent brother,” she said. “So he is just a permanent baby brother.”

She added, “I think I am happier about gaining a family than I am about the money.”

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An internal memo written by the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator offers a concerning glimpse into the future of vaccine regulation in the US — and could have profound implications for both access to and the development of vaccines.

Vinay Prasad’s memo, which was leaked to the news media, makes alarming claims about the COVID-19 vaccine — including the assertion, made without any supporting evidence, that it has caused the death of “at least 10 children.” It also suggests that the FDA will make significant changes to the way vaccines are regulated.

The memo comes at a time of great turmoil at the agency, which intensified this week with the news of yet another leader’s potential exit, and amid increasingly aggressive efforts by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to both undermine confidence in and limit access to vaccines.

Prasad made the extraordinary claim about the safety of COVID vaccines in the email to his staff at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). He said an internal investigation found the children died due to myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation. Yet he provided no data or research to support the claim — an irresponsible and dangerous approach to regulatory oversight.

It is also wildly out of step with the agency’s typically careful process of reviewing safety data. Proving that a vaccine caused a death is a complex endeavor that requires significant evidence, explains Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who previously served on the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee.

In this case, Offit says, regulators would need a raft of information, including an autopsy report that confirms a child had indeed died of myocarditis and not some other cause; documentation showing that the child wasn’t infected with COVID, which can also cause myocarditis; and evidence that they were not infected with one of the many other viruses that can cause fatal inflammation of the heart. If all the evidence pointed to the vaccine being the cause, the FDA’s next step would be to figure out exactly how the harm occurred.

Yet Prasad dropped the bombshell claims without providing proof that such a careful process had taken place. “He’s just raising this horrible specter that if you vaccinate your child, they may die,” Offit says. And he’s doing so, “knowing that the virus is still circulating, knowing that the virus is still causing hospitalizations and ICU admissions and deaths” in children.

Prasad also discussed a new framework for regulating vaccines, one that remains vague, but suggests companies could be asked to conduct much more onerous and expensive studies to prove the safety and efficacy of their vaccines. The goal, he said, is to “direct vaccine regulation towards evidence-based medicine.”

However, getting a new vaccine on the market already requires a rigorous, evidence-based process. When the FDA approved the first RSV vaccine in 2023, it marked the culmination of nearly 50 years of research to understand and develop a vaccine against the virus. To prove the vaccine worked, it was tested in multiple studies, including precisely the kind of large, gold-standard, placebo-controlled trial that Prasad routinely advocates for — in this case, one that enrolled 25,000 older adults.

And while new technologies like mRNA are speeding up vaccine development, the drugs must still undergo similarly massive studies to prove they are safe and effective. For example, last spring, Moderna published data suggesting its experimental mRNA flu vaccine is as good as or perhaps better than shots based on conventional technology. The two studies together enrolled more than 14,000 adults. Last month, Pfizer presented similarly promising data from its own mRNA-based flu shot trial, which recruited nearly 18,500 volunteers.

Prasad’s memo, meanwhile, also suggests changes are afoot for routine shots, including the seasonal flu vaccine. “We will revise the annual flu vaccine framework, which is an evidence-based catastrophe of low-quality evidence, poor surrogate assays, and uncertain vaccine effectiveness measured in case-control studies with poor methods,” he wrote.

Prasad didn’t explain what that revision would entail. But that single sentence could have profound implications. Public health officials have already struggled to convince Americans that the flu shot — an imperfect vaccine, but one that can prevent the worst outcomes of the virus — is worthwhile. Such inflammatory language about the shot (offered, again, without explanation or evidence) from the FDA’s top vaccine regulator is hardly likely to improve consumers’ confidence in its value.

Meanwhile, any regulatory changes that make it harder for people to access the vaccine could have dangerous consequences. Last year’s flu season was a reminder of the virus’ potential to cause severe illness: the CDC estimated it hospitalized 1.1 million Americans and killed 280 children.

The lack of specifics in the memo makes it difficult to assess the full impact on public health. Prasad has made accusations without identifying the data he believes is lacking, without outlining a better process, and without offering a timeline for when any of these changes might be implemented.

In the immediate term, though, the ambiguity is harmful to the environment for vaccine development. As Bloomberg News noted, shares of multiple COVID vaccine developers dipped on news of the memo and the anticipated scrutiny on their products.

It could also hold back investment in future vaccines. Drug developers depend on certainty from regulators about what is needed to approve new products. Instead, they are facing an agency in turmoil, increasingly driven by Prasad’s shifting notion of “gold-standard” science. All of this comes amid vocal skepticism and misinformation about vaccines coming from the highest reaches of US health agencies. Innovation will suffer for it — and so will public health.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was executive editor of Chemical & Engineering News.

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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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