Austin, Texas History & Culture - Meet People & Have Fun

UT-Austin Art, Architecture & History - FREE Guided Walking Tour
Saturday, October 18 - 9:30 am. All are welcome.
Meeting Point: Medici Roasting - 2222B Guadalupe Street, Austin.

We invite you to join us for a FREE guided walking tour throughout the University of Texas at Austin. The focus of our tour will be the area’s incredible public art collection and interesting architecture. We’ll also visits sites connected to the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting. The tour will be at casual pace and will cover approximately 1.5 to 2.0 miles.

The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2023, it is also the largest institution in the system.
The university is a major center for academic research, with research expenditures totaling $1.06 billion for the 2023 fiscal year. The university houses seven museums and seventeen libraries, including the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and the Blanton Museum of Art, and operates various auxiliary research facilities, such as the J. J. Pickle Research Campus and McDonald Observatory.
UT Austin's athletics constitute the Texas Longhorns. The Longhorns have won four NCAA Division I National Football Championships, six NCAA Division I National Baseball Championships, thirteen NCAA Division I National Men's Swimming and Diving Championships, and the school has claimed more titles in men's and women's sports than any other member in the Big 12.
As of 2020, 13 Nobel Prize winners, 25 Pulitzer Prize winners, 3 Turing Award winners, 2 Fields Medal recipients, 2 Wolf Prize winners, and 3 Abel Prize winners have been affiliated with the school as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. The university has also been affiliated with three Primetime Emmy Award winners, and as of 2021, its students and alumni have earned a total of 155 Olympic medals.

The University of Texas tower shooting was an act of mass murder that occurred on August 1, 1966, at the University of Texas at Austin. The perpetrator, 25-year-old Marine veteran Charles Whitman, indiscriminately fired at members of the public, both within the Main Building tower and from the tower's observation deck. He shot and killed 15 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 others before he was killed by two Austin Police Department officers approximately 96 minutes after first opening fire from the observation deck.
Prior to arriving at the University of Texas, Whitman had stabbed his mother and wife to death—in part to spare both women "the embarrassment" he believed his actions would cause them.
At the time, the University of Texas tower shooting was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history.

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Event Details ...

Cost: FREE.

Weather: The tour will take place light rain or shine. If it’s on our calendar then we’re proceeding as planned.

Parking: Many options (free and paid) throughout the area. Please arrive in the area several minutes early so that you have time to find parking and walk to our meeting point.

Before the Event: Socializing and icebreakers from 8:45 am - 9:00 am at Medici Roasting which has beverages, snacks, and a restroom.

Meeting Point: Medici Roasting - 2222B Guadalupe Street, Austin. Look for your hosts Robert (wearing a fedora-style hat) and Michele (also wearing a hat) along with a group of friendly people. We’ll depart on our walking tour at approximately 9:00 am.

Icebreaker Introductions: We should have a good-sized group so instead of everyone introducing themselves to the group we will get to know each other by distributing blank stickers and colored markers and we’ll ask everyone to write down on their sticker: 1). first name. 2). favorite food. 3). dream vacation. Example: “Michele - Strawberries - Kenya” or “Robert - Chocolate - Japan”.

Walking Distance: Approximately 1.5 to 2.0 miles.

Ending Point: Medici Roasters.

After the Event: To-be-determined. Lunch?

Additional Questions: Anything that can't be answered by the event description, Google, or common sense, please let us know.

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Your host for this program is Robert Kelleman, the founder/director of the non-profit community organizations Texas History & Culture and Washington, DC History & Culture.

We look forward to seeing you - thanks!

T. rex: The Ultimate Predator
Bullock Texas State History Museum
October 18, 2025 – March 8, 2026

Let’s meetup and check out this major exhibit at the Blanton Museum of Art.
Additional details when we get closer to the event date.

T. rex: The Ultimate Predator
Experience a jaw-dropping new look at the legend
Bullock Texas State History Museum

Fleetwood Mac: 1960’s-Present – Music History Livestream

Let’s travel back in time to hear the great sounds of Fleetwood Mac, the first time they’ve been featured in our music history series. We’ll go all the way back to the band’s roots in the 1960’s and continue through their classic songs from the 1970’s and 1980’s. Of course we’ll also hear some of the group’s solo efforts. In addition to hearing great music we’ll also weave in other historical and cultural aspects from this area.
Group participation of the music with your fellow participants via Zoom.

Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band formed in London in 1967 by guitarist and singer Peter Green. Green named the band by combining the surnames of drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, who have remained with the band throughout its many lineup changes. Fleetwood Mac have sold more than 120 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling bands.

Primarily a British blues band in their early years, Fleetwood Mac achieved a UK number-one single in 1968 with the instrumental "Albatross" and had other UK top ten hits with "Man of the World", "Oh Well" (both 1969), and "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" (1970). Green left the band in May 1970, with McVie's wife Christine McVie (who had previously contributed to the band as a session musician) joining as an official member on vocals and keyboards two months later. Other key members during the band's early years were Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan, and Bob Welch. By the end of 1974, these members had departed, which left the band without a guitarist and male vocalist. While Fleetwood was scouting studios in Los Angeles, he heard the American folk-rock duo Buckingham Nicks, consisting of guitarist and singer Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks. In December 1974, he asked Buckingham to join Fleetwood Mac, with Buckingham agreeing on the condition that Nicks could also join. The addition of Buckingham and Nicks gave the band a more pop rock sound, and their 1975 album Fleetwood Mac topped the Billboard 200 chart in the United States. Their next album, Rumours (1977) reached number one in multiple countries around the world and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978.

The line-up remained stable through three more studio albums, but by the late 1980s began to disintegrate. After Buckingham left in 1987, he was replaced by Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, although Vito left in 1990 along with Nicks. A 1993 one-off performance for the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton reunited the classic 1974–1987 line-up for the first time in six years. A full-scale reunion took place four years later, and Fleetwood Mac released their fourth U.S. No. 1 album, The Dance (1997), a live album marking the 20th anniversary of Rumours and the band's 30th anniversary. Christine McVie left in 1998 after the completion of The Dance Tour. Fleetwood Mac released their final studio album, Say You Will, in 2003. Christine McVie rejoined in 2014 for their On With the Show Tour. In 2018, Buckingham was fired and replaced by Mike Campbell, formerly of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Neil Finn of Split Enz and Crowded House. After Christine McVie's death in 2022, Nicks said in 2024 that the band would not continue without her.

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It's Saturday night, let's travel back in time and hear the classic Motown songs of Marvin Gaye.

Marvin Gaye (born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr.; April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984) was an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. He helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of hits, earning him the nicknames "Prince of Motown" and "Prince of Soul".
Gaye's Motown hits include "Ain't That Peculiar", "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)", and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". Gaye also recorded duets with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell, and Diana Ross. During the 1970s, Gaye recorded the albums What's Going On and Let's Get It On and became one of the first artists in Motown to break away from the reins of a production company. His later recordings influenced several contemporary R&B subgenres, such as quiet storm and neo soul. He was a tax exile in Europe in the early 1980s, he then released "Sexual Healing" the 1982 hit which won his first two Grammy Awards on the album Midnight Love. Gaye's last televised appearances were at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, where he sang "The Star-Spangled Banner"; Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever; and Soul Train.
On April 1, 1984, the day before his 45th birthday, Gaye was shot dead by his father, Marvin Gay Sr. at their house in West Adams, Los Angeles, after an argument.

Motown Records is an American record label founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in 1959. Its name, a blend of motor and town, has become a nickname for Detroit, where the label was originally headquartered.
Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned label that achieved crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its subsidiary labels were the most successful proponents of the Motown Sound, a style of soul music with a mainstream pop appeal. During the 1960s, Motown achieved 79 records in the top-ten of the Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 1969.

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