More coming in the Tuesday edition on the exit of Dr. Shirley Raines as president of the University of Memphis at the end of June.

Raines announces her retirement after a dozen years at the helm of the city’s largest higher education institution. In that time, much has changed on the campus and off the campus footprint.

Here’s the story we ran in The Memphis News last year that marked the school’s centennial as well as what Raines was working to accomplish beyond the bricks and mortar.

The radio station that brought 1990s alternative rock and grunge to Memphis is coming back.

Flinn Broadcasting announced Thursday, April 11, that 96X has returned at 96.1 on the FM dial.

Before the format switch Thursday afternoon, just in time for afternoon drive time, the station had been playing “Blister” by Violent Femmes continuously.

96x’s Facebook cover photo sports the 1990s-era logo with the note “We’re back.”

In its previous incarnation, 96X was at 95.7 and was owned by the Clear Channel broadcasting group that also included Rock 103 and WREC-AM.

The new radio station’s Facebook page includes the old 96X logo complete with the lizard and the station’s slogan of “Never Blend In.”

When the radio station debuted in 1994, its playlist included such new bands as Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soul Asylum, Soundgarden, Cracker and Green Day. All were bands that weren’t getting airplay in other commercial radio formats in the Memphis market. They represented a different sound and a different audience than the long established artists being featured on album rock, classic rock and album oriented rock radio stations at the time.

The new format quickly connected with younger listeners even as those artists and others quickly became the mainstream future of more conventional rock radio formats and found their way onto those playlists as well.

The original 96X lasted for six years and framed the music in a context that included an oldies lunch hour of late 1970s and early 1980s punk and none of the classic rock that it would later be combined with as it grew in popularity.

It was the station that broke the news locally that Kurt Cobain was dead, interviewed the Dave Matthews Band and Wallflowers during early Memphis dates by both bands and dropped the “Santa Monica” single by the band Everclear it had been playing a lot after a tense on-air interview in which the band mistakenly accused the radio station of not playing it until they came to town.

Fiona Apple and Sarah McLachlan were among those who performed in the studios on Beale Street during visits to the city.

Beck composed an original song in the radio station’s production studio to go with the “Loser” and other early hits.

Lots happening for river watchers in the next few weeks leading up to the busiest time on the riverfront, the Memphis in May International Festival.

Mud Island River Park opens for the season on Saturday, April 13.

Across the harbor at Beale Street Landing, the Queen of the Mississippi will be docked Friday as well as Saturday.

The Grand Caribe will be in dock April 22 and 23 and the Queen of the Mississippi returns to the landing April 26 and 27 with the American Queen tying up at the foot of Beale Street on April 28.

The American Queen, which calls Memphis its homeport and whose corporate offices are at One Commerce Square, will be in town almost one year to the day it began its service from Beale Street Landing.

Here’s a look at our coverage of this a year ago along with some great riverfront photos by Lance Murphey from the occasion. In the year since the photos of the Queen’s interior were taken, the boat has undergone a renovation and upgrade for the new season.

It’s another reminder that the Mississippi River is not a place where anything remains the same for very long.

The last two years have been pretty eventful ones on the riverfront for several reasons. May will mark two years since the flooding that almost but not quite eclipsed the record flooding of 1937.

The Memphis in May International Barbecue Cooking Contest even moved to Tiger Lane at the Fairgrounds because of the high water.

That was followed by a drop in the river level to near record low levels.

What the river gives it takes away and what it takes away it replaces with something it took from some other place reached by its waters.

With Mud Island River Park opening for the season Saturday, April 13, it seems an appropriate time to sound a musical note for the park, that once featured a regular Memphis music revue on the ampitheater stage early in its existence. And who can forget the Sidney Shlenker plan to build numerous stages and performance areas on Mud Island and rename it Festival Island?

I’ve got the t-shirt on that one, literally – a late 1980s early 1990s neon job of “The Great American Pyramid” that came with attending the massive auditions of seemingly every band ever formed in Memphis over several nights at Sam Phillips Recording Studio on Madison.

So, a few months ago, imagine my surprise when I came across a Rita Coolidge tune titled “Mud Island.”

The song, written by Coolidge, was on her debut A&M album “Rita Coolidge” in 1971, about 10 years before the Mud Island River Park made its debut – a time when the island was still flooding on a yearly basis and the idea of Harbor Town and other housing developments on the island sounded like a science fiction plot.

The song even predates by a few years the initial planning for the river park when it was to be called “Volunteer Park.”

“Mud Island” wasn’t a single from the album and it would be about six more years before Coolidge hit the big time starting with a cover of Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher.”

“Mud Island” has a Memphis vibe going for it and lyrics about a man left behind to travel the river and perhaps a future meeting.

Normally, this post would have already included a link to a YouTube video but there aren’t any.

Memphis, as it turns out, is a city that figures prominently in Coolidge’s life. It is where she met her future husband, Kris Kristofferson.

Follow this chain of events.

Harold Ford Sr. is running for his fourth term in Congress and he faces opposition in the 1980 Democratic primary from another black elected official – Shelby County Commission Minerva Johnican.

Ford wins but does not forget and returns the favor when Johnican runs for re-election in 1982. Ford backs Julian Bolton who beats Johnican.

Johnican returns the favor two years later by backing a Republican, Karen Williams, in Williams’ challenge of Democratic state Representative John Spence, who is backed by Ford. Williams beats Spence.

Politics can be a set of chains similar to this. And if you look closely enough you can have a pretty impressive chain even if some of the links become a bit thin.

Johnican’s decision to challenge Ford at the height of his political powers may have had its origins in John Ford’s 1978 County Mayor gambit. He and the family political organization talked a number of probable contenders for county mayor in the 1978 county general election out of making the race in the name of a consensus black candidate – John Ford. Then Ford himself dropped out of the race.

On the other end of the chain, Johnican ran for and was elected to the Memphis City Council in 1983 and then satisfied her desire to make a race for mayor by running unsuccessfully for Memphis Mayor in 1987.

The bid for Memphis Mayor was another milestone in local politics which has included few women as mayoral contenders – city or county mayor. Their ranks include Pat VanderSchaaf and Wanda Halbert as well as Deidre Malone and Carolyn Gates.

Johnican, who died last week at the age of 74, will be remembered at a Saturday funeral service.

Johnican, like another departed political icon we’ve talked about recently on this blog – Otis Higgs – certainly didn’t win every political skirmish or battle over the years and she probably didn’t make it as far in elected office as her ambitions dictated.

But that is not always the mark of political success and more importantly political influence.

I’m not talking about the kind of political influence referenced in decisions made by legislative bodies as well as state and federal court indictments. This is influence on the culture of politics – the atmosphere that a citizen jumps into when he or she makes a decision to run for elected office or support someone else running for office beyond voting for them.

That kind of influence is almost always a mixed bag. A candidate who loses more bids for office than they win can influence the way candidates to come conduct themselves and their strategies. A candidate who wins can nevertheless be a cautionary influence of what not to do.

And some candidates define the times only to be left behind when the times change.

The vote totals aren’t what matters the most because the outcome is only the beginning for those who win. Then comes the very different job of governing.

That job begins about where the Robert Redford character in the movie “The Candidate” utters the final line of the movie – “What do we do now?”

Because most political lives involve both winning and losing, the influence of most political figures with any history is a study in how they acted when times were good and how they acted when times were bad and how much responsibility they really own for the good times and the bad times.

Johnican’s political involvement remained even when she was out of the public eye and public office.

Her name turned up regularly on the campaign finance reports of various candidates who hired a group of campaign poll workers she supervised over the years.

Johnican was also a bit of a prankster. The deadline for candidates to file their qualifying petitions at the Shelby County Election Commission used to be an event that drew large numbers of the hopeful, the desperate and the cautious to Election Commission headquarters at 157 Poplar Avenue.

Candidates could check out qualifying petitions without having to specify what office the petition was for. They would fill in that minor piece of information, especially if it was a citywide or countywide office, sometimes after they had collected the necessary 25 signatures.

In this particular election year, Bolton was the target of the prank as he was watching the clock and contemplating no or minimal opposition. Johnican borrowed someone else’s petition and made sure Bolton saw her as she raced around to get signatures. When someone asked what she was running for, she said County Commission loudly enough that he heard and then she started laughing and put a merciful end to the prank.

The last sound truck I ever saw used in a campaign was during Johnican’s 1987 run for mayor. I’m sure there are still some freelance sound trucks out there operated by political independents.

But Johnican’s came with a schedule and a jingle written especially for the campaign and it showed up as rival candidate Bill Gibbons was campaigning door to door in Lamar Terrace.