#lincoln — Public Fediverse posts

What could be more pathetic? So sad 😞

The Trump administration says excavation will begin within the next two weeks for #Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall #TriumphalArch near Memorial Bridge, between the #Lincoln Memorial and #ArlingtonNationalCemetery

Renderings show a massive structure covered in gold details, topped by a winged, torch-bearing figure

“This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture,” #Burgum wrote, “befitting the most 'powerful' [and stupid] Capital in the World”

https://www.europesays.com/videos/88321/ Young woman’s hope for cancer treatment abroad | ITV News Calendar (South) #Beverley #EastYorkshire #Hull #itv #ItvNews #ITVNewsInFull #Lincoln

"Δεν θα είναι εύκολο να πείσεις κάποιον να υπηρετήσει σε αεροπλανοφόρο όταν οι ιστορίες των ανθρώπων αυτών βγουν στην επιφάνεια" #Lincoln #Trump #Iran #War

www.facebook.com/panosharitos...

facebook.com/panosharitos/p...

https://www.europesays.com/videos/88287/ People told to stop climbing Goosey ahead of Goose Fair I ITV News Central (East) #CentralNews #Derby #Derbyshire #EastMidlands #itv #ItvNews #ITVNewsCentral #ITVNewsInFull #Leicester #Leicestershire #Lincoln #Lincolnshire #Northampton #Northamptonshire #Nottingham #Nottinghamshire #Oakham #Rutland

Meet the 21-year-old opening new Tex-Mex restaurant in Lincoln city centre https://www.diningandcooking.com/restaurants/22370/ #FoodAndDrink #lincoln #LincolnCityCentre #TexMexRestaurant #TexMexRestaurants

https://www.europesays.com/videos/88076/ Man jumps from window to escape kidnappers #CCTV #Crime #England #kidnap #Lincoln #news #NewsPublisher #Newspaper #Telegraph #TheTelegraph #UKCrime #UKNews #window #WorldNews

Lincoln business news this week: new bar, ice cream shop https://www.diningandcooking.com/restaurants/21947/ #alcohol #AlcoholicBeverage #AsianCuisine #ChineseCuisine #ChineseRestaurant #cooking #cuisine #EastAsianCuisine #EatingBehaviorsOfHumans #England #FoodAndDrink #FoodAndDrinkPreparation #FoodServiceCompanies #FoodWatchlistArticles #foods #gastronomy #lincoln #MexicanCuisine #mexico #Restaurant #Restaurants #SteakHouse #SteakHouses #SteakRestaurant #SteakRestaurants #Steakhouse #Steakhouses

Lincoln business news this week: new bar, ice cream shop https://www.diningandcooking.com/restaurants/21947/ #alcohol #AlcoholicBeverage #AsianCuisine #ChineseCuisine #ChineseRestaurant #cooking #cuisine #EastAsianCuisine #EatingBehaviorsOfHumans #England #FoodAndDrink #FoodAndDrinkPreparation #FoodServiceCompanies #FoodWatchlistArticles #foods #gastronomy #lincoln #MexicanCuisine #mexico #Restaurant #Restaurants #SteakHouse #SteakHouses #SteakRestaurant #SteakRestaurants #Steakhouse #Steakhouses

Lincoln business news this week: new bar, ice cream shop https://www.diningandcooking.com/restaurants/21947/ #alcohol #AlcoholicBeverage #AsianCuisine #ChineseCuisine #ChineseRestaurant #cooking #cuisine #EastAsianCuisine #EatingBehaviorsOfHumans #England #FoodAndDrink #FoodAndDrinkPreparation #FoodServiceCompanies #FoodWatchlistArticles #foods #gastronomy #lincoln #MexicanCuisine #mexico #Restaurant #Restaurants #SteakHouse #SteakHouses #SteakRestaurant #SteakRestaurants #Steakhouse #Steakhouses

Skegness is so racing! Tour of Britain riders thrill seaside visitors after route from Boston via Horncastle, Louth and Mablethorpe

Visitors from near and far enjoyed a thrilling spectacle in Skegness, as the town hosted the Tour of…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #Horncastle #HumanInterest #Lincoln #LincsHomepage #Louth #Politics #Skegness
https://www.europesays.com/britain/117065/

https://www.europesays.com/britain/117065/ Skegness is so racing! Tour of Britain riders thrill seaside visitors after route from Boston via Horncastle, Louth and Mablethorpe #Britain #Horncastle #HumanInterest #Lincoln #LincsHomepage #Louth #Politics #Skegness

https://www.europesays.com/videos/87694/ Police call handlers jailed for passing information to criminal boyfriends I ITV News Central (East) #CentralNews #Derby #Derbyshire #EastMidlands #itv #ItvNews #ITVNewsCentral #ITVNewsInFull #Leicester #Leicestershire #Lincoln #Lincolnshire #Northampton #Northamptonshire #Nottingham #Nottinghamshire #Oakham #Rutland

Skegness is so racing! Tour of Britain riders thrill seaside visitors after route from Boston via Horncastle, Louth and Mablethorpe

Visitors from near and far enjoyed a thrilling spectacle in Skegness, as the town hosted the Tour of…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #Horncastle #HumanInterest #Lincoln #LincsHomepage #Louth #Politics #Skegness
https://www.europesays.com/britain/116863/

https://www.europesays.com/britain/116863/ Skegness is so racing! Tour of Britain riders thrill seaside visitors after route from Boston via Horncastle, Louth and Mablethorpe #Britain #Horncastle #HumanInterest #Lincoln #LincsHomepage #Louth #Politics #Skegness

250-plus exhibits at this year’s Nebraska Builders Home and Garden Show https://www.allforgardening.com/1928108/250-plus-exhibits-at-this-years-nebraska-builders-home-and-garden-show/ #BalloonArtist #garden #GardeningNebraska #HomeBuilders #HomeBuildersAssociationOfLincoln #HomeImprovement #landscaping #Lincoln #Nebraska #NebraskaBuildersHomeAndGardenShow #Remodel #SandhillGlobalEventCenter #Spas #wildlife #WindowSupplies

Two Hundred Fifty Years of What, and What For?

https://bolesblogs.com/2026/07/04/two-hundred-fifty-years-of-what-and-what-for/

A quotation from Lincoln

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter (1854-08-24) to Joshua Speed

More about this quote: wist.info/lincoln-abraham/2555…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #lincoln #abelincoln #abrahamlincoln #America #createdequal #DeclarationofIndependence #despotism #equality #liberty #prejudice #racism #tyranny #xenophobia

The Magnificent Loser: The Book I Wrote to Answer Two Words in Red Ink

https://bolesblogs.com/2026/06/22/the-magnificent-loser-the-book-i-wrote-to-answer-two-words-in-red-ink/

Book Reviews

Anthology #67

Deadly Remains, by Kate Ellis

Here, we are in south Devon, the stamping ground of DI Humphrey Goodman, from the popular BBC TV series Beyond Paradise [and before that, Death in Paradise, set on the fictional island of St Marie, aka Guadaloupe]; however, he is not the subject of this book: instead, it is DI Wesley Peterson, and this is the latest in a very full series of books set in this beautiful location. Wesley’s son, Michael, is now 13, and in his summer school holiday is helping Wesley’s old friend from university, Dr Neil Watson, in an archaeological dig on Dartmoor which is aiming to recover physical evidence of an aeroplane which crashed there in world war two, when it was returning from a secret mission to France. The pilot escaped, but died very soon afterwards, so he was not able to provide any reason for the inexplicable crash. When three skeletons are discovered nearby, naturally enough, the police have to be involved. At the same time, an author who mostly ghost-wrote autobiographies for celebrities and is staying in the area, is found murdered; could there be a connection, or had he discovered some potentially damaging information about the subject of his latest book, so he had to be silenced? The author interweaves the contemporary diaries of the pilot of the doomed ’plane, and a young local woman with the current-day action, and as Wesley’s enquiries progress, it becomes increasingly clear that local people in a notoriously tight-knit country community, including the present-day Lord of the Manor, might have guilty secrets in their background. Michael develops a teenage crush on a young woman helping with the dig, but is her affection towards Michael just benign guidance, or something more sinister? Also, who is the odd gentleman in the bucket hat who hangs around on the periphery of the dig? Although there is one suspect Wesley’s boss considers obvious, Wesley isn’t so sure, and the tension builds nicely before the perpetrator is revealed. The hardback I read was published in 2025 by Constable, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, London, ISBN 978-0-3494-4932-8.

The Hawk is Dead, by Peter James

Roy Grace is facing his toughest test yet as a detective, and he is well out of his comfort zone here, because he is called in to investigate what looks like, initially, an attempt on the life of the new queen, Camilla; the reason he is Senior Investigating Officer for the case is that the crime occurred in Sussex, specifically close to the South Portal of the Clayton tunnel, from which the royal train was due to emerge, en route to Brighton, in advance of the queen’s scheduled engagements. This schedule was upset by the derailing of the train in the tunnel, forcing all of the passengers, none of whom was killed in the incident, to walk out of the tunnel, then up an embankment to higher ground, where Sir Peregrine Greaves [the eponymous Hawk], Private Secretary to “Their Majesties”, and one of the most senior members of the royal household, was comprehensively killed by a sniper’s bullet to the head, when he was standing a few feet away from the queen. Of course, nearly everyone assumes that the queen was the intended target; from the outset, however, Grace isn’t convinced. His seniority prevents criticism, but he is aware that his investigation will need to be more than usually thorough, especially given the concern for his wife of the king, who is prepared to give an audience to Grace in person. It doesn’t take long for Grace to realise that there is a conspiracy in operation, so he must be very circumspect about whom he takes into his confidence with his evidence, including his liaison at the palace, Major General Sir Tommy Magellan-Lacey, Master of The King’s Household. One has to assume that the author’s dispensation to put dialogue in the mouths of the monarchs has been cleared officially, and he obviously has respect for the institution, including information about the charities the queen supports at the end of the book. Despite not influencing my views on the monarchy, this is an effective thriller.  The hardback I read was published in 2025 by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London, ISBN 978-1-5290-9006-2.

Murder on the Great Northern Railway, by Edward Marston

This is one of the latest entries in the Railway Detective series by this prolific author. The year is 1867, and a distinguished London silversmith who is nearing the end of a celebrated career has made a model in silver of the cathedral in the city of his birth, Lincoln, which he has designated as a gift to said institution; unfortunately, on the journey from King’s Cross Station, the crate containing the model is stolen at Peterborough station, and the private detective who was engaged to protect it in the guard’s van of the train is shot dead. The reason this was accomplished so easily is because there was an explosion in one of the station buildings while the train was stopped, so everybody’s attention was diverted. Normally, this would have been a matter for the local constabulary to investigate, but the Bishop of Lincoln and the Dean of the cathedral are sufficiently concerned to call in Scotland Yard, also because they know of Inspector Robert Colbeck by repute, from his previous achievements in successfully apprehending criminals who have broken the law on the English rail network. The perpetrators aren’t easy to identify initially, and the involvement in Lincoln of Colbeck’s superior, Superintendent Edward Tallis doesn’t make his job any easier; Tallis is beginning to feel that his efficiency is diminishing, so he thinks this supervision will be good for him. However, he soon realises that Colbeck is the man for the job, so he returns to London, but he does make a useful contribution there. When there are setbacks, the Bishop & Dean begin to lose confidence in Colbeck, and there is a danger that the criminals will succeed, but Colbeck pulls victory from the jaws of defeat. One minor negative aspect is that there is a concurrent plot device involving Colbeck’s wife and her somewhat entitled friend, which is drawn out unnecessarily long to fit the story’s timeline, but apart from that, this is a workmanlike thriller. The hardback I read was published in 2025 by Allison & Busby Limited, London,  ISBN 978-0-7490-3222-7. 

The Long Shoe, by Bob Mortimer

This is at least the second novel from this popular comedian [no list at the front of the book], the first one being The Satsuma Complex: Mortimer’s trademark left-field humour is again present here, and Satsuma is clearly a word he enjoys using. As in the previous book, the protagonist, Matt Giles is a slightly inadequate character who just wants an easy life with his girlfriend Harriet, who has a responsible position at the Crown Prosecution Service, and his cat Goodmonson, with the latter of whom he also has conversations, again repeating a trope from the previous book. Unfortunately, he has just been made redundant from his bathroom equipment salesman position, and the upset is compounded by a notice to quit their shared flat in Hither Green, London; so, when out of the blue an offer is made to him to rent cheaply an upmarket flat, which they had previously viewed — Harriet loving it but Matt dismissing it as beyond their price-range — in return for minimal caretaking duties, Matt jumps at the chance, hoping that Harriet, who has mysteriously walked away from their relationship, will find their new accommodation impossible to resist, and thereby return to him. Things do get a bit strange though, courtesy of the author’s humour, as a result of his dealings with the enigmatic owner of the apartment block and two of the current residents; and this is where the eponymous long shoe comes into the narrative. Another element in the story is Matt & Harriet’s erstwhile near-neighbour, a flirty, possibly over-sexed but rich divorcée called Carol, who enjoys breaking up married couples, just because she can, but also to alleviate boredom. As the narrative progresses, we discover Harriet’s situation, but she is unable to contact Matt, to either reassure him or confirm the break: inevitably, her plight is connected to Matt’s current activities. Aside from a repeat of my previous concern about some grammar: he frequently uses a construction which is now becoming too common, to my regret — “was stood”, or “was sat”, and I’m not familiar with an adjective, “splashy”, which he uses [it could just be his joke, of course] — the tension is built quite nicely to a satisfactory dénouement. The paperback I read was published in 2026 [2025] by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, ISBN 978-1-3985-4808-4.

#book2read: “The Republican House Divided: Civil War Memory, Civil Rights, and the Transformation of the GOP” by Tim Galsworthy
https://a.co/d/0a2KVc35

#ConCW #HealOurCulture #UScivilwar #history #ResistAndHeal #Lincoln #Republican

“How Did the Civil War Change the Republican
Party?” on [PODCAST] America: The Story of the USA

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2lEgoovNkMR81leJCudNiF?si=9ZbaILFxQjm24UXAEkGV_Q

#ConCW #HealOurCulture #UScivilwar #history #ResistAndHeal #Lincoln #Republican

Hype for the Future 183G: Western Piedmont, North Carolina

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/hype-for-the-future-183g-western-piedmont-north-carolina/

Hype for the Future 183G: Western Piedmont, North Carolina

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/hype-for-the-future-183g-western-piedmont-north-carolina/

Hype for the Future 183G: Western Piedmont, North Carolina

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/hype-for-the-future-183g-western-piedmont-north-carolina/

Hype for the Future 183G: Western Piedmont, North Carolina

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/hype-for-the-future-183g-western-piedmont-north-carolina/

Hype for the Future 183G: Western Piedmont, North Carolina

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/hype-for-the-future-183g-western-piedmont-north-carolina/

The Station Across Town: A Lincoln Boyhood, the Federation I Did Not Watch, and the Second Half of a Television Diptych

When I was sixteen, I had a television show called Kidding Around on KOLN/KGIN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was 1981. I was a teenager hosting a teenager-aimed program on a commercial CBS affiliate, three blocks of which I have no doubt were paid for by advertising for Pepsi and Levi’s and the Lincoln car dealerships that kept American local television alive in the early Reagan years. The format was loose. The show featured kid interviews, viewer letters read on air, and unscripted segments of the kind that the FCC’s mandates for “ascertainment of community needs” were supposed to encourage and that the FCC’s 1981 decision to deregulate radio, followed by the parallel television deregulation of 1984, was designed to kill. Kidding Around did not survive into the late 1980s. It was a casualty of a specific federal policy decision documented in the book I published earlier this year, Selling Saturday Morning.

Selling Saturday Morning came out of the position of a sixteen-year-old who had a television show and then did not have one. That book is the institutional history of the commercial side of American television in the years when its regulatory floor was removed.

Today I am publishing the companion book.

Underwritten: The American Experiment in Public Broadcasting, 1967 to 2026 is the institutional history of the other American television. The non-commercial federation. The system that operated under a different statute, a different funding mechanism, a different mission, and a different relationship to its audience than the commercial system I worked inside as a teenager. Underwritten is the third volume in the Institutional Autopsy sequence after Carceral Nation and The Claimed Body. It is also, taken alongside Selling Saturday Morning, the second half of a diptych on the institutional history of American television in my lifetime.

I want to tell you something about Lincoln.

The Station Across Town

In 1981, while I was hosting Kidding Around at KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska, the University of Nebraska’s public broadcasting network, Nebraska Educational Television (NETV), was operating less than two miles from the commercial studio where I worked. NETV had been on the air since November 1, 1954, founded by Jack McBride. Under Ron Hull’s longtime production leadership, NETV produced programs that ran nationally on PBS across decades: the poetry anthology series Anyone for Tennyson?, directed by Marshall Jamison and aired in 1976, along with contributions to Great Performances and later to American Experience after that series premiered in 1988. The Nebraska press wrote about NETV regularly. State university officials cited it in legislative testimony. Few state-network production operations in the country were as ambitious.

I did not watch it. At sixteen, with my own commercial show in production, the public station’s programming felt to me, in 1981, like programming for adults who had patience I did not yet have.

I did not understand, at sixteen, what the public station across town actually was. The station was federated to a thousand other stations across the country through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service. That poetry anthology I would have rolled my eyes at if I had bothered to watch it was being shipped from Lincoln to a national distribution network and aired in Boston and Los Angeles and San Antonio. An entire architecture, from my Saturday morning show on the commercial channel to the Anyone for Tennyson? segments at NETV, was built by federal statute. And the architecture was about to be taken apart.

I have been writing my way back to that understanding for forty-five years. Selling Saturday Morning worked one half of the architecture. Underwritten works the other half. Both books are, in different registers, about how American television was a federally structured artifact of the period from the 1934 Communications Act through the deregulation cycles of the 1980s and the federal-funding rescissions of 2025. On the commercial side, the system was deregulated and reshaped around advertising sales to children. On the public side, the system was federated and protected and starved across five political campaigns before the sixth ended it on January 30 of this year, when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting filed its Articles of Dissolution with the District of Columbia.

What Underwritten Documents

The book runs fifteen chapters. It opens with the four-second PBS logo sequence and the sensory event that anchors institutional memory of public broadcasting for everyone who watched it. It traces the November 7, 1967 signing of the Public Broadcasting Act in the East Room of the Johnson White House and the political coalition Lyndon Johnson built to pass it. Middle chapters examine the federation’s architecture across the coastal flagships at WGBH and WNET, the regional and state networks (Nebraska ETV included as a dedicated case-study chapter titled “The Heartland Node”), the independent producers at Florentine Films and ITVS and Sesame Workshop, the canonical programs that defined American cultural memory, and the five political campaigns from Nixon through the second Trump term that tested the federation’s resilience. Later chapters work through the dissolution itself: the Rescissions Act of 2025, the dissolution vote, the post-dissolution landscape of archive preservation at WGBH and the Library of Congress, the rural and tribal communities whose emergency broadcasting went dark with the federation’s coordination, and what survives.

Underwritten is dedicated to my wife, Janna Sweenie, a Deaf ASL performer and educator and my collaborator across the publishing constellation. This book is one of many she has watched come together at our kitchen table in New York.

Where to Read It

Underwritten is available now in Kindle ebook on Amazon, in paperback on Amazon, and as a free PDF download from BolesBooks.com. Kindle edition pricing is $9.99 with the paperback at $19.99 (509 pages, 1.273-inch spine, cream paper). A free web-download PDF carries the same content with full color typography matching the cover.

Underwritten joins Carceral Nation and The Claimed Body in the Institutional Autopsy sequence, and it sits beside Selling Saturday Morning as the second half of the television diptych.

Coda

The federation that produced the four seconds I did not watch when I was sixteen is gone. Across town from KOLN sat a station I could have walked to in twenty minutes, the station that had originated Anyone for Tennyson? for national distribution five years before I arrived at the commercial channel and was still producing for PBS while I was hosting Kidding Around. It is now operating under post-dissolution funding arrangements that may or may not sustain it for another decade. The federation that made the broadcasting possible is not coming back.

The station across town is where the book always lived. I just did not know it.

A quotation from Lincoln

Slavery is doomed, and that within a few years. Even Judge Douglas admits it to be an evil, and an evil can’t stand discussion. In discussing it we have taught a great many thousands of people to hate it who had never given it a thought before. What kills the skunk is the publicity it gives itself. What a skunk wants to do is to keep snug under the barn in daytime, when men are around with shotguns.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Interview (1859-09-17?) with David R. Locke, Columbus, Ohio

More about this quote: wist.info/lincoln-abraham/4124…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #lincoln #abrahamllincoln #abelincoln #attention #deplorable #discussion #enslavement #evil #exposure #publicity #reputation #skunk #slavery #smell #stench #visibility

A quotation from Lincoln

As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client. And when you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1850), Notes for a Law Lecture (fragment)

More about this quote: wist.info/lincoln-abraham/8344…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #abrahamlincoln #abelincoln #lincoln #advance #attorney #commitment #completion #disinterest #fee #incentive #interest #lawyer #ondelivery #payment #retainer

Lincoln’s long battle for gyro supremacy now pits old against new, and one family versus itself

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – If you ask the owners of the four gyro shops in downtown Lincoln how they got started, the…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #MediterraneanFood #family #gyro #gyros #Heroes #lincoln #Mediterranean #mediterraneanfood #nebraska #Of #Supremacy #versus
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2582708/lincolns-long-battle-for-gyro-supremacy-now-pits-old-against-new-and-one-family-versus-itself/

Speaking of patina
#chromeography #patina #lincoln #continental #moss #pnw

Consider what happened in Texas in 2010. As part of a highly publicized revamp of the state social studies curriculum, the Republican-controlled Texas Board of Education removed slavery as the central cause of the Civil War and replaced it with states' rights and secession, with Republican board member Patricia Hardy calling slavery "an after issue." The Republican members also considered referring to the slave trade as the "Atlantic Triangular Trade" before finally settling on "Transatlantic Slave Trade."

The new curriculum was silent on the KKK during Reconstruction and failed to mention the Jim Crow era at all. It also equated Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln.

In addition, the curriculum claimed that Joseph McCarthy was correct when he said the U.S. government had been infiltrated by communists in the 1950s, included lessons on why the U.S. needs to return to the gold standard, and asserted that the United Nations, International Criminal Court, and global environmental initiatives undermined U.S. sovereignty. And it scrubbed any mention of Thomas Jefferson's role in U.S. history because he advocated for the separation of church and state.

https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks

#confederacy
#confederate
#LostCause
#UnitedDaughtersOfTheConfederacy #UDC
#slavery
#education
#textbooks
#censorship
#BookBans
#Lincoln
#Jefferson
#McCarthyism
#UN
#JimCrow
#Texas
#KKK
#ICC
#Reconstruction
#redemption
#racism
#WhiteSupremacy
#GoldStandard (yes, the clamour for the gold standard is part of white supremacy OMG no-one told me)

Stuck in the Filter: October 2025’s Angry Misses

By Kenstrosity

They say it’s going to be a harsh winter this year. They always say that, and it’s almost never true, at least not from where I’ve set up camp. However, no matter the weather I am a harsh taskmaster, doling out grueling hours, no pay or benefits, and probably the worst coffee on the planet to my dutiful minions. It takes a special kind of person, motivated by pure unadulterated greed to ravenously scour the filter for dusty, almost-forgotten gems like they do.

But we are thankful for them for being exactly that! And we also benefit, in the form of quality(ish) chunks of glimmery, shimmery metal. BEHOLD!

Kenstrosity’s Riffy Representation

Xaoc // Repulsive Summoning [October 31, 2025 – Edgewood Arsenal Records]

Xaoc’s history is one of the more confusing I’ve encountered in my time writing for this blog. After breaking up in 2008, a new lineup spawned in 2022 to record and release Proxime Mortis from the ashes of songs written pre-breakup, supported by Edgewood Arsenal. At some point this year, two more members spawned in anticipation of this new slab Repulsive Summoning. But the band’s labeled as Split Up already on Metallum? I don’t understand what’s going on there, but at least I can say that Repulsive Summoning is a turbo banger! These riffs are bonkers, full of verve and swagger, brimming with groove and muscularity. A happy mix of Vomitory and Dormant Ordeal, this Virginian outfit know how to throw down. Highlights like “Ave Solva Coagula,” “Antima Samskara,” “The Great Perfected Ones,” and the entire “Degenerate Era” three-part suite reduce my body into a fine slurry by the grinding, vicious power of their riffs alone. But the rabid growls, ballistic percussion, and meaty guitar tones contain more than enough fuel to propel those riffs across this tight and thunderous 35-minute runtime. It’s a simple record, built to beat me down and leave me broken and bloodied, but it’s also an effortlessly memorable affair that leaves me wanting more despite the mounting medical bills. Don’t sleep on Xaoc!

Andy-War-Hall’s Succulent Surplus

Canvas of Silence // As the World Tree Fell [October 31st, 2025 – Rockshots Records]

Finnish symphonic metallers Canvas of Silence describe themselves as “prog-influenced chorus metal,” and that description goes far in outlining their debut As the World Tree Fell. Their core sound resembles a progged-out Nightwish moonlighting as a melodeath band, committing ludicrous bombast on symphonic-heavy cuts like “The Great Unknown” and “Wayfarer” amidst a sharp Gothenburg riff attack in “Watching the World Tree Fall” and “Drown.” Canvas of Silence mete out a balanced approach of light and dark sounds between Theocracyesque prog-power (“One With the Wind,” “Humanimal”) and Madder Mortem-like gothic twists (“Drown,” “Anthem for Ashes”), all reined in by the commanding vocal presence of singer Loimu Satakieli.1 Sitting somewhere between Anette Olzon (ex-Nightwish, The Dark Element) and Agnete Kierkevaag (Madder Mortem), her impassioned and heavily-layered singing turns As the World Tree Fell into a smörgåsbord of lush, catchy and anthemic tunes of an uplifting, sing-along nature. Optimism permeates As the World Tree Fell, felt at a fever pitch on the enormous choral bridge of “Humanimal” and the folky power metal jaunt of “One With the Wind.” Even on lyrically dark/mournful passages like “Wayfarer” and “Garden of the Fallen,” Canvas of Silence deliver soaring, hopeful crescendos that at times reach Fellowship levels of good cheer. Canvas of Silence can craft sincerely beautiful moments, and though As the World Tree Fell’s production can be sterile and overly loud2 I am nothing but excited to see what these Finns can cook up next.

Spicie Forrest’s Punky Proferrings

Violent Testimony // Aggravate [October 17th, 2025 – Horror Pain Gore Death Productions]

Do you wish there was more grind in your life? Well, Cheyenne, Wyoming’s Violent Testimony just assumed you would. Combining the punky flair of Napalm Death with the lead foot ethos of early Pig Destroyer and Cattle Decapitation, debut LP Aggravate is 26 minutes of delicious grindy goodness. From the opening salvo of “God Complex Massacre” to the final detonations of “Hit N’ Run,” Violent Testimony shows absolutely no restraint. D.N.’s Gatling drums mow down everything in their path while T.W.’s serpentine bass clears the chaff and flattens any obstruction. Shrapnel propelled by N.Y.’s brutish, breakneck riffing can be seen burying itself in concrete walls, still quivering (“Rider in the Night,” “Psychotic Episode”). Caustic growls and vitriolic screams tear from T.W.’s throat at mach fuck (“Flashbang Celebration,” “Obligatory Manifestation of Infinite Grind”). With only two tracks exceeding the two-minute mark, Violent Testimony screams their piece with as much sound and fury as possible before moving on and picking their next bone with the system. This keeps Aggravate a lean, densely-packed offering. If you need to get pissed off right now and even the fastest death metal is too slow, Violent Testimony is all too happy to decimate the opposition with you.

Uaar // Galger og Brann [October 17th, 2025 – Fysisk Format Records]

Hailing from Oslo, Norway, crust outfit Uaar celebrates their tenth birthday by releasing their debut LP. Galger og Brann, which means “Gallows and Fire” in Norwegian, expands on the foundations laid by established acts like Skitsystem and Tragedy. With one foot firmly planted in black metal and the other in hardcore, Uaar unleashes a cacophony of rage unfettered. D-beats abound, courtesy of Truls Friesl Berg, creating a frantic, enraged atmosphere. Dag Schaug Carlsen’s blackened rasps are so cold they burn, matching the evil pall hanging over tracks like “Galeås” and “Den siste.” Post-flecked, Ancsty tendencies (“Alt Skal Brenne,” “Overalt”) peek through the feral hardcore riffage (“Håpet forsvinner”) of guitarists Erik Berg Friesl and Jon Schaug Carlsen, while bassist Stian S. Evensen provides the muscle to convince you these guys aren’t screwing around. Uaar is well-versed in their base genres, alternating between and mixing black metal and hardcore effortlessly. The occasional blues-tinged heavy metal lead—as in “Overalt” and “Dolken”—keep Galger og Brann from being a one-note affair. With a dearth of standout blackened hardcore releases this year, Uaar’s Galger og Brann is a welcome—if late—addition to the list.

Scorching Tomb // Ossuary [October 24th, 2025 – Time to Kill Records]

I’ll be honest, I’ve never considered Montreal, Canada, to be prime death metal territory. Luckily, Scorching Tomb doesn’t care what I think. Debut LP Ossuary is an aural violation born of Tren-induced hardcore aggression and filthy old school death metal. With a guitar tone (Philippe Lelbanc) like sandpaper and a bass like swallowing gravel (Miguel Lepage), Scorching Tomb plays in the same cesspools as Bloodgutter and Rotpit. We normally associate melted faces with guitar solos, but that honor belongs to whatever corrosive noises issue forth from vocalist Vincent Patrick Lajeunesse’s guts. Drummer Émile Savard loves a blast beat, often detonating them in short bursts to support an already bone-breaking assault (“Feel the Blade”). “Stalagmite3 Impalement” and “Sanctum of Bones (Ossuary)” are particularly savage, with tetanus-inflicting riffs and bloodthirsty screams threatening to drag you into the crypt to be used for meal prep. On “Skullcrush,” Sanguisugabogg’s Devin Swank perfectly matches Scorching Tomb’s vile depravity, cementing them as a promising new act in the scene. Ossuary is raging, muscle-bound, caveman death metal drowned in a vat of viscera and sewage, and it tastes incredible.

ClarkKent’s Gratifying Goodies

Sutratma // Adrift [October 3rd, 2025 – Self-Release]

While I didn’t purposely seek out more doom during my self-imposed month of picking only doom promos, Sutratma’s fifth full-length, Adrift, ranks as one of the better doom albums I listened to in November. This California four-piece has been writing funeral doom for 15 years, and it shows in their ability to craft effective melancholic slow-burns that strike a balance between melody and crushingly heavy. Adrift impresses straight out the gate with the piano-drenched “Wind and Sea.” This song nicely melds the sorrowful softness of the piano with punishing guitar riffs and impressive growls. Just like stalwarts My Dying Bride, Sutratma mixes growls with cleans, and Daniel Larios’s cleans effectively hit you right in the feels while the growls take on a more despairing note. There’s plenty of variety from song to song, with organs stealing the show on “Guiding Star” and a lovely melody on “The Great Bereaver” that builds up to a moving finale. Just like with Oromet, there’s a serenity to the music that is calming, and the skilled songwriting and musicianship lends a poignancy to it all. With the frenzy of list season upon us, it’s nice to have something like this to remind us that it’s okay to just slow down—even when an angry ape is berating you for more content.

Starer // Ancient Monuments and Modern Sadness [October 10th, 2025 – Fiadh Productions]

Josh Hines, the one man behind black metal project, Starer, has been very busy. Since forming Starer in 2020, he has released four EPs and now, with the release of Ancient Monuments and Modern Sadness, four LPs. I first became acquainted with this band on 2023’s Wind, Breeze, or Breath and was taken in by Hines’s aggressively atmospheric take on black metal. Ancient Monuments and Modern Sadness hits the ground running on “I Cry Your Mother’s Blood” with some aggressively catchy melodies. The aggression continues on “Il-Kantilena” with its icy riffs and pumping blast beats. Meanwhile, “The Field of Reeds” combines the black n’ roll of Fell Omen with the fuzzy reverb of atmoblack for a rollicking good time. Hines screams into the void as subdued symphonics add layers of melody, providing a surprising amount of depth to each song. Because of the frenetic pace, the 50-minute runtime flies right by, even as songs like “Song of the Harper” do their best to vary the tempo. For black metal, the production is lush and gorgeous, giving air to all instruments. The epic, ten-minute finale is the culmination of Hines’s ability to put together complex and compelling music that both excites by its aggression and dazzles with its atmospherics. Black metal fans should not miss this one.

Grin Reaper’s Haunted Harvest

Black Cross Hotel // Songs for Switches [October 31st, 2025 – Someoddpilot Records]

Three years after dropping their favorably reviewed debut Hex, keys-drenched and industrialized outfit Black Cross Hotel returns bearing Songs for Switches. 80s-inspired synths, mid-paced chugs, and dance-ready grooves pack neatly into forty-one minutes of grubby fun, sure to interest fans of Ministry and Killing Joke, or anyone with a predilection for leather. Where Hex boasted a wider assortment of tempos, Songs for Switches narrows its focus to mid-paced songs with a keener emphasis on keyboard melodies. Averting a direction that could have been limiting, Black Cross Hotel smartly sidesteps this by shaving down song lengths and arranging the tracks for optimal pacing. Individual moments across the album evoke Me and That Man (“Eyes from Nowhere”), Soulfly (“Blood Dance”), and Joy Division (“Typo”), casting an eclectic array of sounds into Mount Gloom to forge ten dangerously fun tracks. Though I liked the album at first listen, it took multiple spins for Songs for Switches’ distilled aesthetic to fully unfurl, and once it did, my appreciation redoubled. With a sinister atmosphere designed as much for pain as pleasure, Black Cross Hotel has readied your room for a night you won’t forget.

Miasmata // Subterrania [October 31st, 2025 – Naturmacht Productions]

Still hawking their distinctive blend of meloblack and heavy metal, Miasmata dropped sophomore platter Subterrania on what was one of the most congested release days of 2025.4 In addition to the recurring influences of Windir (“Die at the Right Time”) and Iron Maiden (the intro to “Subterrania” smacks of The X Factor), Subterrania adds a dollop of thrash into the mix. Opener “Those Who Cross the Flame” struts out with a punky riff that wouldn’t be out of place on an Anthrax record, while “Full of the Devil” tastes as much like Testament or Havok as Diamond Head. The beauty of Miasmata, both on debut Unlight: Songs of Earth and Atrophy and Subterrania, is one-man mastermind Mike Wilson’s aptitude to synthesize a mighty host of influences into a unique sonic palette all his own. As Sharky noted in Unlight’s review, Miasmata has a knack for remarkable restraint. Subterrania clocks under forty minutes, layering slithery riffs upon one another in a way that propels the music in constant motion, shifting and unfolding so organically that the album slips by before you realize it’s over (an especially impressive feat considering the self-titled closer’s near fourteen-minute runtime). If you missed Miasmata’s latest on release day, go rectify that. Don’t let Subterrania get lost to the underground.

Dolphin Whisperer’s Autumnal Anomoly

夢遊病者 // РЛБ300119225 [October 28th, 2025 – Self Release]

As if plucked into lucidity from amidst a hazy, proggy machination, РЛБ30011922 steps into its narrative—an exploration of a beloved figure in its creator’s life, including sound clips describing the trials through which she persisted—with an entrancing stumble. Through an understated math rock lens, tight kit rhythms with a tension-building hi-hat clashes strut against a loud and leading bass voice across 37 minutes of fluid guitar textures. Whether it’s the chunky fusion reminiscent of Hackett-era Gordian Knot, the playful rhythmic post-rock that evokes a band like toe, or the fuzzed-out punctuation that tell a prog tale as ’70s King Crimson would, 夢遊病者, also known as Sleepwalker, makes their love of sound as clear as their love of РЛБ30011922’s inspiration. In a setting this free and detailed, not a single moment of this one-long-song opus passes by without taking a moment to focus on a given performer’s escalation in the drama of the movement. Wielding short guitar solos as segues into popping double-kick trots, spoken word exposition as pedal switch-up opportunities, all leading to a crescendo of bent and bluesy expression, 夢遊病者 succeeds in more than just holding an audience captive with their jammy and heartfelt statement. РЛБ30011922, like the shorter form releases that have graced these halls before, will have you coming back time and time again to explore its sentiments, which feel both traced from a dream yet rooted in rich, earthly tone pleasures.

Saunders’ Slinky Sneaks

Enragement // Extinguish All Existence [October 31st, 2025 – Transcending Obscurity]

The back end of 2025 has thrown down some delightfully vicious, chunkified, and straightforward death metal gems, courtesy of the likes of Depravity, Glorious Depravity and Terror Corpse. Not to be discounted, Finland’s Enragement dropped their own intense slab of brutal death on fourth LP, Extinguish All Existence. Cutting with any pleasantries, Enragement get down to business, slamming through a tight, burly collection of Americanized death, keenly treading a balance between thuggish beatdowns, chest-busting blasts, slammy, pig-squealing grooves, and more traditional, though deceptively diverse brutal death fare. Despite the certifiably crushing formula deployed, there is an air of accessibility, perhaps attributed to the clean but suitably beefy production job, bludgeoning, addictive grooves and sinister currents of atmospheric melody flowing through the album’s riff-centric veins. Thrashy, straightforward bursts of fury are tempered by more technical flourishes and an impressively versatile vocal assault. The likes of Devourment, Deeds of Flesh, Dawn of Demise and Benighted are perhaps fitting reference points, however, Enragement blast their own path of uncompromisingly heavy destruction.

Stephen Brodsky // Cut to the Core Vol. 1 [October 3rd, 2025 – Pax Aeturnum]

There are a couple of ways to broach this latest solo endeavor from lovable rogue and Cave In/Mutoid Man mastermind Stephen Brodsky. Brodsky delivers refreshed interpretations of various ’90s hardcore songs, reimagined in acoustic form. Those familiar with the original compositions will likely have fun dissecting and comparing the original anthems. While others, such as myself, largely unfamiliar with the originals, can enjoy these polished takes in their reimagined form, without comparison. Over the years, I have developed a strong connection with Brodsky’s works and come to appreciate his softer, acoustic flavorings. The likes of Snapcase, Converge, Texas is the Reason, Threadbare and By the Grace of God are some of the acts covered with typical style, zest, and emotion. Brodsky’s expressive and emotive delivery showcases both a loving appreciation of the material and deeper emotional connection that bleeds through the often darker, melancholic vibes of the acoustic constructions. The collection is remarkably consistent and infectious, highlighted by Brodsky’s crisp and soulful acoustic playing and distinctive singing voice on standout cuts, including “Windows” (Snapcase), “Benchwarmer” (Lincoln), “Fissures” (By the Grace of God), “Farewell Note to This City” (Converge), and “Voice” (Sense Field).

Soul Blind // Red Sky Mourning [October 10th, 2025 – Closed Casket Activities]

Riding a familiar wave of early ’00s alt-rock/metal and ’90s grungy nostalgia, New York’s Soul Blind emerge with sophomore LP, Red Sky Mourning. Although they tread dangerously close to overt derivation of prominent influences, including Alice in Chains, Deftones, and Helmet, Soul Blind manage to just stay afloat on their own terms. The dreamy melodies, chunky alt metal riffs, and soaring, Cantrell-esque vocal melodies cultivate some earwormy hooks and fuzzy, 90s/’00s feels. Soul Blind possess a knack for writing textured, mildly sludgy, infectious rock ditties, dabbling in shoegazing atmospherics, and sturdier alt metal territories along the way. Soul Blind relish in AIC inspired earworms (“Dyno,” “Hide Your Evil”), grittier, more aggressive alt metal fare (‘Billy,’ “New York Smoke”) and airy, indie pop-rock (“Thru the Haze”). Soul Blind have work to do to stand out from their influences and develop a more unique sound and robust character. However, the signs are positive for better things to come. Red Sky Mourning is a solid throwback album and handy companion piece to the equally nostalgia-inspired album from Bleed earlier in the year.

#2025 #Acoustic #Adrift #Aggravate #AliceInChains #AmericanMetal #AncientMonumentsAndModernSadness #Ancst #Anthrax #AsTheWorldTreeFell #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BlackCrossHotel #BlackMetal #Bleed #Bloodgutter #ByTheGraceOfGod #CanadianMetal #CanvasOfSilence #CattleDecapitation #CaveIn #ClosedCasketActivities #Converge #Crust #CutToTheCoreVol1 #DeathMetal #Deftones #Depravity #DiamondHead #DormantOrdeal #EdgewoodArsenalRecords #Enragement #ExtinguishAllExistence #FellOmen #Fellowship #FiadhProductions #FinnishMetal #FuneralDoom #FysiskFormatRecords #GalgerOgBrann #GloriousDepravity #GordianKnot #GrooveMetal #Grunge #HardRock #Hardcore #Havok #HeavyMetal #Helmet #HorrorPainGoreDeathProductions #IndependentRelease #IndustrialMetal #InternationalMetal #IronMaiden #JapaneseMetal #KillingJoke #KingCrimson #Lincoln #MadderMortem #MeAndThatMan #MelodicBlackMetal #Miasmata #Ministry #MutoidMan #MyDyingBride #NapalmDeath #NaturmachtProductions #NewZealandMetal #Nightwish #NorwegianMetal #Oct25 #Oromet #Ossuary #PaxAeternum #PigDestroyer #ProgressiveMetal #ProgressiveRock #RedSkyMourning #RepulsiveSummoning #Review #Reviews #RockshotsRecords #Rotpit #Sanguisugabogg #ScorchingTomb #SelfRelease #SelfReleased #SenseField #Skitsystem #Snapcase #SomeoddpilotReocrds #SongsForSwitches #SoulBlind #Soulfly #Starer #StephenBrodsky #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #Subterrania #Sutratma #SymphonicMetal #TerrorCorpse #Testament #TexasIsTheReason #TheDarkElement #Theocracy #Threadbare #TimeToKillRecords #toe #Tragedy #TranscendingObsurityRecords #Uaar #ViolentTestimony #Vomitory #Windir #Xaoc #РЛБ30011922 #夢遊病者

More from the Palm Springs Modernism Week classic car show.

This beautiful 1960 Lincoln convertible is a near-twin of the 1958 model Eva Marie Saint drove in Hitchcock's North By Northwest. The guy in the maroon t-shirt is my husband, Craig.

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#ModernismWeek
#PalmSprings
#ClassicCars
#Lincoln
#NorthByNorthwest

This is Modernism Week in Palm Springs, so we get to see even more classic cars than usual.

Leaving brunch just now, this lovely 62 Lincoln Continental was in the parking lot. One of my favorite cars of all time.

#ClassicCars
#Lincoln
#ModernismWeek
#PalmSprings

My mother, Wilma Jean Boles, died on June 24, 2024. She was 85-years-old. Her death was unfortunate, and unnecessarily gruesome in that, in the end, she chose not to walk, or eat, or take her medication after a major surgery; the only thing she desired was a quick death. My mother always fought for what she wanted, and sometimes what she wanted is what nobody else wanted, including her death. Wilma never really recovered from elective surgery she had on May 23, 2024 to fix a perforated diaphragm where half of her stomach and part of her colon were stuck in her chest cavity, placing pressure on her left lung. Her surgeon believed she’d been living with that condition for more than 25 years; and he also believed there was “no good reason” for her not to recover and get better. As I have worked to come to terms with Wilma’s death, and the first 23 years of our life together, I am surrounded by — and often hunted with — the memories of my mother’s life, her successes, her disappointments, and her ability to continually confound the unwary. I have also realized, but not quite yet accepted, that no matter how hard I try, or how fast I may run, I will always be “Wilma’s Boy.”

When you are born into, and grow up in, a small village in Nebraska — North Loup, to be exact — there is an exacting sort of lingering punishment of social norms that always percolate and surround your every moment. You must always behave. Everyone knows who you are. You are a stranger until you have been defined by someone else. I quickly learned, in my many visits to my mother’s hometown of North Loup as a young child, that associations and relationships matter more than character.

When you’re a stranger in town, you don’t get introduced as yourself by name. Others introduce you to those who ask about you by using your familial ties. You are constructed in space by their name, not your name in time.

“Oh, that’s Bill Vodehnal’s grandson.”

“Sure, this is Wilma’s Boy.”

With those credits you do not own, you’re in.

Once those small town ties have been mentioned, and accepted by others, you are bound into a new community in a strange and fitful way. You now echo in the hills of your kin and you scream in the valleys of your ancestors as if you yourself were born and bred along the banks of the Loup River.

But there’s an expectation that comes along with all that sudden belonging.

You don’t speak up.

You don’t misbehave.

You are quiet until spoken to.

You are being watched by the town, and analyzed by unseen eyes, and you are immediately, and always, judged by societal agendas; and if you do the wrong thing, even by a little bit, you not only bring shame upon yourself, but upon your family as well.

“Wilma’s Boy, indeed!”

And that’s how the small town mentality inks its way in your bloodstream. You are always aware of timestamp belonging, you always want to fit in, you always become hypersensitive to those around you who are trying to look for the smallest fault to exploit and conquer.

In response, you become harder, more stubborn, colder, and inflexible, imagining yourself as stoic and suffering. You have values. You have strong beliefs. You don’t like strangers without association. You define first, lest you be defined last.

You are embedded into not wanting to stand out, but also wanting to be someone, and yet you are expected to always do your humble best. That dichotomy fosters an immobile sense of self that is always in motion while completely requiring stasis. You survive that way just fine in a small town, even as a young, named, visitor, but when you take that communal baggage out into the deeper, wider world, the temptation for flexible social norms to break you becomes even more powerful the harder you try to escape and not just settle for being where you’re from.

My mother was the daughter of WIlliam Henry Vodehnal, the village pharmacist: “Bill’s Girl.” Wilma was born into the malingering dust of the Great Depression, and she was slender, and beautiful, her entire life. She had Scarlet fever as a child, and became Deaf in one ear. She struggled to understand, to listen, and to communicate, the rest of her life. She never accepted her disability.

I would have loved to have met my mother when she was in her early teens — just to get a real sense of who she was born to be, and to try to understand what she believed. I wanted to know her childhood dreams before life turned on her, and before the promise of her future just became about survival and belonging.

My mother left North Loup. She toured Europe. She graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. She got out! And then, for some reason that I still do not understand, she decided to get married to a university classmate. A classmate who, after several years of a strained marriage, would become my father.

And that’s when it all changed.

That’s when the collapse of a life happened.

That’s when “Wilma’s Boy” was born to save a marriage that was still doomed to fail, and yes, not even being a first born son was enough for my father to stay married to Wilma. The divorce judge ordered him to stay with Wilma for five days after my birth, and then he was free to go live and cheat with the woman he was seeing. He later sired three additional children.

His alimony was to pay, for 10 years, the mortgage on the new home they built together and to pay $100 a month in child support until I was 18. That is the sum total of me knowing anything of value, or of substance, about my father. I do not understand him. I would not recognize him on the street. I have not set eyes upon him for 55 years.

I never understood why my mother chose to marry my father. My mother was not a romantic. She was a hard realist. From their start together, there was no real excitement, or engagement into a sustainable future. I get the feeling there was some sort of slow motion, underwater, push, neither of them fully understood that, after each left their own small town for a bigger city, and after earning a university education, the next natural step expected of them was to get married as soon as they graduated. That’s what you did back then in the radical Sixties. You got married, built a home, and had a child. That’s how you fit in the new modern world. That’s how you named your family with tendril roots.

And that was the beginning of the landslide disappointments for my mother. Divorced at 26, stuck with a five-day-old infant, and no job — she was lucky to find a fourth grade teaching position at a public school right across the street from her new home that provided for her for the next 35 years.

I know my mother felt held back by me, even if she didn’t directly blame me, because I know my mother had higher ambitions than just being a single-mother-divorcee in the 1970s and only teaching the fourth grade.

A bit later, Wilma married again, settling for another loser who came with three sons, and was subsequently divorced again a few years later.

Double divorced, but still stuck with a son who failed to save the first marriage, my mother sank into a deep, lifelong, depression. She vowed never to be married again, and to never tempt the perils of love another time. 

That glowering darkness scraped the bits of joy and the residue of life from her every second of every day. She was an expert at covering her real feelings in public. Her upbringing in a small town — where you put on the mask in public, and you wept, and let loose your monsters, and invented new demons, but only in the privacy of your own home — served her well at work.

However, living with her was an entirely different experience.

Later, she privately lamented that in each of her failed marriages, she had to buy all the diamond rings. Her second husband kept his ring, and put the diamond in a tie clip.

As a child, as long as I did exactly as my mother said, no questions, no quibbling, life was acceptable.

In order for me to survive, and to try to escape into safety and sanity, I became her “performing puppet” where I would act in plays, and make her proud, and I was pressured by her to be involved in community events in order for her to appear to be a good and supportive mother. It was all staged without any underlying substance or passion, but Wilma was never happier than when she was receiving an award, or while she was shouting out support when I found success in her shadow.

My misbehaving was never an option; and I was the perfect child: the perfectly miserable, malformed, disconnected, and forlorn child stuck in a distant, cold, and loveless relationship with his mother.

Yes, over the years, I’ve learned the hard way that not all mothers are willing, or capable, of loving their sons; and not all sons are capable of loving unloved mothers.

It all can spiral into a vicious circle of regret, and pain, and failed expectations that all ultimately become so untenable that either things will explode, or things will slowly, and deliberately, break apart.

And that’s what happened.

We broke apart.

Together, my mother and I tentatively, but without saying so, came to understand we really didn’t ever like each other. Love? Sure. Like? Not so much.

Oh, we played well together when others were watching — I know how to act the role of “Wilma’s Boy” really well — but deep down there was never any real connection to family, or to love, or to respect, or to understanding what was really happening between us. 

I sometimes wonder if it may have been too painful for her to ever really love anyone for fear of losing that idyllic small town adoration she longed for, but never really found in her personal life beyond North Loup. Thinking about that often makes me terribly sad for my mother.

After graduating from the university, and at the tender age of 23, I escaped to New York City and graduate school. I never looked back. I grey-rocked my mother for the last 20 years in order to preserve my own independent sanity, and to try to come to terms with the fluffy confection of a braided prairie education.

Wilma had her secret life without me.

I had my life without her.

I always considered myself her third divorce that was never consecrated in a court of law.

There was no tidy paper ending or proper emotional closure.

What is real, and what remains, is emptiness and longing.

A circle unclosed. 

And so, here I am at age 60, burying my mother at 85, and the childhood feelings of sorrow and regret are overwhelming, even in the fading light of an old man — but I also realize, and accept, that we each have one life, there is no repeating, there is no going back. You own what’s happened.

You give other people the right to live, or end, their own lives, and you try to find meaning in what’s left behind; and the answer is the meaning is only what you choose to bring to it, and what you use to define it, and there’s no way to guarantee a satisfying end except to accept the life that was offered to you, and to make the best of what’s left of the fractured path ahead.

As I said my final goodbyes to my mother in the North Loup Hillside Cemetery under a steamy, and unforgiving, disc of an afternoon sun on July 12, 2024, I recalled the last thing I said to her a few weeks before, in the early morning, while she lay dying in a Lincoln, Nebraska hospital emergency room. I had been her Durable Power of Attorney for four days. I was half a country away in New York.

My mother was flowing in and out of consciousness, defiantly and stubbornly trying her hardest to die. A few hours earlier, her medical team and I decided to place her in comfort care. The nurse let me call her cell phone, and the nurse put me on speaker, and she held the phone close to my mother’s good ear so I could say one last thing to Wilma before she died.

Here is what I struggled to say out loud — to try and finally close our circle: “You are safe now. We will let you go. I love you. Thank you.”

Wilma did not respond. 

Three hours later, she died.

I hope she heard me.

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https://bolesblogs.com/2024/07/30/wilmas-boy/

#davidBoles #depression #haunting #lincoln #marriage #nebraska #northLoup #smallTown #suffering #surgery #wilmaBoles #wilmaSBoy

@easwatch #NCwx #EAS for Cleveland, #NC; #Gaston, #NC; #Lincoln, #NC: National Weather Service: #TORNADO WARNING in this area until 3:45 PM EDT. Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building. If you are outdoors, in a mobile home, or in a vehicle, move to the closest substantial shelter and protect yourself from flying debris. Check media. Source: NWS Greenville-Spartanburg SC** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***

https://www.wacoca.com/videos/2091811/celebrity/ 【リンカーン】「浜田雅功ｘ松本人志」⭐⭐⭐『フォーリンラブがオリジナル料理を創作!!』 ##音尾琢真 #Celebrities #Celebrity #GakiNoTsukasa2024 #Lincoln#HitoshiMatsumoto #LINCOLN2024 #Vlog #Will#MasatoshiHamada #いろはに千鳥 #ウィル#浜田雅功 #ガキの使い2024 #ジャンク #ノブ #バラエティ深夜番組 #バラエティ番組 #ょうマレーシア・ #リンカーン #リンカーン#松本人志 #リンカーンLINCOLN2023 #リンカーン2024 #リンカーン浜田雅功ｘ松本人志フォーリンラブがオリジナル料理を創作 #ル探検TrimTrim #千鳥 #千鳥・ノブ #喜劇 #大悟 #大泉洋 #嬉野雅道 #安田顕 #水曜どうでし #水曜どうでしょう #水曜どうでしょう2020 #藤村忠寿 #鈴井貴之

I'm going to a lion graduation on Friday, pretty excited to see my younger son (the baseball playing goalie) walk across the stage and get his Masters in NYC!

https://pixels.com/featured/lion-cares-blue-college-mascot-designs.html

#BuyIntoArt #Lions #GoLions #Graduation #Graduation2023 #Columbia #Finlandia #TCNJ #GeorgianCourt #LMU #LoyolaMarymount #TAMUC #UAFS #FMU #FlaMemorial #Langston #Lincoln #Vanguard

"Murdoch's mid-90s opp was to build something the country genuinely needed, when the #GOP was moving away from the responsible optimism of the #RonaldReagan party toward the angry #populism of #NewtGingrich & Tom DeLay: an effective center-rt counterbalance to the libs: Burke, Hamilton, #Lincoln rather thn the debase direction of Andrew Jackson, Joe McCarthy, Pat Buchanan

...instead of surf'g a killer wave, he could've purchased a ship & steered it." #BretStephens/#NYT

https://bit.ly/3n1Cl6O