Feb 28, 2025 7 min read

Do you ever feel like you've been catfished? February 28, 2025

A double-crested cormorant holds a catfish he caught (see the blue in the mouth, that's a he-bird) just before horking it down whole.

You may have noticed that there was no post last week. Or, rather, there was no post posted. I did write one but there was a potential controversy in it and I chose not to publish it or re-write it. I'm sure you missed it! Anyway, one reason why I didn't just re-write it is it has been an exhausting two weeks at my house.

Finite Disappointment

On Valentine's Day, a Friday, as you may recall, my kid told me on the way home from high school that the person sitting next to them in class for two periods (read four hours) was coughing like nothing the kid had ever seen or heard before. My kid is a vigilant mask wearer, but four hours a few feet from a contagious person is too much for any intervention. What's more, the sick kid, whom we'll call Patient Zero, wasn't wearing a mask (few do) and wasn't even bothering to cover their mouth when they coughed. And Patient Zero coughed—a lot.

Monday night my kid came down with a fever and the Patient Zero's cough. My kid's temperature sometimes went over 103 degrees and the cough was nasty. At least one other child sitting near Patient Zero was home with the disease too. Wednesday morning of that week I took the kid into the doctor and was told what I expected--it's a virus, it's not the flu and not COVID (they tested for those two)--get plenty of rest and fluids. As my kid was politely holding in their cough for the unmasked doctor, I had to tell the doctor the kid coughed so much the previous night they threw up to get some heavy duty cough medicine.

We returned to the doctor's office a week later, this past Wednesday, to find out that the previous doctor had prescribed a lower-than-usual dose of the cough medicine and that the kid's sickness had morphed into pneumonia. The kid was prescribed a Z-Pack and the next day (yesterday), for the first time in nearly two weeks, the kid's temperature returned to normal. The miracle of science!

In the previous two weeks, because Patient Zero went to school sick, unmasked and not trained to cover their mouth when they coughed, my kid has missed the first visit from their grandparents in over a decade (grandparents cancelled the trip for several reasons, including the plague being at our house), a bell choir concert the kid was going to perform in at church, a vocal choir performance the kid had a solo in at a local museum in Miami Beach, a performance by some childhood heroes (the kid is big into environmental causes and got this sickness at an "environmental academy) at a show that was supposed to be the kid's Christmas present. And, of course, nine days of school where the base class is "honors" level.

About that miracle of science, the antibiotic my kid is on was discovered in present-day Croatia. So, unlike 99% of all drugs approved by the FDA in the last decade, it is not a direct result of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. But it is considered the greatest medical achievement of Croatia, and rightly so. Still, the cuts to the NIH will likely threaten your health, my kid's health and the financial health of Miami. My congressional district alone, FL-27, received a quarter billion in NIH projects--fully a quarter of all project spending by the NIH in Florida.

So, my kid has been very sick, and the miracle of science has the kid on the mend. However, the greed and ignorance of some have the very programs that create the "miracle" of science on the brink of oblivion in this county and this country. Maybe we should stop calling it the "miracle" of science, which suggests some power beyond our control is responsible for it, and start calling it "science."

Historic Interlude Two-Fer

February 20, 1864

Thunder at the Gates by Douglas R. Egerton

Last week's historic interlude should have focused on the sole big battle of the American Civil War fought on Florida soil on February 20, 1864, near Lake City, Florida. Known as the Battle of Olustee or Ocean Pond, it was notable as not only the only battle fought in Florida but also as one that saw the Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry and the 1st North Carolina Colored save an entire battalions of white soldiers ambushed by Confederate traitor forces. The Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry, or perhaps more accurately their white commanding officers, was the subject of the 1989 Oscar winning movie, Glory.

Glory ends with two untrue implications: one, that the 54th was all but annihilated in the Battle of Fort Wagner, and two, that their efforts to take Fort Wagner were ultimately unsuccessful. While literally decimated (which means having a tenth removed) and unsuccessful in their July 1863 assault of the battery at Wagner, not only did the core of the 54th persist, their efforts gained such national fame that they quickly replenished their number and returned to combat readiness. As for Ft. Wagner, the Confederate traitors illegally buried the dead in a mass grave in the sand, including, in what was an unheard of breach of etiquette, tossing Col. Robert Gould Shaw in the pit. Within a few weeks, the stench from the shallow graves was so great the traitors abandoned the fortification, ultimately helping the very same 54th and their sister regiments, the Massachusetts 55th Colored Infantry and the Massachusetts 5th Cavalry, Colored, take Charleston a year later. They sang "John Brown's Body" as they marched into the city.

As for February 20, 1864, the 54th had been dispatched to do some menial work, then under the command of Col. Montgomery, the officer portrayed as villianous in the burning of a town in the movie. But when the white regiments fell into a chaotic retreat at Olustee, it was the Massachusetts 54th and the 1st North Carolina Colored that literally saved the lives of the white men. A month after the battle, Confederate deserters wandered into the Union encampment and offered praise of the 54th. "You black soldiers fight like the devil...we know all the Massachusetts flags. You peppered us like hell."

Through the movie Glory, the men of the Massachusetts 54th inspired me to become a historian. I hope you find them inspiring, too. Their story is best told in one of my all-time favorite history books, Thunder at the Gates, by Douglas R. Egerton. While detailed battles will satiate any military tactics lover, the book is mostly about the men in the Massachusetts 54th, 55th, and 5th Cavalry themselves. It is from this book I pulled much of the above history.

February 26, 2012

In this March 22, 202 file photo, protestors, Lakesha Hall , of Sanford, center, and her son, Calvin Simms, right, participate in a rally for Trayvon Martin, the black teenager who was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Fla. The killing of Trayvon Martin at the hands of a stranger still reverberates 10 years later--in protest, in partisanship, in racial reckoning and reactionary response, in social justice and social media. (AP Photo/Julia Fletcher, File) Text taken from AP website. Click on the image to go to the website.

Thirteen years ago a self-appointed, would-be neighborhood watchmen executed a Black boy from Miami Gardens– a prosperous, majority Black community where the Miami Dolphins and Miami Hurricanes call home--named Trayvon Martin for having the audacity of holding a bag of Skittles and perhaps not wanting to talk to a random, armed stranger yelling at him from a truck. The murderer, once acquitted, has risen to be a celebrity on the right, even making a painting of a Confederate traitor flag for a "Muslim Free Gunshop" here in Florida. Not long after he was acquitted, his wife filed for divorce after Martin's acquitted murderer punched her in the face and threatened to murder her family. Here's a link to the information I'm talking about, but I'm not printing that man's name.

Infinite Hope

The double-crested cormorant with the catfish in his mouth emerging with his trophy from the water. Photo Credit Philip Cardella Copyright 2025

I'll be honest. I don't remember being as down as I have been this previous week. The housing insecure dog we've been caring for will likely be the topic of finite disappointment next week as his trip over the Rainbow Bridge is imminent. I have dropped thousands of dollars in the last month or so on that dog and our now insulin-dependent 17-year-old cat. It is miserable listening to your baby cough their lungs out to the point of vomiting all because someone sent a very sick Patient Zero to school and didn't have the common decency to ask the kid to cover their mouth when they cough, much less wear a mask. The FDA is considering eliminating anti-depressants I use so I snap at my family less and cancelled the vitally important flu preparation meeting for next year's flu vaccine.

So where do I find hope? Perhaps The Everglades, while the National Park Service still exists, though that is in question after the Valentine's Day letter terminating 1000 park ranger positions, including ones in the National Parks near Miami, and another 700 resigning next week.

I feel like the catfish in the mouth of the double-crested cormorant. I feel like my doom is inevitable--as it was for that fish (he went down, as is the coromorant and anhinga way, in one gulp). But is it? After just one visit to The Everglades, my oldest child begged me to take them back during this spring break, and it was there that we caught this bird eating the catfish. Look at that image! I love it. It is a minor thing, but I'll love that picture my whole life. Same with the osprey and its chicks I caught on the same day. These are two of my all-time favorite photographs I've taken. And these are moments that have transpired repeatedly for thousands of years. Perhaps that's where I find my hope today—not as the fish or the bird but of the person blessed enough to watch the circle of life in its full glory march on.