“Fog” by Carl Sandburg. Public domain. Published, 1916, in Chicago Poems, by Carl Sandburg.
Image Copyright © 2025 by Douglas M. Wilcox.
Fog
CLM
Remember, kids, Black Lives don’t matter, but Confederate Lives—you know, the lives of those who fought against the United States of America—do.
New York Times (gift article): Black Lives Matter Plaza Is Gone.
Haunting Reflections
To remember their suffering is to recognize the danger and evil that are possible whenever one group persecutes another; … know that wherever prejudice, discrimination, or victimization are tolerated, evil like the Holocaust can happen again.
—New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston
I have been here to this memorial before, but today I wept as I walked through, thinking especially of my great-grandparents, Raphael Alfandary and Lea Caraco.
They escaped Berlin for France soon after Kristallnacht, and remained mainly in hiding, first in Marseilles and then in Nice. Their last place of hiding was in Les Moussieres, in the Jura mountains in France, about an hour across the border from Geneva and the safety of Switzerland which they never reached.
Raphael was tortured and later shot and killed by the Nazis while in hiding in France. Lea was transported to Auschwitz in 1944, and died during the death march out of Auschwitz in 1945. There is, I am told, a monument or memorial in Les Moussieres, naming Rafael and three other men executed.
Four Fathers
For Father’s Day, let me introduce you to four fathers I have had. The last one will blow you away. (And that’s not just clickbait.)
Here they are, in order of when I learned of them.
(1) Paul J. Wilcox, Jr. Pictured with my adoptive mother Addie is my adoptive father. I met him when I was 8 or 9 months old. Dad was supremely practical. For example, when I was born I was diagnosed as retarded. He declared, “Well, if he’s not going to work with his head, we will teach him to work with his hands,” and for Christmas after my second birthday I got a toolbox with real tools (the toolbox and some of the tools I still have). Dad, a lifelong refrigeration technician, was skilled at repairing everything except modern home refrigerators and cars, and could build just about anything. He taught me many skills that I still use today.
(2) R Michael Frenchman. Pictured with one of the most loving people I have ever met, his wife Karen Crowe, is Michael Frenchman. He was labeled my father by my biological mother, who misled people in that respect. We met when I was in my 20s. Michael is indeed a Renaissance man, doing everything from working with UN programs, to being an independent reporter in Iran, to mentoring high school students in videography and animation, to producing live theater and video projects. Getting to know him has been one of the delights of my life. (He even inspired me to get my SCUBA certification.) Michael, along with my biological mother, made the prudent decision to place me for adoption, knowing their own lives were too chaotic at the time to raise a child.
(3) George Fortini, also pictured with my Mom. A few years after my Dad‘’’s death, Mom remarried George when she was 80 years old. The next few years were wonderfully happy for them, although Mom outlived him as well. George was crazily in love with my mother, and fit in well with the family. He wasn’t Dad, but pretty close, except with an even better sense of humor and cooking ability. Most important, he was wonderful for my Mom.
(4) Michael “Mickey” Rachlin. Well, this is the big surprise! After decades of searching, and over a decade of DNA sleuthing in search of my biological father, my cousin Audrey texted me last August and said, “I think I’ve cracked your case … but first, was there any reason you know of for your [biological] mother to have been in Texas?” I haven’t gotten to meet Mickey, as he passed away in July of 2020, before I was able to locate him. He never knew I existed, but, it is clear from other examples in his life that he would have loved to learn he had a son. He was the only child of Ezra Rachlin, who himself was a child prodigy pianist and conductor of, among others, the London Symphony Orchestra. I am still learning about Mickey through people in the family, but solving this mystery and expanding my known family has been huge, as you might imagine! I feel like I can only write in superlatives! I’m still learning what we had in common, but heard, from a stepsister, something I never was sure I would: “Oh my gosh, you look just like him!”
It’s been quite a journey.
Space Station V: Life Imitates Art
Life imitates art: “Hilton will design suites and sleeping quarters for Voyager’s private Starlab space station.” As you recall, Space Station V from 2001: A Space Odyssey had a Hilton on board.
Back in My Day
Buback ubin my dubay, thubis wubas Zuboubom.
Fear
It is somewhere around 1:00 am. All but two of us are asleep.
I am hugging my daughter tightly as she sobs uncontrollably, her heart pounding with disappointment and fear.
There is nothing, really, I can say to comfort her. The best I can attempt is, “I will always fight for you,” as my own tears flow.
The Thoughts of One of Many
My name is David Isaiah Wilcox. I am black or African american or whatever you want to call me. I am also agoraphobic, but that will tie in later. I see all that is happening in the world, and I am hurt, not just because I am black but, because I am human. The blind eye that society has turned to the suffering of all those of different walks of life than the “majority†needs to stop. And it won’t be easy.
First I speak to those that are claiming to be ignorant of the atrocities of man, Then I speak to those that might hate or feel dirtied by my mere existence. First the virus known commonly as COVID-19 (called such because of the year it originated in) Isolated us, forcing us to stay home or risk the lives of our loved ones that could be harmed or killed by the disease. Little did I know that twenty-twenty would be the year where another sickness would also be addressed, I of course speak of racism. It is odd for me to speak on this topic as I have been locked away in my home with little interaction with the outside world for much longer than the rest of you. I have been stuck at home for seven, coming on eight years now, due to a crippling anxiety disorder. I, when around people begin to ache through my whole body, this pain grows worse and worse until I just can’t take it anymore. In addition if I am outside too long I stop being able to think, and I do mean that in the most broad way possible. If outside too long I begin to lose the ability to do simple tasks. Such as pace, five steps forward, turn, five steps back. On two occasions has it gotten this bad. Never again do I want to feel my brain turn against me to that extent.
I have strode a little off topic but I felt it was necessary to share what exactly I go through when I try to leave the boundaries of my home. Outside it seems the world has descended into chaos. When I heard what happened on May 25, 2020, I was appalled—sickened by what I was hearing. How could men, sworn to the protection of others, take the life of a man for the possibility that he paid with a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. For those that have not figured it out I am speaking of the murder of George Floyd. I found myself asking why aloud; I don’t know who I was talking to, perhaps God. Asking if all this is truly necessary, and if so to what end. Just end it already. I pleaded before and pleaded now “God, please end us all.â€Â
Racism is a disease, a plague that exists in the hearts of man, and can only be conquered if we as a whole acknowledge it, and strive to push past it.
Of course that would not work, we must rise above this adversity, this tragic condition that exists in far too many people. Racism is a disease, a plague that exists in the hearts of man, and can only be conquered if we as a whole acknowledge it, and strive to push past it. To make matters worse, we have a government that has decided that it is best to use rubber bullets, tear gas, and brute force to corral an unwarned and non-violent crowd of protesters. This reminds me of an event in our history, as a nation we once stood against tyranny, rallied together by the deaths of five and injuries of six. We were smaller then, and we had more problems, but how would we have responded had the very scared British Soldiers only used rubber bullets, avoiding the “Boston Massacre� I guess we will never know.
To close this session of writing, I should say there is hope. Not everyone is racist, for one reason or another. It doesn’t matter what pigment your skin is, if you notice you have a prejudice towards another, based on the pigment of their skin, stop, take a breath, and ask for help. It doesn’t matter who you ask, just talk about it, get it out in the open, and figure out where you picked it up from and how to get better from there. To those that deny that this is a rampant problem in our world, our lives, our souls, I ask you to look again, and ask someone about the pain that they have endured, just because they were born with a different amount of pigment in their skin.
Watching Pandemics—in Film
(Additional updates on January 31, 2021)
One of the things we’re doing to pass the time is winding down the day with a “good” pandemic flick. So far, we’re only gotten through two. I’ll update this post as we get through more. Spoiler alert: I’ll be careful not to give too much away, but can’t guarantee a no-spoiler review.
First up was The Andromeda Strain (1971, IMDB score: 7.2). Two films and one miniseries have been based on this early novel by Michael Crichton, and this is generally considered the best of them. If nothing else, it’s the one that adheres closest to the book.
In today’s every-film-is-a-blockbuster world, one tends to forget that, due to technical, economic, and other constraints, films were often extremely poorly paced, chaotic, and somewhat boring. There’s almost no background score for the film, and what’s there is entirely forgettable. Though the sterile technique is relatively good in this, it’s far from perfect; science is only so-so. Performances are decent, and one item of note is that this is probably the last time in film that a supermodel prototype was not used for a female scientist. It also reminded us that people used to smoke.
Outbreak (1995, IMDB score: 6.6) Horrible sterile technique, mostly poor science (although some good basic virology) and an entire military branch that refuses to obey orders. Excellent makeup for disease effects. (Bonus: Ebola-type viruses cause one’s hair to lose its curl as the disease progresses. Who knew?) Dustin Hoffman and cast provide credible performances while behaving incredibly, although the basic scenario is plausible. There’s a conspiracy-driven sub plot that doesn’t quite fit. Hoffman seems schizoid when it comes to protecting the world from an Ebola-type outbreak. He’s determined to cure it, but becomes positively reckless in his investigation.
We then tackled The Hot Zone, a National Geographic miniseries based on Richard Preston’s excellent account of the same name. (2019, IMDB score: 7.3). This was an only-moderately dramatized version of real events, with which I was familiar from reading Preston’s book. This scored extremely well on the science, and captures the horror of viral hemorrhagic fevers. The world can be very grateful that this strain only affected monkeys.
(Updated on January 31, 2021.) It took us a while, but we finally returned to another pandemic film: Contagion (2011, IMDB score: 6.7). This film deals with a global pandemic of a mutated zoonotic virus with a rapid, 25% mortality rate and an R0 of 4, a true “doomsday scenario.” What’s impressive is how much of the societal effects this film gets right, as we now have a case study of a pandemic with a mostly low but widely varied mortality rate (highly affected by age) and an R0 that ranges from 1.4 to 3.9 (according to Medscape). There are food shortages and hoarding, social media propagators of disinformation, and a CDC sometimes hamstrung by politics. The scenes of empty stores, shopping malls, and gyms were particularly poignant. The precautions taken by scientists are sound, and feel very real, and the science is pretty good, if slightly vague, until the end, where a single act becomes a deus ex machina. Our own experiences have made this film seem far more authentic than we would have realized; I don’t think we would have appreciated it as much in 2011.
On Hold
Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after will seem inadequate.
— Michael Leavitt
For the moment, there is far less chaos than a lifetime of apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction have led me to expect. This is a good thing. Sort of. I am disappointed that another trope has been shattered. No cities were surrounded by the military, sterilized with nuclear weapons, or set on fire.
It’s not all good, of course. There has been the inevitable dismissal of all we are doing to slow the spread of COVID-19, keep our health care systems from being overwhelmed, and save the lives of our seniors as nothing more than overreaction or a media frenzy. There was new terminology to learn, like presumptive positive, which refers to a test sample that has tested positive by a state health service lab, but not yet been confirmed by the CDC itself. There was also the overlooked state of testing, which led to a false sense of security: Almost no one was being tested, even if they had been exposed to COVID-19 and exhibited every symptom perfectly, the lack of available test kits meant many such people were rejected from testing, and continue to be rejected even now. (I know it’s shocking and unprecedented, but President Trump is lying to you.)
And, one must not forget the actions of our Very Stable Genius in Chief, who disbanded the National Security Council’s Pandemic Response Team in 2018, or his repeated attempts to reduce the budget of key CDC sections responsible for emerging and zoonotic diseases.
[clap, clap] (GLaDOS, Portal 2)
On Thursday evening we got ready to hunker down. Market basket, at the nearly-empty time Naomi and I normally go—Thursday evening at 8:00 pm—was Saturday-morning crowded. Toilet paper and bananas had disappeared. But the staffing had been ramped up, and people were amused and polite, as is typical for our neck of the woods. When I got home I ordered some devices to be used instead of toilet paper.
Friday was a prearranged work-from-home day, while Veracode tested an “all-employees-working-from-home” scenario. There were few problems. On Sunday night, we received notice that mandatory working from home would be in effect for the next two weeks.
Humor is a typical fallback. I’ve remarked several times to David, whose severe anxiety keeps him inside at home almost all the time, “Look! We’re all David, now.” My kids have repeatedly quoted, “Oh, so now you’re interested in what introverts do for fun.”
Tonight we’re trying a long-distance game of Pandemic.