Remain calm, be kind, and carry on regardless!
You've reached the online journal of Richard Rathe — online since 2004! In this iteration I'm trying a few new ideas: minimal markup, working with mostly plain text, and moving beyond the timeline. I call it BLIS (BLog It Simple). Find me online…
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It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.
Panorama, Lava_Flow, Galapagos, Geology
Jun 02, 2026
Purple martin in flight yesterday along the trail at the Waterworks Prairie Park in Iowa City, Iowa. #birds #birding #BirdPhotography #wildlife #WildlifePhotography #nature #NaturePhotography #photography #AltText
Critters History Travel Video 2019
On my trip west this year I made sure I had time to visit this unique area. The Dinosaur Tracks are located within and along side the Purgatoire River within the Comanche National Grassland. It is located 35 miles south of La Junta, Colorado off the lightly maintained County Road 25 (upper left in the map above). The last few miles are on a primitive forest service road that ends at the Withers Canyon Trailhead and Campground (four sites with fire grates and a pit toilet).
Galleries Nature Plants 2026
While walking in the woods we came upon this huge pore fungus called Dryad's Saddle described as …an annual mushroom commonly found attached to dead logs and stumps or on living hardwood trees at one point with a thick stem. …On the underside one can see the pores that are characteristic of the genus; they are made up of tubes packed together closely. The mushroom's smell resembles that of watermelon rind.
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Books Commentary History 2026
I've reworked these extended quotations from The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman (1986) for today's wannabe King
Trump. Tuchman's words speak to greater truths. My words are my own and speak for more immediate truths in desperate times.
Birds Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
The next day I had a three hour drive to my next destination—Petrified Forest National Park. The southern entrance is less used than the north but two of he major hiking trails are there: Crystal Forest & Blue Mesa. Unfortunately there is no trail to Newspaper Rock—a major Petroglyph site. It was cold and windy, but apparently I came at a good time to see the many desert flowers in bloom. 🙂
Books Commentary History Music 2026
![Preparing to Fly the Flag (July 4, 1976) [source: DC Public Library]](commentary/america_at_250/img/bicentennial-1976.jpg)
I put out my American Flag today. 🇺🇸 I only fly the flag on special days and this is one of them. Thinking about what makes this day special is what gives the act meaning. One cannot be patriotic every day, but that's not required. We need days like this to think hard about history (those actions and actors who mattered), the present (our current situation and how it differs from what it should be), and the future (the history we might make during the time remaining to us).
Camping Hammocks Reviews 2026
I recently bought a Ridgerunner Hammock from Warbonnet Outdoors. These are my first impressions. I'd been aware of this type of hammock for a few years and I was curious about them. Online descriptions and 2D photos don't really help much. This design makes much more sense when you actually lie in one.
Commentary Video 2016
Most are familiar with the concept of FUD—short for Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. It summarizes a strategy often used in marketing and political propaganda. Its effects are pernicious, divisive and lead to exploitation. Examples abound. Fear is a strong motivator! To resist FUD one must understand how it is practiced using the principles of Deception, Obfuscation and Misdirection.
Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Travel Video 2015
This was my Eighteenth Everglades Journey and a collection of firsts for me: first Solo Trip, first en-route rendezvous, first exploration of the River of Grass, first time around Cape Sable, first time sailing beyond the horizon, first time camping in Florida Bay, and first major equipment failure (rudder). This was probably my penultimate trip! With the exception of bug problems at one site, it pretty much came off without a hitch. 🙂
Camping Commentary Reviews Technology 2025
I hadn't used a headlamp in five years until this one caught my eye. Mostly because of configurability and the price ($9.99). (The price suddenly jumped to $24.99 after I bought mine. (Tariffs kicking in perhaps? It's Nov 2025)
Panoramas Photography Technology 2016
I've always been fascinated by 360° spherical photographs (sometimes called mirrorballs, planets or wormholes
). These are some of the first photos I took with a Ricoh Theta S (basically a black slab with two 180° fisheye lenses pointing in opposite directions.
Projects 2022
I developed this todo list format in 2016. It allows you to easily translate from paper to digital—and back again! This approach is compatible with other journaling formats such as KIST, Bullet Journaling
and GTD.
Commentary Medicine Medinfo Projects 1997
Jrju
(Chinese for spider) is a Perl program that weaves hypertext 'notebooks' from plain text files. An author creates notebook pages using the JTX markup format. Jrju will process a directory of JTX files into a cross-linked collection of HTML pages. Jrju rebuilds the entire notebook each time so there are no broken links or orphan pages.
Art Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Travel Turkey_2016 2016
In 2016 we had the privilege of touring the ruins of Ephesus in Turkey. Originally built by the Greeks—the Romans took over the site in 129 BCE. The ruins are dominated by a long avenue lined with statuary and temples. This descending pathway leads to the Library of Celsus with it's two story facade mostly intact. There is a huge overhead structure protecting the Terrace Houses of wealthy inhabitants—looking very much like luxury condos today!
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2003
This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.
Hdr Nature Photography Plants 2012
The Cellon Oak Park is located three miles south of La Crosse off highway 121 in rural Alachua County. For years I’ve driven the highways nearby and never knew this gem was there. The tree is magnificent in person. Well worth a trip!
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2008
This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.
Books How_To Projects Reviews 2026
I've been a novice bread baker over the years, specifically breads leavened with yeast. I've made bagels and pizza crusts from scratch. I have a pizza stone in my oven and a wooden peel for that purpose. My last big endeavor was using my bread machine to make no knead bread (based on the famous NY Times recipe) with some success. All of this pales by comparison with the Five Minute
approach outlined in the book discussed here.
Projects 2024
BLIS is an alternative to Wordpress and other database-dependent online publishing environments. One obvious problem with such systems is portability. They generally store text in a database—while media such as images are stored in nested directories by date. It can be daunting to put all these scattered parts back together again outside the original site. (I'm working on converting my WP materials now…it may take several months!)
Birds Nature 2012
Sometimes you see something in nature that has a direct analog in the human world. I caught sight of this family of Bald Eagles on the Mississippi River—then I noticed a familiar pattern…
Apostle_Islands Birds Camping History Plants Travel 2021
We made an amphibious landing to offload our gear and then moored the boat about a mile away at the pier. I pitched my hammock tent right on the beach between mature white and red pines. The level of Lake Superior had recently gone down so there was a more normal amount of beach exposed.
Commentary Medicine Medinfo 2017
The History of Present Illness (HPI) has not changed appreciably since the introduction of the Problem-Oriented Medical Record in 1968. Until recently most medical documentation was created via dictation or handwritten notes. Narrative was the natural format for the HPI. This is no longer true in the era of online forms and computer-generated text.
Commentary Technology 2026
My Critique of: Your Voice, Your Choice
— A Guest Post by Claude Sonnet 4.5
The ELIZA Effect is a tendency to project human traits—such as experience, semantic comprehension or empathy—onto rudimentary computer programs having a textual interface.
This little book was conceived neither as a medical history nor as a technical discussion of surgery. It is instead a story of people, of friends with whom I have shared joy and sorrow, in short, bits of the day-to-day drama which is the life of a country doctor. Many of the incidents are trivial, in one sense of the word, yet each has had in it something which appealed to me enough to make me remember it as a highlight in my forty-five years as a country doctor.
