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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In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Birds, Florida, Sandhill_Cranes
Mar 07, 2026
Manet's famous painting Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère never appealed to me. But now I realize its genius, and my spine tingles every time I see it. The perspective looks all wrong. You're staring straight at this barmaid, but her reflection in the mirror is way off to right. Even worse, her reflection is facing a guy who doesn't appear in the main view! But in 2000, a researcher showed this perspective is actually possible!!! To prove it, he did a photographic reconstruction of this scene. Check it out in my next post. This blows my mind. (1/3)
California Galleries Plants Travel 2025
We recently visited the Bristlecone Pines within Inyo National Forest in the White Mountains of Eastern California. While there we took a five hour hike on the Methuselah Trail amongst some of the oldest trees in the world!
Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Panoramas Travel 2017
Everglades time again! This year I went for five days/four nights with my sister Diana Pray from LA. We did a lazy double figure eight route around northeastern Whitewater Bay and the Gulf. With the exception of a few distant motorboats we were completely alone for four days, quite remarkable! I brought along a 360° panoramic camera and took some impressive shots! [note1]
Birds Galleries History Nature Travel Video 2013
We arrived about noon and proceeded to nearby Black Turtle Bay where we saw Sea Turtles, Sharks, and Golden Rays amongst the mangroves. If you have enough bandwidth you should also view the 12 Minute Video I’ve prepared to see them in motion!
Birds Flowers Galleries History Panoramas Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
We entered Arches National Park about 8am the next day. This was a great time for photographing the rock formations in the southern part of the park (near the entrance). Our plan was to take a leisurely drive north—exploring along the way—until we reached the Devil's Garden area. This is where the majority of the notable arches are. You might also like to view photos from My November 2024 Trip.
Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Rock_Art Travel 2026
I established my campsite and went for a walk about an hour before sunset. It was a magical time to be out in the desert. Some of the rocks are volcanic in origin. I think that may be a cinder cone in the distance. There is a large abstract petroglyph on the right (click to enlarge).
Birds Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Rock_Art Travel 2026
We left Green River heading north to Wellington and the Petroglyph megasite known as Nine Mile Canyon. The backway
road went over a small pass before descending into a beautiful flat-bottomed canyon. This is the best map I could find on the web. [source: National Scenic Byways Program]
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…
Books Reviews
Charles Pierce (2009)
This short confection of a book has a serious message… When cranks
become mainstream and large segments of the population take them seriously, our entire society is at risk! He's not against people with unconventional ideas, in fact he considers them to be an asset… a sort of check on the status quo. But an increasing number of cranks have won mainstream acceptance, and this is very alarming! Politics and religion are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.
Bookhouse Books History Reviews 1970
Turns out I had volume two of a three part report on a decade of radiation research done in a national forest. There is an official Fact Sheet for this program which reads in part…
Birds Galleries Nature 2026
Photos from our recent visit to Sweetwater Wetlands Park. Not sure I've been there in January before. There were the usual denizens and one surprise (Roseate Spoonbills). It was a bright shiny day and it warmed up quickly.
Birds Flowers Galleries Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
While attending a family wedding I camped on my Brother's property in the Sierra Foothills. This turned out to be a hook-up place for Wild Turkeys in the area. About six Toms (males) appeared every day in pursuit of a few hens (who appeared to completely ignore their suitors 😉). Other birds included Hawks, Owls, and California Towhees. The area also supported a herd of deer and many wildflowers, including this Yellow Star Tulip (actually a type of lily).
History Science Video
Hans Rosling (2010)
This spectacular section of 'The Joy of Stats' tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine. [source:youtube]
Birds Bwca Camping Galleries Hammocks Travel Video 2019
This year we returned to the Gunflint Trail. Our party of four became just two due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. This was exacerbated by horrendous wind and cold rain on the drive up. Fortunately we had a place to stay (a family cabin) and waited an extra day for the weather to improve. Ross and I took off on a cold, windy morning from the entry point on Poplar Lake. Crossing Poplar turned out to be the hardest part of the trip. We started with a cold headwind and couldn’t find the portage at first.
Books History
Lewis Carroll (1865)
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book,
thought Alice without pictures or conversations?
Galleries History Medicine 1930
![The Tilden Company circa 1930 [source:NLHS]](medicine/patent_medicines/images/tilden-company-from-above.jpg)
My Wife's Grandfather worked as a chemist for The Tilden Company in Upstate New York during the early 1900s. As a result we came into possession of his Recipe Book
for the plethora of nostrums and remedies he helped create. Some of the ingredients are still sold today under various brand names. Some are humorous, others are forgotten, while still others are downright dangerous. The following installments are my exploration of this unique window into the medical past. [Note: We donated the actual book to the historical section of the National Library of Medicine.]
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel Video 2007
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.
Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
My original plan was to find a BLM campground in the Sierra Foothills and have an easy first night. This became untenable due to a Pacific storm blowing in that would deposit snow on Donner Pass. So the plan became a quick up and over the pass and on into northern Nevada. We drove until we could leave the I-70 and got a motel in Fallon.
Galleries History Panoramas Travel Turkey_2016 2016
Here is a gallery of all the panoramas from our 2016 trip to Turkey and the The Turquoise Coast. We started in Istanbul and ended at Ephesus. Best viewed on a large screen!
Birds Flowers Galleries Iowa Travel 2025
This year I came and went three times due to other trips and obligations. Starting in May to open up the place. Then back in late July for the RAGBRAI and family reunion. Then back after trips to Brimson and the BWCA in September.
Galleries Photography Southwest_2024 Travel Video 2024
The entrance to The Wave is a long curved corridor of twisted stone stripes with no real floor. The stripes vary in both color and indentation. It’s a remarkable visual/tactile surface! The actual Wave is tulip-shaped, looking a bit like a skateboard park designed by Dr. Seuss. There was an ephemeral pool at the lowest point.
Projects 2023
No regrets! Mastodon has been so much better! I decided to try my hand at creating an automated robot
to post quotations alongside some of my photographs. And this is the result…
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.
