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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To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.
HDR, Fisher_towers, Utah
Jul 08, 2026
Any way you slice it.
Galleries Nature Photography Travel 2018
My brother-in-law Rick flew out from Colorado so we could go on a road trip together across South Dakota and beyond. We entered the Park via the Northeast Entrance (extreme right on map) and spent most of our day slowly moving west, stopping frequently—sometimes to take photos, sometimes due to bison migrating across the road. We ended up at the Sage Creek primitive camping area (upper left).
Birds Flowers Galleries Iowa Travel 2026
Late Fall excursion to Pikes Peak (the original!) for a bit of color and a long walk in the woods. In the panorama below, the city of Prairie du Chien is in the upper left, north of the Wisconsin River outlet near the center. Wyalusing State Park is on the opposite bluff. The sumac in the foreground is near its peak. There were White Pelicans down on the river (too small to see here).
Boats Nature Photography 2026
An occasional journal of photographs and activities on the Lake thru the seasons. I walk or kayak almost every day and these are the flora and fauna I encounter. The photographs are mine unless otherwise noted. Entries are in reverse chronological order.
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).
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. In a few pages she describes the bad policies and attitudes of the French King Louis XIV. I was struck by the deep parallels with the policies and attitudes of the current administration and the flock of Lickspittle Poltroons that compose the current GOP. Tuchman's words speak to greater truths. My words are my own and speak for more immediate truths in desperate times.
Bookhouse Books Camping History
Ed Dodd (1971)
This little book brings back memories of reading the Sunday newspaper when I was a teen. There would always be a non-humorous cartoon by and about the fictional Mark Trail
promoting life outdoors. These cartoons often depicted humans and wild animals in close proximity. This book of camp cooking tips borders on the whimsical.
Books Commentary History Reviews 2016
I was on a short business trip recently and had a chance to view three new movies about real conspiracies that affect us all. This prompted me to go back and re-watch some documentaries from the recent past. Talk about dark night of the soul! Here are my brief reviews in no particular order…
Birds Critters Galleries Nature Video 2024
A recent cold snap in the Tampa Bay area forced hundreds of manatees inland in search of warmer water. One ready source is the outflow from the TECO powerplant. To their credit, the company provides a dedicated viewing dock and surrounding wildlife preserve for birds and other critters.
Commentary History Medicine
Lawrence P. Garrod (1944)
Consider the so-called War on Raw Milk
. I was amazed to discover in my Grandfather's scrapbook an article from 1944 debating the benefits of unpasteurised (raw) milk. These are echoed today by the public health nihilist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Music Reviews
Imogen Heap (2010)
I’ve been a fan of Imogen Heap for several years. Her latest album Ellipse
has one of my all time favorite songs—Earth
[listen]. It describes how a frustrated Mother Earth deals with her rambunctious offspring, homo sapiens. [lyrics]
Galleries Travel 2004
A trip we took for my parents 50th wedding anniversary. We drove a rental car from Seattle to Montana and back, with stops at several National Parks: Olympic, North Cascades, & Glacier.
Bookhouse Books History Reviews Technology 1916
I rescued this thick, encyclopedic volume from the trash. (Notice the page numbers are up to the 2800s!) These pages are from the chapter on Electric Vehicles. This illustration is so similar to a modern garage I was intrigued to consider what opportunities had been missed as we progressed to our petro-industry fueled present?
Commentary Galleries Protest Video 2025
Visiting family and friends in Sacramento California for my third protest against Trump. We had a nationwide No Kings!
event to counter Trump's birthday parade in DC. The final estimates were 4-6 million of us spread over 2000 events. Compared with The Orange Man's quarter mil.
History Science 2010
I’m currently reading A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson. About a third of the way in he introduces Clair Cameron Patterson who could be the model of the modern citizen/scientist.
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)
Birds Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
I planned to stay overnight in Flagstaff, AZ so I could visit the Lowell Observatory in the evening. Apparently they give tours during daylight hours and then setup smaller telescopes to view whatever's happening in the sky that night. Alas, dark clouds moved in and there was precip predicted for the early evening. So I went to bed early…
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2014
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.
Everglades Galleries Hammocks Travel Video 2023
This year we returned to the northern part of the park. The original plan had been a grand tour
loop with two beach sites and two chickees. However, the forecast was calling for high winds on the last two days where we would be exposed out on the Gulf of Mexico. On the drive down I called and amended our permit to camp at Lopez River on the last night.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2014
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.
Bookhouse Books History Reviews
Theodore Roosevelt (1914)
This book records an expedition lead by Teddy Roosevelt in 1913-14 after he was president! It has the most amazing cover… embossed, leather (I assume) with a Golden Anteater?!
Books Reviews
Edward Abbey (1968)
I had the good fortune to pick up this paperback copy of Desert Solitaire
by Edward Abbey for reading material on my Recent Everglades Trip. It is an excellent book for both the stories and the perspective on our National Park System (of which the Everglades is a part). With all the tent time I read most of it by the end of the trip.
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.
