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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My father taught me how to work; he never taught me to like it.
Panorama, Morning, Mists, Fogbow, Lake_Santa_Fe, Florida
Jul 08, 2026
Any way you slice it.
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).
Commentary Protest 2026
Visiting the Iowa branch of my family for the fourth No Kings Protest against Trump and his Lickspittle Poltroons in the GOP. The Orange Man is more unpopular than ever. It is very important that we get out the Vote!
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.
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).
Commentary Science Technology 2026
Forty percent of America's corn crop — 36 million acres — goes to producing ethanol, a fuel that barely breaks even on energy and may be worse for the climate than gasoline. Billions in subsidies keep the machine running.
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.
Commentary Technology 2009
I like to listen to audiobooks on my iPod. I have a subscription to Audible.com and buy one or two books a month. In the beginning things were fine, but about two years ago iTunes stopped remembering my Audible password. I get around this by double-clicking on any Audible file and put in my password when it asks. This fixes the problem long enough to sync. But if I quit iTunes, I start over. If I forget, iTunes automatically deletes the files from my iPod. Needless to say this is a major pain in the butt!
History 1742
Farewell Vain World I have Enough of thee and now I'm Careless what thou Say'st of me. What Fault thou See'st in me Take Care to Shun. There's worke within thy Self That Should be Done. Thy Smiles I Court not, nor thy Frowns I fear. My Cares are past, my head lies quiet here.
Critters Galleries Medicine Nature Science 2026
Horseshoe Crabs (Limulus polyphemus) evolved some 450 million years ago.[1] They have no close relatives in the world today. They are true living fossils and generally fascinating. First, they are not crabs—but remotely related to spiders. They have nine eyes, two underneath near the legs. They have twelve legs, including specializations for pushing, feeding, and mating (males). They breathe and excrete using book gills just behind their legs. And here's the best part—they chew with their knees!
Camping Hammocks How_To 2026
It has taken me a couple of years to fully understand this knot. The Becket Hitch provides a strong but temporary way to tie a rope or webbing onto a fixed loop (such as a hammock). It is basically a slipped
version of the venerable Sheet Bend (shown below).
Apostle_Islands Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Photography Travel Video 2022
Over the past eight years I’ve walked along the Lakeshore Trail to admire the Cliffs and Sea Caves from above.
Birds Galleries Science Travel 2024
Last week I traveled with my Sister Diana to Southern Illinois hoping to experience the Total Solar Eclipse. We were not disappointed! We had mostly blue skies that day with some high stratus clouds. Nothing can really prepare you for the moment of totality. We could suddenly see “stars” (actually the planets Venus and Jupiter) in the odd twilight. It got perceptively cooler and the wind changed direction.
Birds Nature 2018
Yesterday we kayaked over to the Egret Rookery on Little Lake Santa Fe. There were at least ten great egrets sitting on nests and one nest had a raucous bunch of chicks (3 or 4). Then we noticed there was a much smaller chick on the edge and its siblings were attacking it! After a minute or two we watched the little guy fall sixty feet into the water…
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.
Audio Galleries Kist Projects Video 2026
KIST combines the best elements of various markup formats I've worked with over the past forty years. The original purpose of these tools was to generate valid HTML without special editors or technical knowledge. The plain text source files are nearly universal, portable, and reusable!
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. 🙂
Birds Flowers History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
I was called to California for a family wedding. The first part of my journey took me through several southern states, the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, & Arizona. I left about two in the afternoon so I arrived in Pitcher Plant territory after dark. Fortunately I knew where there was a patch just off the shoulder of a county road.
Reviews Technology 2007
While I was in Philadephia over the summer I was amazed by the number of folding bicycles. About half of all the bikes I saw were folders. Of course they make eminent sense for urban dewellers. I’ve always been interested in “packable” bicycles, and have a thirty year old three-speed folder gathering dust in my garage. The concept has come a long way since then! Over the holidays I bought two Dahon Speed D7 bikes for $299 each. They’re an exquisite bit of engineering for the price. The principal flaw with the older design, a telescoping seat post, has been replaced by a single long piece. The 20 inch wheels are a nice compromise, the components are good, and the road feel is solid. Folding the bike takes less than a minute, and two of them will fit in the trunk of a small car!
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…
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.
Art Galleries History Travel Turkey_2016 2016
In 2016 we had the privilege of touring the ruins at Ephesus and the associated museum a few miles away. The photo above is the symbol-rich Statue of Artemis, which at one time was the centerpiece of the temple to the goddess. That temple is now in ruins but it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World!
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.
