Richard Rathe's Reflections

Where I've been and what I've learned along the way…

Welcome!

Remain calm, be kind, and carry on regardless!

id photo 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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Food for Thought

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln

Featured Photo

Photo by Richard Rathe Colorado, National, Monument, Panorama

Colorado, National, Monument, Panorama

Social Media (Mastodon)

Tjeerd Royaards (@royaards@newsie.social)

Mar 13, 2026

See original post on mastodon.

What we get upset about. Cartoon for Dutch newspaper Trouw: https://www.trouw.nl/cartoons/tjeerd-royaards~bcb45712/ #GasPrices #oil #OilPrices #Iran

Everglades Kayak Trip 2026 (Solo)

Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Nature Travel 2026

Sunset Behind Turtle Key

This was my 30th trip to the Everglades—different from all the others in several respects. First I was trying out new equipment (a sit-inside folding kayak). Second, I planned to just camp on a desert island, read, and take it easy. Third, I left from the Smallwood Store on Chokoloskee Island because the actual Ranger Station was closed for long-awaited hurricane repairs. I was also alone as there were no takers to join me this year.

Panoramic iPhone Photography

Galleries Panoramas Photography Travel 2008

Termessos Theater, Turkey

About a year ago I upgraded the iOS on my iPhone 4s. A few days later I discovered a new option in the Camera App—Panorama Mode! Over the next few months I slowly realized that this was a serious photographic tool. Now I take it along as an important part of my photographic gear. It appears to work like a slit camera, but instead of moving the film, you must move the camera. This has interesting ramifications if some or all of your subject is moving (see my Treatise on Panopainting).

Road Trip West 4, Crane Petroglyph Site

Birds Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026

The Eponymous Cranes

My target for this segment was inspired by a used book I came across while working at my local Friends of the Library—Sinagua Sunwatchers by Kenneth Zoll. At first I had a bit of trouble finding the site online because the name has been changed very recently to better reflect its Native American origins. [The old name V Bar V referenceed the now defunct ranch on the property.]

Bicentennial Thoughts on the Semiquincentennial

Commentary History 2026

Preparing to Fly the Flag (July 4, 1976) [source: DC Public Library]

I put out my American Flag today. I've decided to 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).

Road Trip West 6, The Longest Day

Birds Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026

Area 51 Sign

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…

Hammock Camping Guide

Camping Hammocks How_To Reviews 2025

Hammock Bliss

There are various configurations of camping hammocks that I'll outline below. Most are gathered with single tie-on points at each end. Some have integrated bug nets. Complete packages come with both nets & rainflies. After a brief survey of the different types, I go on to propose my criteria for the Ideal Hammock.

Turkey Panoramas (Gallery)

Galleries History Panoramas Travel Turkey_2016 2016

The Turquoise Coast

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!

Everglades Trip 2011 (Sail Canoe)

Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Hdr Travel 2011

Everglades

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 Trip 2014 (#2)

Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2014

Everglades

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.

Heron Killing Grebe

Birds Nature 2010

Heron Killing Grebe

I caught this drama outside my kitchen window. A Great Blue Heron was swinging the limp body of a Pied Billed Grebe. Apparently this grizzly action has been observed elsewhere. There is some debate weather the heron is defending its foraging area or sees the grebe as potential prey.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Books History
Lewis Carroll (1865)

Mad Tea Party Banner

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?

Florida Manatees

Birds Critters Galleries Nature Video 2024

Friendly Manatee

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.

Self-Organizing Hypertext Notebooks (Jrju)

Medicine Medinfo Projects 1997

Hypertext Notebook with Inverse References

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.

Wrens Singing a Duet

Birds Nature Science Video 2011

Plain-Tailed Wren (from article)

Plain-tailed wrens (Pheugopedius euophrys) cooperate to produce a duet song in which males and females rapidly alternate singing syllables. From Neural Mechanisms for the Coordination of Duet Singing in Wrens by Fortune, Rodríguez, et al in Science 4 Nov 2011.

The Maze 2019

Camping Canyonlands Galleries Hdr Panoramas Travel 2019

Glen, Richard, Jeff, Bren, Bill, Rick

It would be hard to top our 4WD/bike trip to the White Rim in Canyonlands last year, but entering the isolated subunit called The Maze was a strong contender! This immense National Park is divided into three major areas that are completely isolated from each other. The Maze lies mostly on the western side of the Green River with the southern-most Dollhouse area just below the confluence with the Colorado. As we did last year, we stopped at Fisher Towers and Moab along the way (see photo gallery below).

Headlamp Thoughts

Camping Commentary Reviews Technology 2025

BougeRV Headlamp

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)

Desert Solitaire (Review)

Books Reviews
Edward Abbey (1968)

Desert Solitaire Paperback

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.

Hand Counting by Twelves

History Technology 2023

Right Hand Counts with Thumb

Ever wonder why we sometimes count things by the dozen, or why there are 60 minutes in an hour? We may have the ancient Babylonians (or earlier societies) to thank. They came up with this ingenious way to keep track of large numbers using only their two hands. There are variations on this theme, but it becomes pretty obvious if you have a hand with four fingers, with three bones each, and a thumb.

Intro to Spherical (360°) Photography

Panoramas Photography Technology 2016

Basic Mirrorball

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.

Sweetwater Wetlands 2026

Birds Galleries Nature 2026

Sandhill Cranes

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.

Everglades Kayak Trip 2021 (Dec 2020)

Camping Everglades Travel Video 2021

Leaving Jewell Key

It started out so well… then the wind and waves shut us down—again. I haven't had a normal Everglades trip since 2017! I decided to try December to see if conditions would be better than the usual time in January. It did not make any difference in the end. On the plus side there were no bugs!

There is No ‘I’ in AI

Commentary Technology 2026

Tales from the Claude Crypt (from original post, uncredited)

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.

Good Morning Doctor!

Books History Medicine
W.A. Rohlf (1938)

W.A. Rohlf ~1910

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.

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