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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The sinner who knows no guilt is truly disabled.
Birds, Florida, Sweetwater_Wetlands, Red_Winged_Blackbird
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)
Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Nature Travel 2026
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.
Commentary History 2026
![Preparing to Fly the Flag (July 4, 1976) [source: DC Public Library]](commentary/americas_250th/img/bicentennial-1976.jpg)
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).
Birds Nature 2026
Consider the Black-Bellied Whistling Duck! (One of the better bird names IMO.) Larger than average ducks, longer neck, pink bill & feet, used to be called tree ducks
. I see these very early in the morning and occasionally a pair on a nearby dock. Only learned recently that they are mostly active at night, which is why I wasn't aware they were around.
Books History Reviews
Barbara Tuchman (1984)
With America “at war” [2006] on several fronts, I was stimulated to recall this wonderful and important book by the eminent historian Barbara Tuchman. The first line says it all…
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 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. 🙂
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 Travel 2026
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 was V Bar V
in reference to the now defunct ranch on the property.]
Commentary Reviews Technology 2024
![Green River, UT [source:google]](commentary/tesla_review/green-river.jpg)
I recently did a trip with a friend in his new Tesla Model Y. (St. George, UT was the furthest west). I was amazed at how many Tesla-branded charging stations there were, and how integrated they are with the vehicle. You tell the dash navigation system where you want to go and it will route you based on your current charge, the distance, need for re-charge(s), and charging station locations.
History Medicine Science
Willett & Stampfer (2003)
For more than ten years the U.S. Department of Agriculture has promoted its food pyramid as a guide to proper nutrition. The only problem is that it isn't very good advice! The authors of this January 2003 article in Scientific American provide much better guidance. But first a little history…
Commentary 2026
The history of the food pyramid is complicated (see my analysis from 2004). There hasn't been an official one for maybe twenty years. I grew up with it and I think it is a sound idea, but very political with respect to what foods go where. It may be a coincidence, but anyone who is familiar with the old pyramid will recognize this one as an inverted echo. There are many other ways to lay out these ideas graphically, the choice of an inverted triangle is not subtle. I think it's propaganda for the following reasons:
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 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…
Galleries Photography Southwest_2024 Travel 2024
Fantastic Rock Formations in Utah
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.
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.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2001
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.
Camping Hammocks Reviews 2022
The Kammok Mantis is most notable for the superior materials used. My favorite is the night sky
bug net material, which nearly disappears on dark starry nights. The hammock fabric feels very light and sturdy, while having a slight texture that makes it less slippery. The fly is made from an extremely light waterproof fabric (silnylon). It all goes into a very small package weighing 2 lb 11.5 oz (per Kammok website).
Commentary Galleries History 2017
I’ve become a real fan of @MobyDickatSea, a bot-based feed of random quotes from the book. It’s amazing how well some of these fragments stand up as individual thoughts!
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!
Books Commentary Reviews Technology 2009
Welcome to my Powerpoint resource page. It will evolve over time as new information and links become available. I should begin by saying that I'm not a Sourpointer
. I use PowerPoint almost every week, but perhaps not in ways you'd expect. I view PowerPoint as just another tool—whose use can lead to good, bad, or even ugly results. I'm mostly impressed by how mediocre PowerPoint presentations can be. It creates a path of least resistance that often gets in the way of meaningful classroom interaction. PowerPoint was built for marketing and is great for making a pitch to a potential customer. But colleagues and students rarely want a marketing pitch. Instead they need audiovisuals that support and clarify what the speaker has to say.
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.
