Where I've been and what I've learned along the way…
Welcome!
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…
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.
Bicentennial Thoughts on the Semiquincentennial
Books Commentary History Music
2026
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).
The March of Folly — Louis XIV vs Trump
Books Commentary History
2026
I've reworked these extended quotations from The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman (1986) for today's wannabe KingTrump. Tuchman's words speak to greater truths. My words are my own and speak for more immediate truths in desperate times.
Bridge Hammock (Review)
Camping Hammocks Reviews
2026
I recently bought a Ridgerunner Hammock from Warbonnet Outdoors. These are my first impressions. I'd been aware of this type of hammock for a few years and I was curious about them. Online descriptions and 2D photos don't really help much. This design makes much more sense when you actually lie in one.
Philadelphia Gallery
Art Galleries Hdr History Photography Travel
2010
I had the pleasure of visiting Philadelphia multiple times during my career in support of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). In 2006 I even lived there for five months during a sabbatical. The gallery below contains a number of architectural/urban environment studies, and my earliest attempts at High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. I took most of the sculpture and fine art photos at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and long walks along the Schuylkill River.
Road Trip West 10, Arches National Park
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.
Panoramic iPhone Photography
Galleries Panoramas Photography Travel
2014
About a year ago [2013] 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).
BWCA Canoe Trip 2008
Birds Bwca Camping Galleries Travel
2008
I learned to canoe in Northern Minnesota and the BWCA. I recently returned for a five day trip with an old friend. We went to the extreme northeast corner along the Canadian border. The lakes in this area are mostly long and narrow, running west to east between steep hills. The water clarity was remarkable. We saw bear, beaver, loon, eagle, osprey, and many smaller birds. Our route included the Royal River, which was beautiful and very different from the large lakes. Wild Rice was falling into our canoe as we passed. At one point we even had to pull over a Beaver Dam.
The Book of Birds (1849)
Birds Books History Reviews
George S. Appleton (1849)
Below is a limited sampling of historically significant pages that contain many surprising (and perhaps inaccurate) facts. Alas the Elegant Plates mentioned on the title page appear to be missing. Also missing is any mention of smaller birds such as wrens and warblers?!
Trump v Moby-Dick
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!
Duluth Panoramic Postcards (1914)
Bookhouse History Panoramas
L. P. Gallagher (1914)
I came across these rolled-up postcards (yes, they have a place for a stamp and address on the back!) in an old collection of regular postcards that had nothing to do with Duluth or Minnesota. After some research by friends and family we came up with approximate dates. Based on the early automobiles and horse-carts we dated the downtown view before 1920 (Full-Res Image).
Self-Organizing Hypertext Notebooks (Jrju)
Commentary Medicine Medinfo Projects
1997
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.
Everglades Trip 2019 (Solo)
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel
2019
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.
Finding the Andromeda Galaxy (aka M31)
Nature
2010
Here's a bit of astronomical lore I picked up a few years ago. I learned the sky at summer camp; I have looked through numerous telescopes over the years; I even took an astronomy class in college—but no one ever pointed out the Andromeda Galaxy (the most distant and largest object we can see with our naked eyes!). So I invented my own way to find it using the triangle in Cassiopeia as my pointer. This is a great target for binoculars!
Deception, Obfuscation & Misdirection
Commentary Video
2016
Most are familiar with the concept of FUD—short for Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. It summarizes a strategy often used in marketing and political propaganda. Its effects are pernicious, divisive and lead to exploitation. Examples abound. Fear is a strong motivator! To resist FUD one must understand how it is practiced using the principles of Deception, Obfuscation and Misdirection.
Treatise on Panopainting
Galleries History Panoramas Photography
2015
Panopainting (verb, noun) — Panoramic photographs captured in real-time with unpredictable, non-deterministic distortions due to movement of the camera and subject. The aesthetic value of these images depends on the camera's stitching algorithm and the physical brush stroke performed by the photographer. A degree of glitching is expected and often leads to cubist or impressionistic effects. Each exposure is unique due to inevitable variation in subject and technique.
Thoughts on the Approaching COVID19 Pandemic (2020)
Commentary History Medicine
2020
I've annotated this NY Times graphic, rounding the estimates for COVID19 (aka the 2019 novel coronavirus) to 2% mortality and 2 people infected for every one who has the disease. What this suggests is the infection rate will be similar to a bad cold season, but unlike the common cold, a significant number of people will die of the disease.
KIST to HTML Conversion Notes
Kist Projects
2026
Kist.pl renders documents as plain vanilla HTML by default. Generated pages will degrade gracefully to the degree possible. These pages contain a minimal set of CSS styles and javascript in the <head> element. (This helps make each kist-generated document self-contained.) Authors are free to override these styles with their own custom styles (using the -s flag).
Duluth Aerial Ferry Bridge (1905)
Books History Technology
Thomas F. McGilvray (1905)
The northern city of DuluthMinnesota is famous for its Lift Bridge connecting the Canal Park area with the long sandy beach of Minnesota Point. However, the current bridge was not the first. The original structure was a more exotic Ferry Bridge. There are only a few examples left in the world. I found these images in a digitised book from that time.
BWCA Canoe Trip 2022
Bwca Galleries Travel Video
2025
This was a return to a familiar area with lots of options. Gaskin and Winchell are particularly nice lakes accessible from the Gunflint Trail. This area has also been burned by forest fires more than once in recent times.
Road Trip West 1, Westward Bound
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.
There is No ‘I’ in AI
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.
Good Morning Doctor!
Books History Medicine
W.A. Rohlf (1938)
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.