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…
Click or tap on any Article or Social Media Post to see more. You can also Search by key words.
No one wants advice, only corroboration.
HDR, Sierra, Mountains, California, Fused
Jul 12, 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." The chart I'm including here is really the take home. At this time, with current tech, 👉️ #Ethanol from #Corn is NOT economically viable. 👈️ So all that Federal money is just more special interests at the public teat. Just a way to let big businesses in non-oil producing states get in on the #FossilFuel gravy train. Ethanol from Sugarcane does make sense, which is why most of the flex-fuel innovations are found in Brazil. #Energy #Renewables #Government #Subsides
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 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!
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.
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.
Camping Galleries Hammocks Okefenokee Travel Video 2021
I last traveled to the Okefenokee in 2004, and I had been hoping to return sooner. My return was delayed in part by a multi-year drought and Major Fires in 2011. This year the water was high thanks to record rainfall in the late summer.
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 V Bar V
referenceed the now defunct ranch on the property.]
Galleries History Rock_Art Southwest_2024 Travel 2024
Photos of Petroglyphs (pecked
into the rock) and Pictographs (painted onto the rock) from my most recent trip to Arizona and Utah. In some cases the panels are Palimpsests (newer inscriptions covering older, faded work).
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2015
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.
Commentary 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…
History Technology 2010
Anthropologists Steven Churchill & Jill Rhodes recently wrote a fascinating article on the development of projectile weapons by early Homo sapiens and subsequent effects on large carnivores (extinction!) and human evolution.
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.
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).
Galleries Nature Photography Science 2025
I was visiting friends in northern Minnesota and had just finished a good meal. We were all fading fast so I said good night
and headed for my hammock. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I noticed that the sky looked kind of strange—like city glow from a nearby town. Then, on the edge of the glow, I saw the tell-tale green curtains of the Northern Lights!
Camping Everglades Travel Video 2021
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!
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel Video 2007
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.
Commentary Medicine Medinfo 2016
I have worked with home-grown and commercial Electronic Medical Records for over thirty years. The use of dot commands
(a period followed by a trigger phrase) is about as old as personal computing. (I first encountered dot commands in the WordStar word processing program during the 1980s!) These commands generally fall into three categories:
Commentary Galleries Iowa Travel 2025
It just happened that this year's RAGBRAI ended in Guttenberg, which is homebase for us. I joined my Sister and Niece on day three in Forest City. We camped under the town's windmill which chirped like a bird all night. The presence of so many windmills was an ominous sign. The next day developed into a slow trudge against 20 mph headwinds and 106° heat index. I got heat exhaustion and had to be picked up after about 40 miles.
Camping Reviews Tents 2025
This nominal Three Person Tent from Sierra Designs is an asymmetrical, rectangular, wedge design. The asymmetry shifts the maximum interior height towards the head end where it is most useful. The sides (and doors) are nearly vertical thanks to a short spreader
pole across the top. (Note that the tent reviewed here has been discontinued. The newer lite version costs twice as much 🙁 and has a bright orange fly.)
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.
