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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Nature is neutral.
Panorama, Panopainting, Driftwood, Florida
Jul 08, 2026
Any way you slice it.
California Galleries Plants Travel 2025
We recently visited the Bristlecone Pines within Inyo National Forest in the White Mountains of Eastern California. While there we took a five hour hike on the Methuselah Trail amongst some of the oldest trees in the world!
Boats Nature Photography 2026
We have a small herd of White-Tailed Deer in our neighborhood. They usually give birth to the new fawns in the spring. That's why I was surprised to encounter this newcomer in October. We started having a piebald individual every year. This is the fourth or fifth I've counted. Less obvious color pattern than the others. None have survived more than a year to my knowledge. 🙁
Bookhouse Books Camping History
Ed Dodd (1971)
This little book brings back memories of reading the Sunday newspaper when I was a teen. There would always be a non-humorous cartoon by and about the fictional Mark Trail
promoting life outdoors. These cartoons often depicted humans and wild animals in close proximity. This book of camp cooking tips borders on the whimsical.
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.
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).
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).
Birds Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
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…
Galleries Nature Photography Plants Travel 2025
Spring is the time to hunt for carnivorous plants along the Gulf Coast of Florida and Alabama. The image below from 2020 shows three different, unrelated species that have all evolved the ability to trap and consume insects (Pitcher Plants, Butterworts, and Sundews).
Commentary 2011
While walking in my old Moline Illinois neighborhood, I came across this chalk slogan… When I grow up I want to be a Vet, Artist, or a WWE Star.
I think we have a sidewalk philosopher. Kids these days! (April 2011)
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2016
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.
Apostle_Islands Birds Camping History Plants Travel 2021
We made an amphibious landing to offload our gear and then moored the boat about a mile away at the pier. I pitched my hammock tent right on the beach between mature white and red pines. The level of Lake Superior had recently gone down so there was a more normal amount of beach exposed.
Books Reviews
Edward Abbey (1968)
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.
Birds Flowers Galleries Iowa Travel 2025
Pikes Peak is a state park in Clayton County, Iowa, United States, featuring a 500-foot (150 m) bluff overlooking the Upper Mississippi River opposite the confluence of the Wisconsin River… The Iowa incarnation of Pikes Peak, a particularly high point overlooking the gorge of the Upper Mississippi, and like Pikes Peak in Colorado, is named for Zebulon Pike. Pike visited the area in 1805 during his first expedition.
[wikipedia]
Commentary Medicine Medinfo 2006
…the biggest complaint — with potentially dangerous implications — involved the automatic alerts that flashed on the screen every time a doctor made an out-of-the-ordinary request. Designed to catch errors before they occur, the alerts became an unending series of questions, reminders and requests on fairly basic decisions.
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…
Camping How_To Projects 2023
This is an idea I’ve been incubating for some time as a non-destructive “place anywhere” alternative to nails in trees or breaking living branches to hang things on. The knots required are very simple. Shown here is my first successful field test! It is tied using a short stick or similar object found locally.
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.
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.]
Birds Nature 2012
Sometimes you see something in nature that has a direct analog in the human world. I caught sight of this family of Bald Eagles on the Mississippi River—then I noticed a familiar pattern…
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2008
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.
Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
I originally ventured into Arizona to visit the Crane Petroglyphs Site so I took in other sights as they appeared. The first of these was Montezuma Castle—a Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwelling site.
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.
