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

Data is powerful because it's universal. The cost is context.
C. Thi Nguyen

Featured Photo

Photo by Richard Rathe Panorama, Sealions, Beach, Galapagos

Panorama, Sealions, Beach, Galapagos

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

Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest

California Galleries Plants Travel 2025

Old Guys on a Hillside

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!

Bridge Hammock (Review)

Camping Hammocks Reviews 2026

Basic Bridge Hammock Setup

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 lay in one.

Bicentennial Thoughts on the Semiquincentennial

Books Commentary History Music 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 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.]

Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks

Birds Nature 2026

Black-Bellied Whistling Duck

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.

Road Trip West 10, Arches National Park

Birds Flowers Galleries History Panoramas Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026

Brothers at the Partition Arch

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.

In Pursuit of Pitcher Plants 2017

Nature Photography Plants Travel 2017

Finding My Elusive Quarry

We decided to take a week-end trip to the Panhandle to see if we could find Pitcher Plants. We were not disappointed! Here I am standing along Highway 65 in the Apalachicola National Forest

BWCA Fire & Canoe Trip 2011

Birds Bwca Galleries History Travel Video 2011

Pagami Creek Fire (Looking North)

Just back from a challenging trip to the BWCA with my friend Ross. We had intended to start on the Sawbill Trail, but were told to evacuate just as we got to the entry point due to the rapidly expanding Pagami Creek Fire. (Satellite photos show this plume forming in less than two hours!)

The Profession of Medicine

History Medicine
James Guthrie (1888)

James Guthrie 1895

To Dr. Guthrie every word of that lecture was the living truth, a truth which found practical expression daily in his long professional career. And when, one tragic day in the dead of winter—when he was confined to his bed by illness—a patient needed him, he did not hesitate but arose and went to minister to him. Giving his last ounce of strength of this unselfish act, his own illness overcame him and he passed on in March of 1930.

Finding the Andromeda Galaxy (aka M31)

Nature 2010

The Andromeda Galaxy (source:Luc Viatour)

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!

Road Trip West 8, Leaving California

Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026

Nevada Highway as Dust Storm Begins

My original plan was to find a BLM campground in the Sierra Foothills and have an easy first night. This became untenable due to a Pacific storm blowing in that would deposit snow on Donner Pass. So the plan became a quick up and over the pass and on into northern Nevada. We drove until we could leave the I-70 and got a motel in Fallon.

Stockon Island Camping Trip

Apostle_Islands Birds Camping History Plants Travel 2021

A 360 Toast at Campsite #19

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.

The Rational History of Present Illness

Medicine Medinfo 2017

The History of Present Illness (HPI) has not changed appreciably since the introduction of the Problem-Oriented Medical Record in 1968. Until recently most medical documentation was created via dictation or handwritten notes. Narrative was the natural format for the HPI. This is no longer true in the era of online forms and computer-generated text.

The Brimson Forest Fire

History 2025

Cabin (Looking SW)

In the late 1970s two friends and I invested in a three room cabin on thirty acres embedded in Superior National Forest in Northern Minnesota. That cabin and other buildings are no more after the Camp House Road forest fire swept through.

Chaco Canyon 2023

Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Travel Video 2023

Chaco Canyon Entrance

After braving the nearly washed out road from the north I arrived around 9am. I had to walk my Prius diagonally over piles of gravel and exposed rock faces. This was my third attempt over twenty years to visit this important site. (The first two failed because the roads were completely washed out!)

No Kings 3 Anti-Trump Protest

Commentary Protest Video 2026

No Kings Crowd

Joined my community to protest the Trump administration. Larger crowd than No Kings 2 back in October. Amazing how much has changed since then: the Demolition of the East Wing of the Whitehouse, the invasion of Minneapolis/St. Paul, the public execution of Renee Good & Alex Pretti, the Kidnapping of the President of Venezuela, the Epstein cover-up, starting an Illegal, Senseless War with Iran. Airlines are shutting down because TSA workers have been unpaid for a month. Gas is headed for $5 a gallon. And those are just some of the highlights.

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.

RFK Jr's Inverted Food Pyramid as Propaganda

Commentary 2026

New Dietary Guidelines 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:

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 2008 (#1)

Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2008

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.

RFK Jr. & the Pasteurisation Controversy

Commentary History Medicine
Lawrence P. Garrod (1944)

Coutry Life Cover (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.

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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