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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Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves.
Panorama, Goblin_Valley, Utah
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!
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. 🙂
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. Tuchman's words speak to greater truths. My words are my own and speak for more immediate truths in desperate times.
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.
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.
Galleries Hdr History Travel 2015
This fortification along the Florida/Georgia border dates from the era of the Second Seminole War (1847) and served the needs of both the Confederacy and the Union in the Civil War. It is a asymmetric pentagon built out of red bricks with gun emplacements on the top of four walls. There are several lovely internal architectural features such as arched ammunition magazines and spiral stairways, No shots were ever fired here!
Camping Reviews Tents 2024
This One Person Tent from River Country Products is a clever hybrid of single and double layer designs. The head of the tent has generous mesh panels for ventilation. The foot is completely enclosed in waterproofed nylon, allowing the rainfly to be much smaller (saving weight and volume). This is a unique design I have not seen elsewhere.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2006
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.
Birds Nature 2010
I caught this drama outside my kitchen window. A Great Blue Heron was swinging the limp body of a Pied Billed Grebe. Apparently this grizzly action has been observed elsewhere. There is some debate weather the heron is defending its foraging area or sees the grebe as potential prey.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2009
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.
Books History Reviews
Richard Preston (2002)
This is one of the scariest books I've read in a long time—and it’s not fiction! Published in 2002, it chronicles the strange tale of Smallpox, its world-wide eradication, and the lingering threat of its return. Millions are alive today thanks to the efforts of D. A. Henderson (who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002), the World Health Organization, and an army of public health workers. Smallpox is probably the worst disease the human race has ever known, and now it’s gone—well almost… The demon lives on in at least two freezers, one at the CDC in Atlanta and one in Russia. But there is no way to know how many other caches exist. In a cruel twist of fate, the fact that smallpox no longer exists in the wild
makes it well suited for bioterrorism. It is the biological equivalent of an atom bomb. This New Yorker article by Preston summarizes the major themes of the book.
Birds Flowers Galleries Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
While attending a family wedding I camped on my Brother's property in the Sierra Foothills. This turned out to be a hook-up place for Wild Turkeys in the area. About six Toms (males) appeared every day in pursuit of a few hens (who appeared to completely ignore their suitors 😉). Other birds included Hawks, Owls, and California Towhees. The area also supported a herd of deer and many wildflowers, including this Yellow Star Tulip (actually a type of lily).
History Technology 2023
Ever wonder why we sometimes count things by the dozen
, or why there are 60 minutes in an hour? We may have the ancient Babylonians (or earlier societies) to thank. They came up with this ingenious way to keep track of large numbers using only their two hands. There are variations on this theme, but it becomes pretty obvious if you have a hand with four fingers, with three bones each, and a thumb.
Reviews Technology 2007
While I was in Philadephia over the summer I was amazed by the number of folding bicycles. About half of all the bikes I saw were folders. Of course they make eminent sense for urban dewellers. I’ve always been interested in “packable” bicycles, and have a thirty year old three-speed folder gathering dust in my garage. The concept has come a long way since then! Over the holidays I bought two Dahon Speed D7 bikes for $299 each. They’re an exquisite bit of engineering for the price. The principal flaw with the older design, a telescoping seat post, has been replaced by a single long piece. The 20 inch wheels are a nice compromise, the components are good, and the road feel is solid. Folding the bike takes less than a minute, and two of them will fit in the trunk of a small car!
Projects Video 2022
Fire is a necessary feature of many ecosystems. It helps clear out old growth and often prevents dominance by one or more climax species. Some plants even specialize to exploit the ecological opportunities created by fire. This simulator attempts to capture some of these dynamics.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2004
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.
History Science 2010
I’m currently reading A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson. About a third of the way in he introduces Clair Cameron Patterson who could be the model of the modern citizen/scientist.
Birds Bwca Galleries Photography Travel 2024
This year we decided to base our trip out of Ely. We spent the night in the bunkhouse on Snowbank Lake. The next day we took the short drive to the official entry point #27 to head out into the wilderness.
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)
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.
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.
