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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A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
Panorama, Mangrove, Rabbit_Key, Everglades, Florida
Oct 08, 2026
Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90. Over two decades at MIT, Hamilton forged new paths in computer science and engineering. Her groundbreaking work included leading the team that programmed the first computers that took humans to the moon https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007 #RIP
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 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).
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!
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.
Birds Galleries Travel 2025
Out with friends to canoe down the Santa Fe River in north Florida. We saw many large turtles sunning themselves along the way plus a juvenile bald eagle! Stopped for lunch in the outflow from Blue Spring.
Music Reviews Video
Jean-Michel Jarre (1978)
IMO Équinoxe is one of the best original synthesized orchestral pieces out there. His preceding album Oxygène (produced and recorded at home!) is also good, similar in form—but Équinoxe remains my favorite.
Birds Galleries Science Travel 2024
Last week I traveled with my Sister Diana to Southern Illinois hoping to experience the Total Solar Eclipse. We were not disappointed! We had mostly blue skies that day with some high stratus clouds. Nothing can really prepare you for the moment of totality. We could suddenly see “stars” (actually the planets Venus and Jupiter) in the odd twilight. It got perceptively cooler and the wind changed direction.
Commentary Protest Video 2026
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.
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]
Apostle_Islands Galleries Travel 2025
This year we boated to Sand Island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. It is the western-most island where camping is allowed. It also has a historic lighthouse and was the site of a small fishing village. We took the campsite overlooking Justice Bay and a small set of sea caves.
Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Hdr Travel Video 2013
Just back from the Everglades with highlights too numerous to relate them all here. For a start I think we’ve hit on the perfect mode of transportation—pedal kayaks with sails! The only downside compared with a canoe is getting on/off the chickees. In every other respect they were superior to canoes and even other types of kayaks. We especially noticed how wind and waves were much less of the threat, and the wind could often be put to good use! Unlike the sail canoe rig I’ve used in the past, the kayaks are much safer if they capsize.
Books How_To Projects Reviews 2026
I've been a novice bread baker over the years, specifically breads leavened with yeast. I've made bagels and pizza crusts from scratch. I have a pizza stone in my oven and a wooden peel for that purpose. My last big endeavor was using my bread machine to make no knead bread (based on the famous NY Times recipe) with some success. All of this pales by comparison with the Five Minute
approach outlined in the book discussed here.
Projects 2023
No regrets! Mastodon has been so much better! I decided to try my hand at creating an automated robot
to post quotations alongside some of my photographs. And this is the result…
Books Reviews
Charles Pierce (2009)
This short confection of a book has a serious message… When cranks
become mainstream and large segments of the population take them seriously, our entire society is at risk! He's not against people with unconventional ideas, in fact he considers them to be an asset… a sort of check on the status quo. But an increasing number of cranks have won mainstream acceptance, and this is very alarming! Politics and religion are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.
Books
Douglas Adams (1998)
This was originally billed as a debate only because I was a bit anxious coming here. I didn't think I was going to have time to prepare anything and also, in a room full of such luminaries, I thought, What could I, as an amateur, possibly have to say?
So I thought I would settle for a debate. But after having been here for a couple of days, I realized you're just a bunch of guys! It's been rife with ideas, and I've had so many myself through talking with and listening to people, that I'd thought what I'd do was stand up and have an argument and debate with myself. I'll talk for a while and hope sufficiently to provoke and inflame opinion that there'll be an outburst of chair-throwing at the end.
Bookhouse Books History Reviews Technology 1916
I rescued this thick, encyclopedic volume from the trash. (Notice the page numbers are up to the 2800s!) These pages are from the chapter on Electric Vehicles. This illustration is so similar to a modern garage I was intrigued to consider what opportunities had been missed as we progressed to our petro-industry fueled present?
Apostle_Islands Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Photography Travel Video 2022
Over the past eight years I’ve walked along the Lakeshore Trail to admire the Cliffs and Sea Caves from above.
Commentary
Frank Wilhoit (2018)
There is a quote from a few years ago that adds political framing I find useful. I propose using it as a test or razor
(à la Occam) when evaluating political actions and legislation:
Everglades Galleries Travel 2026
Detailed maps of the thirty trips I've taken since the year 2000…
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.
