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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Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Panorama, Pictographs, Rock_Art, Defiance_House, Lake_Powell, Utah
Oct 29, 2026
Rest in peace Patrick Stewart. I will miss your voice.
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 Boats Flowers 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.
Commentary History 2026
The Election has finally come and gone. It was a whirlwind day for me working the polls. At the end of the day we helped nearly 400 voters cast their ballots. We were in the community hall of a small Baptist Church in a small rural community. The voters were diverse and I was struck by the number of disabled people who came in—even tho they could have voted early or by mail. There is something satisfying about voting on the actual election day. 🙂
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!
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:
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.
History 2025
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.
Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Hdr Travel 2011
This was my first year of experimentation with novel nautical modes of travel. I purchased a Sail canoe kit to fit my 17 foot fiberglass canoe. We got there a day early so we could do some testing before committing to an overnight trip. The wind was very accommodating and we left with it across our stern most of the way out to Picnic Key. It was a pure joy!
Galleries Travel 2004
A trip we took for my parents 50th wedding anniversary. We drove a rental car from Seattle to Montana and back, with stops at several National Parks: Olympic, North Cascades, & Glacier.
Music Reviews
Imogen Heap (2010)
I’ve been a fan of Imogen Heap for several years. Her latest album Ellipse
has one of my all time favorite songs—Earth
[listen]. It describes how a frustrated Mother Earth deals with her rambunctious offspring, homo sapiens. [lyrics]
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!
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2020
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.
Galleries Nature Photography Plants Travel 2020
The last time I went hunting for Pitcher Plants was 2017. This year I went about two weeks earlier and learned more about their distribution and lifecycles. I visited six sites in all, moving from Florida into Alabama. I saw mostly pitcher plant flowers as I moved west, apparently the flowers emerge days to weeks before the funnel-shaped leaves.
Audio Critters Nature 2016
One of the most relaxing sounds I’ve ever heard occurs late at night in the spring and summer, usually after the frogs settle down. After wondering about it for twenty years I finally know who’s singing… Broad-Winged Tree Crickets (Oecanthus latipennis)!
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.
Bookhouse Books History Reviews
G. A. Henty (1886)
The original Luddites were millworkers who rebelled against factory automation back in the 1800s. They had a lot to lose. In the present time, to call someone a Luddite
or Neo-Luddite
is to write them off as a kind of techno-hermit, using a non-smartphone and writing in a paper notebook. This is a mischaracterization. The full text is available at Project Gutenberg.
Nature Video 2025
I was out walking at dawn today and saw this slow motion display. I could not tell if it was a plane with lights shining forward or something else. It turns out to be rocket or satellite debris falling back to Earth (aka Spacejunk).
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.
Everglades Galleries Travel Video 2025
My Presentation to the Sante Fe Audubon Society on Jan 14 2025, including photos and personal stories from 28 wilderness trips over 25 years! I've canoed, kayaked, and sailed most of the navigable areas. In the talk I briefly cover the geology, hydrology, flora, fauna, and history of this unique national treasure.
Commentary Protest 2025
This was my fourth protest against Trump—and the second nationwide No Kings Day! This time we rallied in a shady city park and it was even bigger. I estimate at least one thousand participants.
Galleries History Travel 1976
In 1976 I was a sophomore at Carleton College in Northfield, MN. I had already done a few cross-country, multi-state bicycle trips in High School and continued planning short trips during my weeks off. The Bikecentennial was too good to pass up! In 2002 I scanned my 35mm slides and created this travelogue with representative quotes from my journal. What you see here is the current version updated in 2026, fifty years later!
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.
