Richard Rathe's Reflections

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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. Some refer to this as a Digital Garden. I call it BLIS (BLog It Simple). Find me online…

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Food for Thought

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

Bertrand Russell

Featured Photo

Slitscan, Mono_Lake

Badlands National Park

Galleries Nature Photography Travel 2018

My brother-in-law Rick flew out from Colorado so we could go on a road trip together across South Dakota and beyond. We entered the Park via the Northeast Entrance (extreme right on map) and spent most of our day slowly moving west, stopping frequently—sometimes to take photos, sometimes due to bison migrating across the road. We ended up at the Sage Creek primitive camping area (upper left).

Westward Bound

Galleries History Nature Travel 2026

I was called to California for a family wedding. The first part of my journey took me through several southern states, the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, & Arizona. I left about two in the afternoon so I arrived in Pitcher Plant territory after dark. Fortunately I knew where there was a patch just off the shoulder of a county road.

No Kings 3 Anti-Trump Protest

Commentary 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.

Baking Good Bread On Demand

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.

Everglades Kayak Trip 2026 (Solo)

Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Nature Travel 2026

This was my 30th trip to the Everglades—different from all the others in several respects. First I was trying out new equipment (a sit-inside folding kayak). Second, I planned to just camp on a desert island, read, and take it easy. Third, I left from the Smallwood Store on Chokoloskee Island because the actual Ranger Station was closed for long-awaited hurricane repairs. I was also alone as there were no takers to join me this year.

RFK Jr's Inverted Food Pyramid as Propaganda

Commentary 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:

Everglades Kayak Trip 2022

Everglades Galleries Hammocks Travel Video 2022

The plan for this year was a clockwise tour around Whitewater Bay, with options to go out to the Gulf of Mexico and explore the Watson River. My cousin David Rathe and nephew Theron Pray decided to join me.

The Brimson Forest Fire

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.

Wet-Boot Adventure in Paria Canyon AZ

Camping Galleries Photography Southwest_2024 Travel 2024

The Paria River begins up by Bryce Canyon and flows south through Grand Staircase Escalante and the Vermilion Cliffs Arizona. Just before it empties into the Colorado River it flows thru a deep slot canyon and this is where we hiked.

Fort Zeller Pennsylvania

History 1745

Distant relatives of mine built this Fort in southern Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War. (Yes, a stone farmhouse was considered a fort back then!) The fort/house had two things going for it: fireproof walls and a fresh water spring in the basement.

Wrens Singing a Duet

Birds Nature Science Video 2011

Plain-tailed wrens (Pheugopedius euophrys) cooperate to produce a duet song in which males and females rapidly alternate singing syllables. From Neural Mechanisms for the Coordination of Duet Singing in Wrens by Fortune, Rodríguez, et al in Science 4 Nov 2011.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Books History
Lewis Carroll (1865)

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book, thought Alice without pictures or conversations?

Ephesus Museum Turkey (Gallery)

Galleries History Travel Turkey_2016 2016

In 2016 we had the privilege of touring the ruins at Ephesus and the associated museum a few miles away. The photo above is the symbol-rich Statue of Artemis, which at one time was the centerpiece of the temple to the goddess. That temple is now in ruins but it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World!

The Motor Mill

Galleries History Technology Video 1870

The Town of Motor with a large gristmill took shape in the 1870s along the Turkey River in Clayton County Iowa. Nothing remains of the town itself, but the mill and associated buildings survive. The Mill is situated at a narrow bend in the river. It was built of limestone quarried from the nearby cliff top, and oak from the surrounding forest.

Okefenokee Canoe Trip 2021

Camping Galleries Hammocks Okefenokee Travel Video 2021

I last traveled to the Okefenokee in 2004, and I had been hoping to return sooner. My return was delayed in part by a multi-year drought and Major Fires in 2011. This year the water was high thanks to record rainfall in the late summer.

Sand Island Camping Trip (Gallery)

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.

Wisdom in Space (Python/Mastodon Project)

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…

In Pursuit of Pitcher Plants 2017

Nature Photography Plants Travel 2017

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…

Winter Camping in Yellowstone Park

Camping Galleries Travel 1986

Richard, Al, & Christopher at the Ranger Station

We were three college buddies with lots of skiing and camping experience between us. So when I moved to Wyoming we decided to take a little winter trip inside Yellowstone National Park.

Florida Manatees

Birds Critters Galleries Nature Video 2024

A recent cold snap in the Tampa Bay area forced hundreds of manatees inland in search of warmer water. One ready source is the outflow from the TECO powerplant. To their credit, the company provides a dedicated viewing dock and surrounding wildlife preserve for birds and other critters.

Gulf Coast Carnivorous Plants

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).

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)

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.