Other Works

Web Design

Starting around 2000, while on faculty at Northern Arizona University, I had several websites on the University’s servers. At that time, I had set up a “science room” for the teaching elementary science methods. There was no such room prior to my arrival at NAU in 1999. I had set up a similar room while at Queen’s University, in Canada. As with NAU, there was no science room for teaching elementary science teaching methods. However, they did have room for teaching high school biology teaching methods and high school physics and chemistry teaching methods. I also had a similar situation at Acadia University, where I also set up an elementary science teaching methods room. In each case, I designed the rooms to be more “friendly” and less ominous than a physics or biology lab. I used wooden tables and shelves from Ikea. The shelves were lined with all sorts of materials and equipment for exploring and investigating a variety of topics relevant to science (and beyond). Although I had a freshwater aquarium at Queen’s University, I went further at NAU. I set up about 500 gallons worth of saltwater aquaria, along with a 50-gallon pond water aquarium. For a while we had desert tortoises and an 8-inch African millipede. One of the websites I set up at NAU was focused on elementary science education, which included a live streaming video on the saltwater aquaria. We had a video server in one of the backrooms off of the science room.

After several years, the NAU system was not particularly “friendly” to faculty web design, so I started setting up websites on Wikidot, which as the name suggests is a host of free and paid wiki sites. They are very generous in hosting free educational sites, so I developed websites, which my students could not only use as part of my courses, but they could post the products of our course projects. Some of these still exist, at least for the moment, which I will list here.

Current & Early Wikidot Websites that Still Exist (at least for now)

WordPress Websites

Since about 2011, I have been focusing most of my website efforts using web hosting companies. I’ve been through several. The first one was great when I was using HTML and CSS (don’t worry, if you don’t know what these are, it’s not important unless you’re a bit geeky). But, when I switched to WordPress where most of the coding is done for you, that hosting company was not very supportive. The next one was great for a while, but when I received a bill for $1662 for 3 more years of hosting (I had been paying about $300 for 3 years), I told them to stuff it. Now, I’m with a hosting company called Geek Storage, for about $52/year with more or less the same features. And, so far, they’ve been great. However, in the transition I dropped some of my websites. And even before this move, I had dropped a few websites that just weren’t working out.

So, my current sites are under development, including the one you’re looking at now. The other two are listed here:

Software

Poetry

Over the years, I’ve dabbled in poetry as the inspiration arises. I’m not particularly fond of rhyming, although is “just happens” occasionally. I think I’ve been influenced more by Beat poets than any other. Allen Ginsberg read some of mine — and boy did I feel totally exposed and vulnerable! — his response was to pay attention to the textures.

I first met Allen Ginsberg when I was taking graduate Zoology courses at the University of Rhode Island. One of my grad student friends from the English department came over to my apartment and asked me if I could cook dinner for Allen and a few other people after he finished a talk and reading in the English Department. I jumped at the opportunity. Then, when I was living in a meditation center in the Chelsea section of New York City, I would see Allen periodically when he would come by the Center. He never remembered me from one meeting to the next, including when I’d see him elsewhere around the country. I also briefly met a number of other poets, including Patti Smith (just before she took over the music scene big time), John Giornno (who get audiences bouncing in their seats), Spencer Holst (a fablist of great weirdness, who also did a workshop for my middle school students), Gregory Corso, Anne Waldman, and a few others. They all sparked my imagination and penetrated my heart and mind.

Some of My Poems

	Selling Your Soul to the Status Quo (2024)
	Gift From Nowhere... a study in emotional ecology (2024)
	Coward (2024)
	For My Birthday… (2022)
	Clones, Drones, and Monotones (2018) with an Addendum (2021)
	Experiences (2018)
	As… (2018)
	Connections (2000) updated (2013)
	Autobiography of a White Boy (2000)
	A Thousand Deaths (1980)
	Rain Drops (1980) – haiku
	Costumes (1980) – haiku
	Spring Peepers (1980) – haiku
	To My Students (somewhere between 1974 and 1980)
	Observations at a Laundromat (1974)

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The following “Snippet” was posted on Passionate Meanderings.
It pretty much captures the discomfort I have in sharing some of my writing, especially poetry.

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Writing — Learning & Leaping

For me, writing is and has been one of the most powerful ways to learn. Studying for tests was both painful and disappointing. I never felt I learned much of anything. What may have been recalled soon after, was quickly forgotten. Writing forced me to connect and organize my ideas, and then to search out the missing pieces. But, even more importantly, it forced, or maybe it should be, coerced me to think about the implications, to make informed inferences, to look at the bigger picture, the wholes and the holes.

Writing Poetry

Like writing in prose is a powerful way for me to learn. It has more freedom to juxtapose ideas, textures, feelings, humor….

But… sharing poetry has to be one of the most frightening actions I’ve ever taken or will ever take. It’s like one of those recurring nightmares where you’re running naked through the streets of some big city or other crowded location, but have no place to hide.

…. completely naked and totally vulnerable… a sideshow…

… of emotions and bad poetry?

…Gulp… and take the leap…

© 2024 Jeffrey W Bloom

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Biological Drawings

I think that I first learned how to do biological drawings as a means of sharpening observational skills in my Advanced Biology course in high school. The technique we learned was stippling, which involves drawing everything with dots using either a pencil or a drawing pen. The idea behind drawing, including stippling, is that in order to produce a reasonably accurate drawing of some object — a cell, a protist, a fish, a plant — you have to take the time to really “see” the particular object. Drawing forced you to take the time, see the pattern, see the relationships between parts, and to see the whole.

After high. school, we still had to draw and stipple in many of our biology courses. And, then my first professional, full-time job in a marine biology laboratory, we also had to create drawings of the specimens we collected. My particular area at the New York Ocean Science Laboratory was in ichthyoplankton, which is yet another big word to make scientists feel more elite and unapproachable, that means fish eggs and larvae. So, I have quite a few drawings of fish eggs and baby fish. In this particular job, the drawings really helped us to identify the specific species, which was often fairly challenging.

A Selection of Fish Eggs, Fry, & Larvae

Protists (single-celled organisms)

Macroscopic & Larger Animals

Embryology

The drawings below are a sample of those done in an Embryology course during my undergraduate work at Guilford College. The drawings are of Amphioxus (commonly known as Lancelet), which are Chordates (we are Chordates), but without a bony skeleton.

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