Jeffrey, El Babbitt

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep ...

The Truth About Halloween: Final Report, 2025

Well, here it is: A day after All Souls Day/All Saints Day 2025, and, with other priorities, I was unable to get far in answering any of the questions I posted in the last post. I will present what information and sources I have found and pick it up…

Eros and thanos in the walls of the finely ordered room of logos.

frank 16, "What is it you feel, I asked Kurt..." by Diane Seuss

One of @dseuss.bsky.social 's poems that have a soundtrack. My 1st time listening to Ravel's String Quartet. Realizing how at least frank 13-16 present a world behind, before, between our own, like the infinitely divisible numbers within any interval of ordinary numbers.

Diane Seuss sonnet "To return from Paradise..." from frank: sonnets, p 15

So much buried in this, just beginning to suss it out after a crowded page of notes, half of which probably go in the wrong direction, but my inkling, again spirit/flesh, Romantic/Decadent, truth/lies... what it is to be human ... @dseuss.bsky.social frank "To return from Paradise"

Evaluating Sources: CARS, CRAAP, ACT UP, & SIFT

Evaluating Sources using CARS: Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness, Support. From URL Before I look into any claims in my Truth About Halloween series, or in any other research project, I must have a strategy for evaluating my sources of…

The Truth About Halloween: Scary Stories

The following stories are accounts of Halloween propagated by conservative Christians as fact, culled from various places on the internet. I make no claims as to the veracity of any of this, but I will make every effort to prove them true. As any good…

I pray they get their loves ones back however Netanyahu is a fucking Butcher

The Ethics of Writing/Editing: Researching Lived Experience

I am performing a developmental edit on a story by a friend in which the protagonist is a drug addict. As an addict myself, in recovery, I know a little about the subject, but not about this particular drug. I also have a personal…

Is there a virtual human library with a recovering addict? Would I call the NA hotline and put out feelers? Is there an ex-junkie speaker's bureau?

Say I was writing a story about a heroin addict and wanted to know how it feels to overdose, without actually going through the experience. I personally know some recovering addicts. But what if I didn't?Whom could I talk to?

The Truth About Halloween!

Around 2011, or maybe late 2010, I downloaded this audio file of the interview of an evangelical preacher (as I recall, a D.Div. or Th.D. or some kind of Bible college doctor) on the "True History and Meaning of Halloween." My interest in it was ironic. I love Halloween,…

A Boone to Pick with Stefanie Stefanie Boone, defendant in a defamation suit after throwing around insults like “groomer” and “pedo,” wraps herself in the flag for the camera. I’m reading up on the…

Who has more pedophiles, librarians or pastors?

sisyphusinthestacks.wordpress.com/2025/09/27/a...

Search Engine Test 2.c & 2.d: Science.gov and Mojeek

This is the second and final post in the Search Engine Test 2.0, using the keywords spacetime expanding. I wanted to try a science-specific search site, and Science.gov, as a government site, seemed a good place to start. The results are a…

Search School: Jessamyn West on the Trail of Miss Crabb, part 1

I decided to reconstruct Jessamyn West's research trajectory in Miss Crabb: librarian and poet because I wanted to learn from the best. Although, as a librarian, I'm ashamed Jessamyn's claim that "many librarians could replicate this…

Search Engine Test 2.a & 2.b: Google vs. Bing

I've heard great things about Bing, but, as a Google guy, I've resisted. So, I gave it a shot with the keyword search spacetime expanding. Both sites search semantically, attempting to "make sense" of the search terms, and both use crawlers to discover…

About Mojeek

I ran a search for the keywords spacetime expanding on Mojeek, and it did not shower me with right-wing perspectives. (Now that I say that out loud, it sounds like a ridiculous expectation.) Something of a surprise, given the results of the Ben & Jerry's search yesterday. So I wanted…

Why I Ignore AI Search Results Stories like RFK’s embarrassingly inept use of AI in May of this year and a recent article about people asking librarians to find phantom books make it clear that something is dreadfully wron…

AI hallucinations and research on the H3LP desk. theh3lpdesk.wordpress.com/2025/09/21/w...

Time, Entropy, & Zeno’s Arrow Paradox My own current research project grows out of my close reading of A. S. King’s YA novel Switch (2021). The premise of the novel is that Earth is stuck in a fold in time and space. Time has bee…

Adventures in research! Read this theh3lpdesk.wordpress.com/2025/09/21/t... ... and then hit me up on Fiverr www.fiverr.com/s/99g8vjj

Hey folks. Starting up my Fiverr gigs again. If you need help researching, writing, editing, or proofreading, I'm your person. HMU! 💼📝👍💻 www.fiverr.com/s/dDqRpE2

frank 14 "Here on this edge I have had many diminutive visions." Diane Seuss

This one is dense. Call it a spiritual manifesto? So much more to unpack. "How to mother that peace, to wean/ it, is a terrible career." To separate, cast into the world, make one find its way back/forward to "love's other shore"...So much here, I've hardly begun...frank 14 @dseuss.bsky.social

Etymology of "agenda" in re: "opened milkweed with no agenda" (frank 13, line 9): "1650, originally theological, 'matters of practice,' as opposed to *credenda* 'things to be believed, matters of faith,' from Latin *agenda*, literally 'things to be done,' neuter plural of *agendus*, gerundive of *agere* 'to do' (from PIE root *ag-* 'to drive, draw out or forth, move').

Not sure how thia works into my interpretation of the piece. One can adhere to an agenda or hide behind it, perhaps it represents a removal from direct experience the way language separates us from direct experience. But language provides a key to recover (multiple meanings) from it.

frank 13: "Poetry, the only father, landscape, moon, food" by Diane Seuss with commentary

I think the greatest disservice that could be done to frank: sonnets by @dseuss.bsky.social is to focus on the autobiographical aspects. Too often, especially with women in poetry, criticism latches on to the facts of the poet's life as key, when all the real secrets are buried in the text.

Complete Concordance to frank: sonnets

Have to pause the concordance to frank for now, as I don't have a laptop. Just can't do it on my phone. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

frank 12 [From the bench I like to call my bench] by Diane Seuss

This is such a gorgeous poem. Love the last 2 1/2 lines, so Baudelairian, the urgency of Decadent Nature. Look at the volta, tree balanced perfectly "in the middle of everything"...bloody Christ consoled by (here they are again) barn swallows (not in text but can't unsee it). @dseuss.bsky.social

On the backs of minorities and the poor: Second thoughts about penal fines Michigan is reportedly the only state with a constitutional mandate directing penal fines–imposed on lawbreakers for various kinds of criminal and civil infractions–to the funding of li…

sisyphusinthestacks.wordpress.com/2025/08/24/o...

I might not be employable after this.

If I had 5 minutes to spend with my 12yo self, I would give him a mixtape with all the music that I was missing at the time that had been made up to that time.

The way words relate to each other interests me, the weight each carries and how each amplifies or mitigates the others in the same container. A container being a poem, a book of poetry, a body of work, the work of a cohort of poets, the work of all poets, a language. Humanity is a big ass container

Barn swallow lives among humans but transcends. Legend says the swallow consoled the crucified Christ by removing thorns and whistling "cheer up." This last part seems dubious, there must be another translation of Danish "svale" besides "swallow" (n) & "cheer up."