March to Washington

MarchToWashington.com

The March to Washington  is an historical web site designed as a "survey site" for those interested in this specific form of protest, and who may be seeking some sources of additional information.  Its design acknowledges that most web users, even serious scholars, have decidedly different attention spans and patience for receiving information from the web, than they do from print media. Therefore, the site seeks to provide a tolerable amount of information that is both impressionistic, yet accurate. The goal is to hold both those casually interested, as well as those who may seek some very specific insight into one aspect of a march. It is not intended to be an archival site because it lacks the thoroughness that should be associated with such sites. Rather, the site is meant to  stimulate the interest of history students at all levels, as well as provide a grounding for the general user. Its links to Wikipedia, Google Books and Google Maps is indicative of its intention to provide basic information in a readily usable form.

The site is indebted to Lucy G. Barber whose Marching to Washington (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002) volume is an excellent compendium as well as analysis of the major marches to Washington of the last century. The open source design for the site is also credited and appreciated. This web site was constructed as part of a course taught at the George Mason University in the Spring of 2008. The University's Center for the History in New Media is the premier center nationwide for the digitization of historical information.

The site is only a beginning and its construction was deliberately economical, minimalist and straightforward. The author would consider the project a success if someone with superior technical web skills would use this as a template and build a truly integrated web site on the same subject, drawing on the plethora of materials that could be successfully organized and stored in an archival site on the same subject.   

Web Redux

Having experimented ad nauseam with alternative designs, the site needed to relax and gain consistency and clarity. Recall the western font @ $145 for the cache only to find photo shop was required. And, alas, the text proved unreadable when  applied to the Coxey site. Or recall the tie died backdrop that obscured the text of the Vietnam page(though Jeff's contribution was huge and is now incorporated in the way i think he intended). Or,recall the atrocious olive green wall paper applied to the Bonus page. So, in its next to final iteration, Marchtowashington.com has returned to a minimalist design that incorporates the American flag as a subtle wall paper for each page with the exception of Vietnam (fitting since the flag was much in disrepute during the Vietnam protest; more often burned than waved), and a consistent font and background color.

Each of the March pages now has a photo (in one instance we are on version 14) designed to 'periodize' and actually transport the viewer into the context of the era. The labels. now far more subtle and visible, lend to the 'periodization;' but the periodization is entirely captured in the header. The style of the content remains consistent so the site has a greater unity.

The first four pages convey marches with flags or placards being proudly carried.  The last two were more gatherings on the mall; thus a different choice of photos. There is thus an energy and purposefulness to the picture chosen for the Coxey  march; the suffragettes  suggests a pride  and dignity ; the bonus army picture a  sense of the beleaguered unemployed seeking their pay; and in the Negoro March there is a sense of quiet dignity which produced a stunning result for the time. The Civil Rights March and Vietnam Protest are conveyed differently  because they were more  gatherings than marches. The picture chosen for the Civil Rights March  exudes the peaceful , non violent spirit that  permeated the day.  By contrast, the Vietnam photo suggests the rage of the moment.   But though each page is meant to suggest a different aura, they are unified by a consistency in the CSS by similar CRAP and fonts.

The archives similarly seeks to achieve consistency though the Map page is obviously migrated from its earlier popular acclaim in Clio 1.  The Library and Leaders pages are enhanced by their links to Google Books and Wikipedia; thus making them in some sense archival.The press page which links to PDF's gleaned from Proteus remains deficient.  And, it should be a subject for evaluation as to whether the term archive is an appropriate header. In fact, my sense is that archival sites should be complete in their storage of electronic media relevant to the subject. This is far from the case here. But what is available, combined with the March pages, allows the viewer some ability to move across a range of media and discern what may be available. It is a site which hopefully stimulates more, not less interest in the subject. But in strict terms of what an archival page should present (and I believe there should be standards)this does not meet my measure.

In both March and Archives pages the navigation  wrapper works because the fonts are quiet (unlike some earlier versions which were also impeded by insufficient padding). Still the press page suffers from lack of explanatory material and this will be remedied in the final (plus the infernal inability to get the link right on th every first PDF).

I very much welcome comments and criticisms Thursday night. I really appreciate the way the class has allowed all of us at very much different levels of ability to play on our strengths and draw from others to produce a respectable end product. My particular thanks to work partners Sherpa John (who got me through anxious early period)  and Kira who has great insight into what ails the site.

GEE! MY SITE MISSES THE ESSENCE OF THE WEB

Of course I should have known better. Consistent through Manovich, Krug and Tufte is the emphasis on the web as a visual medium. Manovich argues the concept of variable representation as opposed to the fixed nature of earlier media. Thus we typically surf on a web site in often unpredictable and unstructured ways. "A number of different interfaces can be created from the same data." Thus is it any wonder that we can get lost in the mist of archival sites and take our own curious routes to data that others might alternatively pass over or dwell upon.

The autonomy of the user in this media is far greater than the reader of a book or article who starts and finishes in orderly sequence. Similarly there is Krug who understands the media to a fault and parodies the dumbed down nature of the web; a medium at  which we glance, rather than pore.  Convey the big picture says Krug , keep the noise down, and tell viewers where they are for fear they may be lost. Tufte of course is not limited in his commentary to the web, but his design of the museum web site acknowledges how the randomness of web searching can nonetheless be given a sense of order and yet allow each user the autonomy of creative searching. Imagine a menu with 45 choices!

Which brings us to James Gee who in twelve idea rich pages has convinced me I have completely missed the essence of this medium in the design of my web site. Yes, I might make Carrie Bickner happy with my focused and economical approach to web design (though she would scold me for my transgressions of the English language in my still "much in need of editing copy"). But  Gee's insight into the diversity of cognitive patterns between individuals and how  game sites in particular take advantage of the web's fractured essence, by allowing each of us to each get to an objective in our own way. We begin to feel an ownership by engaging in the riddles of the search.

My site www.marchtowashington.com  (I might add still under serious construction as I learn a few new tricks but then find myself unable to solve even the most basic of issues: note the line between the menu and content on Coxey page; or the CRAP issues with each page with perhaps the exception of Suffrage) suffers from what Gee would suggest is oriented around the "content fetish." In other words, the site is static and conveys a sort of finiteness to the information and presentation. It misses the essence of what the web can do to expand our horizons.

Imagine if I were more facile in web design. Each march could borrow many of the features of good game sites, such as The Rise of Nations, where the navigation and problem solving are inseparable, and the problems to be solved are well ordered, but provide a latitude of micro decisions that not only make the site fun but instructive.

For each March I describe in narrative form on my web site there are multiple issues that lend themselves to contextualization and challenge. For example, each marches organizers had to face issues of organization, theme,  logistics, and  legacy.  These challenges were each subject to multiple variables and potential responses. Should the suffragettes have decided to confront their male taunters? Should Coxey have arranged to have the Senators who supported his petition escort them up the Capitol steps? Should The Negro March gone on despite the fulfilling of part of the organizer's demands?

And what was going on in the period that gave each of these marches a distinctive imprint? Clearly, a site that had far more moving parts and web facility than the one I have designed could engage viewers in imaginative ways that provide the comfort as Gee notes of the sandbox but allow the user to  learn safely at their own pace.  My  emphasis on the visual  is one that periodises  each march  much as  a  book  might do  chapter by chapter.  That in itself has been far more challenging than  I could  ever have imagined. But it scarcely  takes advantage of what the web is really  geared to do.   

FALSE-FRACTURED-FOUND

Fortunately I was woefully behind in my reading (the turtle thing) and had not read What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Gee when Professor Petrik asked "how do we construct history?" It is a question that sticks, unlike many web sites. What is our objective with history in new media? Now, Gee provides me with a different framework to address the issue. So let me revise and extend my remarks from our discussion Thursday night.

Gee's Principle 20: "Meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, texts, interactions, abstract designs, sound,etc.)" Behold a generation of web users, reared on video games, who come to the encounter with history on the web with just this multidimensional perspective. So what does this mean for those of us on the other side of this generational divide who want there to be control, clarity, and a cannon. We are still on the other side of this ill understood frontier demanding there be a librarian to guide us to the right bookshelf, a book that is readable and ordered, and the comfort that there are standards governing what we see (or hear) emanating from the ether.  For those of us who found the archival material in The Lost Museum far more interesting to peruse than navigating the "silly" game, we only seek some comfort that standards govern our engagement.

Turn we must to http ://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/refdesk/  for reassurance, the Center for History in New Media's valiant effort to define standards for history web sites. And yet the web's very essence overwhelms "rules." The very notion that an entire web site devoted to "archiving" false documents could be constructed and left for the  uninitiated is  what  makes those of us  who were not reared on  video  games  straddle the internet divide and long for Kate Terrabian (University of Chicago).Imagine this. A few years ago, when I was still in my Winston Churchill phase,  I researched at the Harvey Mudd Library at Princeton University, and discovered  the actual room service bills for Churchill during his circa 1932 US speaking tour. He ran up a rather significant Scotch and cigar bill even without any adulteration. But just imagine what fun one could have in Photo Shop doctoring this PDF? [By the way I agree with those in the class who argued that such a site devoted to false historical documents would be profoundly useful, but only if there was clear guidance as to how they were falsified and how they could be discovered to be false; now that is a web site for those of us on all sides of the generational digital divide].    

Steve Krug's book remains for me the one that is best adjusted to the reality of what the web has wrought. Fractured knowledge, fractured attention spans, and a fractured civil society. The web forces us to "glance' says Krug, and what is worse "there is no typical, average, normative, web viewer (as he notes "The Farmer and the Cowman should be firends;" no more complicated than finding the right balance). 

So we have this medium reshaping us in ways as profound as what the industrial revolution did in the nineteenth century, and we seem at once as helpless to control it as the Welsh sheep farmer or the Lancashire spinner. It is constructing its own history and we are asking how it can help us construct the past in meaningful ways to viewers who enter its dimensions with dissimilar aptitudes and appetites.

And yet Gee provides a hint with the Transfer Principle #20: Learners are given ample opportunity to practice and support for, transferring what they have learned earlier to later problems, including problems that require adapting and transforming that earlier learning. Return to the web archivist. I had established a false dichotomy between what seemed to me to be historical web sites aimed at the classroom versus those aimed at researchers. But perhaps the Video Game principles apply to both. After all, what is most frustrating about archival web sites, even those that follow Krug's rules of simplifying and "dumbing down" is that they allow the user full latitude and that typically means glancing from one treasure trove to the next and losing any sense of what is really most critical and most relevant. While of course each researcher utilizing an archival site comes with her own predilections, there still is need for the game master to guide the errant surfer. We need the equivalent of the archival librarian to help us navigate through these treasure troves of data; to tell us when we are straying toward the dungeons or the dragons.

   

24 DAYS OF TO DO'S

There was a moment this long  weekend when I thought of calling Heritage Web Solutions (see links in Design assignment) and offering them the one hundred and ninety nine dollars to repair my three days of design experiments. "Here! You take these and have at it,"  I wanted to say to any 1-800 operator who would answer. But perfecting these designs is too much a challenge to pass up, and I have some ideas as to what needs to be done. The issue is can I execute given my skill level in the time remaining.

And so as the turtle stumbles forward and the finish line looms (and I view the rabbits racing ahead and admire their handiwork),  I decided to plot my course to the finish line. Looking at my attempts at designing six successive pages that each have a period motif, it is clear there are a myriad of repairs, additions, and restarts that I need to accomplish in the span of the next 24 days. And I certainly welcome any critiques more salient than those I have self-inflicted in the "self-help" outline below (in no particular order of priority):

1. Should I carry the home page banner picture across all six "March" pages. Envision a sort of black and white faded version of what now appears on the March Leaders page at the top and bottom of each page? Too much? Would it interfere?  Maybe we should try one and see if it hints at the unity I desire.

2. The Home Page title needs to be brought into the picture and I am debating whether to eliminate the space above (or as in #1 above devote it to a consistent header with or without a quote (or just eliminate altogether). There is a side of me that likes the feint quotes. But we need to work through some larger issues first.

3. There are CRAP issues all over the place and they are exacerbated on IE 6 (of course). The March Leaders page is one egregious example; but there are others. My favorite is what happens to the text on the Vietnam March page (about which much more will be said later) on IE 6. You have to scroll way down the page to see the beginning. VALIDATE VALIDATE VALIDATE: Have not validated anything so I need to save a couple days just for that horrid exercise and pray that I can make the necessary corrections.

4.  Now  as for the primitive efforts at  design (particularly as I peruse the Zen Garden or the retro theater and realize what is possible):

Coxey: The burnished image worked out pretty well and in my judgment it was worth it to return to those expensive fonts and use the photo shop to capture them. This is a step forward. But the font carried into the text doesn't work (not easily readable). Moreover there needs to be a background color that lends a period design. So page in progress and I welcome comments.

Suffrage: Really worked on this one and colorized it to match the purple and gold colors that were emblematic of the 1913 suffrage March. However,  the colors might be a bit tawny (?) and i need to extend the background color to cover the links.  And what about the fonts? This is a good start but can use some smoothing.

And here is a general question: should I insert some posters or other emblematic art into the text to further periodize it' or will this simply create more clutter. Perhaps this can be done in the links section of each page. For example here is a poster from the Vietnam March that could be subtly inserted. The issue is where?

Bonus: Have not done a thing with this page yet,  but it does remind me of the bare simplicity and minimalist nature of the original site design which I am partial to but only because perhaps too may brain cells have died or been over stimulated! But it is functional and I think Tufte  would like it.

Negro: This continues to be my magic page. But I need to change the headline of the photo shopped text image to match the vignetted image and bring the color across the entire page. Plus the color gray is not quite matched between picture and text so I need to attend to  that. And again  there is white space between picture and text so I need to work this out .

Civil Rights: Bet you didn't know that A. Philip Randolph approach MLK in 1863?  This is symptomatic of many grammatical and textual errors that need to be corrected sooner than later.  Free at Last with exclamation and then no exclamation. Boy, 35 years in corporate  America and this is my attention to detail! But this page has potential. The Civil Rights title needs to be centered in the reflecting pond. And what should the text look like that would distinguish it from the next site ten years later?

Vietnam: Here my primitivism is on full display. I had the notion to do a "flowers" backdrop (we were the children with flowers in our hair); I think this should become a feint backdrop to the text (wallpaper!); so I will work on that in the photo shop. Again, as for fonts this plagues me with the last two sites and I need to think long and hard about design possibilities.

5. The March Leaders Page is new and I sort of like the way it links to Wikipedia in the true spirit of open source media. And I am developing a press page which is hidden from view (which frankly should be the case for tall the above). 

6. Although, according to Jakob Nielsen, my links might actually make the cut. They are clear and accessible and not scrunched together. I think I pass the Nielsen test for links though, as indicated, they sort of stand out on these early attempts at stylized design.

So folks,  I lay it all out here in its ugly developmental stage to invite your very good ideas and insights. Have at it. The turtle needs some miracles to happen in the next 24 days. I don't see any of you rabbits napping!   

Designing for Hawking

This is a moment to draw inspiration from Stephen Hawking who made celestial physics so extraordinarily interesting. For those of us challenged by anything quantifiable and abstract, Hawking is extraordinarily adept at making the indecipherable understandable. And he used computers at will, but not without extraordinary will power. So the readings, particularly the well described issues for the individuals in Mark Pilgrim's web essay, illuminate how important it is for us to recognize that what we design may well miss a very significant and valued group of users.

What is a bit unnerving, however, for those of us still struggling with the basics, let alone intricacies of web design, is to be confronted with a new set of challenges. But how can we whine when we conjure the image of a thousand Hawkings who are our heroes and deserve our very best effort to accomodate. Otherwise, as Pilgrim points out, Jackie might hear as she listens to her Jaws (the most popular screenreader worldwide which reads at 300 words a minute and also outputs refreshable braille displays) the following extremely annoying verbiage creeping into the narration:

"graphic shim dot gif shim dot gif graphic shim dot gif graphic shim dot gif welcome to my website graphic ciblue header two dot gif graphic ciblue curve two dot gif"

Could not have said it better myself! We owe our friends much better than this. But how?

If Pilgrim's very specific and targeted solutions seem at times bit overwhelming, there is this very comforting paragraph by Paul Bohman in describing a technique for effectively using the CSS style sheet to overcome some of the issues that would result in:

Sighted users will not see the hidden content at all. It will be out of their viewing range, hidden above the top of the browser window. Screen reader users will have access to the content as if it were not hidden at all. Screen readers read the content normally, completely ignoring the styles used in this technique.

My strategy will be to return to these essays, particularly Bohman's, once the site is well under design (added a new Leaders page this week using interface with Wikipedia raising some additionally interesting issues about this very public space) and to see what modest adjustments I might make to make this site more accessible. If Hawking can do what he did with Gehrig's disease, then certainly even the computer challenged tortoise should try and sprint toward this goal line.

Correcting Images

I really appreciated the comments last night; more importantly the work done by the class on this assignment was very inspiring. So back to the photo shop tonight and maybe I have improved a bit based on some very good comments on deficiencies in my imaging. First I started over on A. Philip Randolph and tried to do more with the spot imaging tool than the sponge. My real goal all along has been to remove the unseemly yet subtle line down the right side of his face. But the comments around how he might wish to appear were spot on (no pun intended) and so I tried several times to accomplish. Ultimately with another dozen or so attempts I might get to the perfect; but I have much additional work to do on this project so this version (about #8 tonight) will have to suffice for the moment.
Then I turned to de-yellowing my newspaper background. This is a little closer to an old paper look.

MOVING FORWARD

                               
Since Photo Shop is clearly an expertise (or a career), being limited to five distinct exercises was helpful. In the process I have convinced myself that there must be at least a dozen different ways to use this ingenious program to accomplish the same end. If my experience was like yours, it was one of alternating between the tutorials, guidebooks and exercises on the syllabus; but in the end essentially just allot of idle dabbling, and trial and error. So, Professor Petrik's stories about her own early travails with the program gave me some courage to just jump in the pool and try and learn to swim.

Moving forward there are several opportunities my site affords to keep practicing different approaches. For example, I am trying to crop the flags in the picture on the Home Page and colorize them. Hopefully you will see this by next week. So far the stars are giving me fits. I am also repeating the matting exercise for my press page. In addition, did not have time to take some of the worn look techniques in that excellent tutorial on the syllabus, and apply to my people page. 

So, I have some of my own assignments as I begin to develop text and add formats to my web site. Its time to get serious about developing some copy for the various components of the site, cleaning up the pages and beginning to develop additional links. Thus have set up a work plan recognizing that May 7 is much closer than we think. Meanwhile, I am hoping the Design assignment may allow me to recast how my site looks, although frankly the minimalist-clean approach does not bother me as much as the inconsistencies between the components.

Backing Up

The tortoise plodded inexorably forward, at least in Aesop's 6th century version of the fable. But at his speed he must have dwelt upon the scenery at least for a moment. So this week, before moving onto Photo Shop, I went back to Dream Weaver and began trying to steadily build toward a web site (the final goal). Having discovered a short cut  to creating links, I have "linked up" various pages, even though much work is left to be done on layout and text. I have gone link mad!

What a month ago I would have found absolutely terrifying and in the realm of terra incognita, now is becoming dare I say,  routine (careful: the tortoise never became this confident); though I still often botch the code. And my pages are all desperately out of synch and have some real mechanical issues. For example,  tonight I find the one page I have provided text for and a "sort of" vignetted picture (i.e., The Negro March 1941) does not "pop up" when you "click on." After staring at the code for a half an hour it becomes apparent. I have capitalized Negro March in 'href"  but not in header. And while I am inserting a picture here and some text there, they are often flawed. Somehow, if I am going to keep this template for my web site I have to learn how to resize differently in Photo Shop. The goal is to create panoramas (because I really like the photos I have chosen) without so distorting the images (the flathead syndrome).

So what I am trying to do is plot my course knowing my speed lags others who I admire in this class for their web acumen. Yet the shape of the web site is becoming more apparent (keep it simple is my motto) and the tasks to complete it more defined. What I would like to devote the last two weeks of the course to is cleaning up and repairing: adjusting fonts, repairing images, cleaning up text (oh yeah and one day I better validate!) All of this I am coming to learn will take far more time than one imagines. So, this is why the tortoise has paused to plot the course and even dwell a bit in the land of Dream Weavers.

So too as I took my maiden voyage into the world of  Photo Shop did I eventually have to pause. After one fully wasted day I totally agree with the statement in one of the guidebooks that one could spend 600 hours fiddling and not get very far. In fact, what caused me most difficulty was the concept of layers which I need to come back to with fresh eyes and with a new set of tutorials that seem to help: http://www.vtc.com/products/Adobe-Photoshop-6-tutorials.htm

After some very crude efforts at vignetting and colorizing, I decided to again go back to Dream Weaver and code the image page. I borrowed (truth in advertising) a page that was used in a prior class and adjusted for the assignment. Thus if you go to my image page off my web site you can see the challenges I have laid out for myself over the next two weeks: 1.) a subtle restoration is required of A. Philip Randolph's photo; 2.) the cropping of the women's march photo (this should be relatively straightforward-cropping, which  is one exercise I seem to get); 3.) vignetting needs to be redone; but we are making some progress; 4.) likewise ---having again repaired to Border's for "Dummies" guides, I confess to using Tip 44 in the Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks to Adobe Photo Shop CS3 to colorize Coxey's car; but it may need an alternative approach; and 5.) a matted  engraving  yet to be determined; but my initial thought (per the web site) is to begin building my press portal  by matting a press headline.

So the tortoise has plotted the course forward both in micro (Imaging assignment) and macro (the larger web site) and knows what's in store the next eight weeks... and wishes for the hare's speed.

REDACTING, RECREATING and REINHARDT

REDACTING: Before turning to the readings (in particular Tufte's volume is worth a semester of reflection in and of itself; what a miraculous volume it is!)my first priority was to revisit both my CSS and Typography assignments, and begin to make the many adjustments needed. This was all the more frustrating in the context of Tufte, which excited the mind with all sorts of possibilities of what could be. But, mindful that Sherpa John was in Las Vegas, I reconciled myself to plodding (as turtles are want to do-see previous blog) alone, and very slowly.

First I decided to try and reshape the Andreas template (my style sheet) into  two columns. Reviewing some of the web sites from last Spring it seemed that those that were minimalist and straightforward in their design were achievable even by the non-geek.  So I decided to return to a web design concept that would allow for conveying some depth of information (i.e., Marches to Washington), while staying within what I expect to be an increased (based on the last month) facility with some code, but still very real limitations of what I can ultimately produce. So I copied the column on the right, reduced its width so it virtually disappears, and then  inserted on the left  (not pretty but visually it seems to work). I also inserted, after at least six false starts, my only claim to any "geekocity," a Google map on a link in the right column. Those in Clio last semester recall I constructed a Google map of the path taken by Coxey's Army. Since this web site will not focus exclusively on Coxey (as did my Clio 1 design) this feature may ultimately not survive. But it was the one geeky thing I have ever accomplished and so, for the moment it's there! What I am really saying, is that as minimalist as this home page appears, it may allow me to do some very interesting things should my learning curve suddenly spike exponentially. Turtles have allot of time to gaze up at the trees (wistfully).

Second, I turned to  my  typography page, repairing the footnote, moving the pull quote up and expanding the font size of the block quote. The class comments were appreciated and sparing given the reality of the way it really looked. I also put some emphasis on the wrapper and tried to align the overall spacing of text, image, and white space. Its better, but ugly. It will not survive into my final site, though the concept of featuring at least a dozen prominent Marchers will. 

Still both these assignments need work. But the turtle advances!

RECREATING: Now to turn to Tufte.  Despite all the exercises with color, Chick Green's idea book and rereading Williams and Tollett on Web coloring, Tufte's book is profound on many levels. Try as I did to read hurriedly (out of necessity not desire) it nonetheless grabbed me and made me pause. I just called one of our sons,  a documentary film maker, thinking I would wow him; of course he said "oh yeah, its really good!" What have I ever known!

Clearly Tufte's application to web design is in the core concept that the web is at its essence about the recreation of data and its presentation in forms that engage and inform, or repel and confuse.

A few takeaways from Tufte for purposes of this already too long blog: 1.) Find the pump handle: The genius of John Snow in "ordering and analyzing" a mass of anecdotal data to quell the 1854 London cholera epidemic suggests how critical presentation is, particularly when juxtaposed to the O Ring fiasco; "Shrill and strident visual activities" or the preeminence of data over message is a common faux paus on the internet. 2.) Magic is a two edged sword: The web is a form of magic that often "suppresses context," and "prevents reflective analysis." It is the Chess Master 10x. It also magnifies in ways that are not well understood. So, as Tufte inveighs: "Analyze the details of your presentation, then master the details by practice, practice, practice." 3.) Parallelism and multiplicity: These are two chapters i will reread since intuitively I sense they have greatest application to my site. Assume I will be searching for six congruent images of the six marches (how is that for parallelism) arriving in Washington with the Capitol dome in site; a derivative of Reinhardt's "How to Look at Things Through a Wine Glass." Which brings us to Ad Reinhardt.

REINHARDT:  Anyone who  was  born  in Buffalo and  taught  at the University of Wyoming can't be all bad. If my web site can achieve one one thousandth of  the same calmness and "stickiness" of his "Abstract  Painting 6, Blue, then we will call it a satisfactory Visual Explanation.