The contents of this collection of blogs is presented as, might be, a series of scholastic these, or what shall I call them, papers. I have not been associated with a college for decades, but I have been practicing the methods of scholarship, and I hope to please the reader. This perhaps unconventional medium for composing and presenting supposedly scholarly documents, selected for its beauty, control, and great advantage as a publishing medium, must be understood if anyone is to make sense of the whole collection of content in the several blogs. The medium (blogger) has its quirks, one of which is that it usually cuts a series of posts off in the middle, requiring the reader to link to a new page arbitrarily. But, after spending time on the interface, you start to see options. The blog archive section on each page is key. It allows you to display all the posts posted in a given month. This means each month's archive page is like a magazine issue, and articles, series of posts on different topics, can extend through it freely. All the reader has to do is scroll the page.

The other quirk is, of course, that everything starts at the bottom of the page. The reader is usually required to scroll all the way to the bottom, after the page loads, and read the posts from the bottom up, and the archive page will only make complete sense if read that way, but there is a twist: if an article starts somewhere in the middle of the archive page, how can I guide the reader there? I can link the reader to an individual post, but that's very unsatisfying. What's interesting about a blog is the stream of posts. The only thing I can do is describe the post which begins an article, that is, provide its title and location. I am, therefore, constantly asking the reader to "look for a post titles such and such," wich is probably pretty annoying.

Another worry is the way a blog can become just a series of links, and a substantial portion of these posts in effect is just that, because the reader will see a series of small pictures, each of which links to a larger view. That link is a bit clumsy. I've decided the way to handle it is not to worry about it too much, and I've concluded that I can make most of the information accessable in the archive page itself. A kind of code has emerged, whereby different size images signify different things. The larger one are to be viewed in the body of the blog, except when clarrification is sought, while smaller ones usually, but not always, aren't links themselves, but accompany a text link, or just text. Then, recently, on one page, I used a step up in size twice to suggest to the reader clicking through to the larger view, and, in a couple of places, I've used the jumbo size to make part of an image - that's all it will display - pretty much fully readable.

The whole project has in part developed as a series of letters, never sent, each one seeming to require some kind of explanatory preface, until you are, at any rate, here. I hasten to add there are included two more formal papers - though readers will question how formal - and even a third, a kind of short story in pictures. I'm also working on an art section ...

So, the letter previous to this one is almost at the top of a blog I sort of started for it, and it, itself, like this letter, is a guide to the site, and repeats all the stuff about how to navigate, but this letter differs in being just a guide to the site, where that one, titled "interlude", also discusses some theory.

Interlude, in turn, describes and links to the propper starting place for reading the main blog, studentsofurbanism, as well as additional blog content.

It is also important to note the importance of the links list on each page. They are all internal links to create navigation around the blog group, and they all as a rule link you to the proper monthly archive page. I will, I think, leave it to the reader to proceed to Interlude using the link on this page.

A late development is me thinking about renewing classwork and persuit of an academic degree. That's the short story I  mentioned. And then this letter in a way is an inquiry into what it might mean. I'm inclined to be extremely busy with reading and writing, and participation at a college would have, of course, beneficial advantages, but where does the work I've done already, and which I intend to continue, fit in? And there still might be other avenues, such as more of a pure business approach or more of a pure writing approach.