This site is about the way history, in this case of a city and it’s surrounds, is remembered or recorded in stories and small bits of memory. It’s also about the way images and stories go together, how they inform and enrich each other and how we as thinking people use our imaginations to fill in the content between a narrative and a visual document. So here is my city in time past, the way it looked and the people and events that create its character. It is Tacoma in fragments of recall and record.
For more than 20 years I have taught a 5 hour a week course on the History of Tacoma at the University of Washington Tacoma. With an average of 30 or 40 students a year, each doing a research paper as their primary focus for the course, I have benefited from many paths of inquiry and many researched and assembled stories. Here are some of them in the retelling along with the treasures of photographs and images in the collections of the Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma Public Library, University of Washington Digital Archives, Washington State Archives at the Office of the Secretary of State, Library of Congress, Washington State University, Alaska State Library, and many other archives, libraries and private collections.
Hi Michael: Great job! I’ve been reading and have been impressed. I’m responding to your call for thoughts about redesign. Couple of thoughts: It would be good to organize your posts into categories so people can sort through them better. This project isn’t chronological in the way that a blog is, and there are things you good do to organize the site so people could more easily browse and discover. I’d also change the front page so the pictures didn’t look so cramped. You have fantastic images that would draw in readers, but the current these doesn’t show them off to best advantage.
Few other things: The current theme isn’t html responsive, so it doesn’t read well on tablets or mobile. You need a mobile version. And site navigation could be improved. You could also add related stories to each post (easily done). AND you need a contact button.
I know WP quite well – all of my ArtsJournal blogs are built on it as is the main site. And I have access to a premium WP framework that would add significant functionality, as well as a suite of premium child themes I’d be happy to give you access to. I’d be happy to help you with this if you’d like. Plus it would be fun to catch up.
In any case: hi. Nice to see you doing this.
Doug
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