I expect most people who come to Prairieside Outpost remark upon the quiet. It can be hard to come to grips with the absence of traffic noise and the silent presence of the open range – that space beyond fences, whose soil has never been turned over by the blade of a plow. But there are noises too.

The air and the weather and the birds are always saying quite a lot. The uncanny chortling of coyotes is not the postcard stereotype of nature’s beauty. For Prairieside Outpost is not so much a retreat as it is an encounter.

At Prairieside I encountered the world through a different frame, and of course that is what we really need from a retreat. A change of scenery that changes how we see. 

Color Theory: A Critical Introduction is not simply a book on theory – it includes suggestions within each chapter for connecting the theories discussed with color use. Perhaps the time I spent playing and thinking about games in the sun room had something to do with the result. For games are essentially what I wrote for the last of the book’s color activities during my stay: Games giving Washington D.C. a makeover. Games forcing Wittgenstein’s own games into an unpleasant encounter with bigotry. Games proposing a new flag.

Color Activities 8.2

Contextual Color 3:  Purchase souvenir replicas of the structures on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Observe the blank whiteness of the marble buildings and monuments and their appropriation from ancient cultures whose architecture was anything but achromatic. Provide a chromophilic makeover for these replicas using colors that might stereotypically suggest femininity, flamboyance, irrationality, and sexual abandon. 

 Contextual Color 4:  Wittgenstein describes a transparent white - a color that acts like a screen through which everything may be viewed in shades of black and white, without any of the rainbow’s hues remaining. Design an ad campaign for “White Jell-O” an imaginary food product that does just this. The spokespersons for this product should be well known white supremacists, apologists for racist policies, and their enablers. 

Contextual Color 5:  Design a new flag, based on an older pattern but with new colors.