Just recently, at a company “Scholé Lunch,” we read and discussed Walt Whitman’s poem “A Noiseless, Patient Spider.” We were slow to approach the poem, but after about fifteen minutes the discussion took on a life of its own. Here is the poem:

A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

Well, we at CAP have been patiently weaving another web: a completely new website. We have been casting forth filament, filament, filament as endless lines of code, text, photos, and media—and seeking to connect them into a meaningful, beautiful hold. If you are reading this post, you are on the new website, and I hope that you, too, can see that it is beautiful and that the ductile anchor does indeed hold.

Virtually our entire team has been a spider on this web, so unlike Whitman’s spider, we have not stood isolated. We have, however, worked ceaselessly over many months to weave this web. We should praise the chief spiders among us: Stuart Dum (our in-house programmer and web developer), David Gustafson (one of our creative designers with great web-developing ability), and Robert Baddorf (our creative director who is gifted in design and many other media). The site design has been collaborative with regular input from Rebecca James (our VP of sales and marketing), along with help from Tristin Schambach (our sales and marketing associate), Brittany Stoner (our operations assistant), Emily Price (our eLearning coordinator), Greg Lowe (our business and operations manager), and Laurie Gustafson (our house editor). In other respects, none of these wonderful people resemble a spider.