Okay. . . one step at a time here. . .
First step was to resolve the html rendering issue in the sidebar. Michael Jones -- the designer behind Armageddon Design (http://www.armageddondesign.net/) and new CIO of CITAR (The Center for Independent Threat Analysis and Research - http://www.citar.org/v2/ -- suggested possible inheritance problem with CSS definitions. Also, he suggested changing the way I was commenting out blocks of code. Impatient, rather than changing the comment out code, I deleted all the code I no longer use, both template and stylesheet. Doing so, the sidebar renders the way I expect.
The next step is to modify the Banner, with the former background and enough white background to display "Heads Ups!." Eric Allison at Stanford is helping me with that one (Don' want to hurt myself, you know?)
So. . . Off to spend last full day with my son and all my family.
And, thanks to Michael and Eric.



