OK, I’ll preface this by saying I just started with Yii last week so I’m learning (and sometimes it just takes a conversation with yourself to figure things out). 
I’m just going to talk myself through how I followed what was going on here in case other newbies may benefit.
As I looked at the Yii guide examples more I realized that this array is being assigned (in the view file) to the "portlets" property of my controller, where the array key is the name of the widget class…
*** view file index.php
<?php
$this->portlets['MyNote']=array('note'=>'Hello World'); // assign value to note property.
// $this->portlets['AnotherWidget']=array('blah'=>'yadda');
// $this->portlets['MoreWidgets']=array();
?>
<h1>Home Page</h1>
<?php
$this->widget('zii.widgets.CListView', array(
'dataProvider'=>$dataProvider,
'itemView'=>'_view',
));
?>
and then this code in the layout file creates the widgets by extracting the key as the widget class and the assigned array as the property values.
***layout file column2.php
<?php $this->beginContent('//layouts/main'); ?>
<div class="container">
<!-- left-column -->
<div>
<?php
foreach($this->portlets as $class=>$properties)
{
$this->widget($class,$properties);
}
?>
</div>
<!-- content-column -->
<div>
<?php echo $content; ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php $this->endContent(); ?>
What I needed to do was add the properties to the widget class!!!
***widget class file MyNote.php (in components directory)
<?php
Yii::import('zii.widgets.CPortlet');
class MyNote extends CPortlet
{
public $note; // <---- THIS WAS THE KEY!!!
public function init()
{
parent::init();
}
protected function renderContent()
{
$this->render('myNote');
}
}
?>
and then my widget view can access its own property as such
***widget view file myNote.php (in components/views)
<?php
$x = $this->note; // <--- NOW I CAN ACCESS IT HERE!!!
?>
<p>My message: <?php echo $x; ?></p>
Lots of looking at this documentation helped me figure out the path.
http://www.yiiframework.com/wiki/28/how-to-implement-multiple-page-layouts-in-an-application#hh1
http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/basics.view#widget
I’m sure the experienced OOP and Yii people out there will think this is obvious but I’m putting it all in here for the newbie that might find it helpful.
