On Thursday, September 10th, Victor published what was our 100th article at The New Leaf Journal, “Is my cat deaf, or does she just not give a…?” The content combined the photography, writing, and hard-hitting investigations that we hope you have come to know The New Leaf Journal for.
To commemorate our reaching triple-digit articles, I will revisit some of our notable content while following a simple rule. Our home page on site lists the nine most recent articles. You can hit “next” to find the next nine articles (page 1 has articles 1-9, page 2 has articles 10-18, so on and so forth). Below, I will chose one article from pages 2-11 of our archives as they appear to me while writing this on September 12, 2020. This is not a ranking or attempt to choose what we think are the absolute best articles, but a showcase for the variety of content that we have published and an opportunity to highlight some articles that people may have missed. Some articles on the list may be familiar to you, others less so.
May 6, 2020: “The Quarantine Sessions: Love Henry” (Victor V. Gurbo)
In what was our seventh article, Victor published an in-depth look at the classic folk ballad, “Love Henry,” accompanied by a video recording of his rendition of the song with Mark Caserta. The article featured an analysis of various versions of the song put to print by the folk music historian, Francis James Child. “Love Henry” remains one of our most-read articles. If you missed it the first time around, this is as good a time as any to learn the history of a folk music classic. If you already read it, the music video, accompanied by charming visuals taken by Mark Caserta, is worth revisiting.
May 16, 2020: “Welcome to The Emu Café” (N.A. Ferrell)
After a bit of planning, I launched The Emu Café section of The New Leaf Journal with a welcome post. The post sets out to establish the idea for The Emu Café, a New Leaf Journal forum for “lively discourse about aesthetics and the life lived well.” Come visit for some charming pictures and an assist from Plato’s Symposium.
May 28, 2020: “Defining What The New Leaf Journal Is” (Victor V. Gurbo)
After it became clear that some people found the concept for The New Leaf Journal to be less than clear, Victor and I worked to ameliorate any potential conclusion for our readers. While I drafted a new About the Site page, Victor wrote an article about our efforts to come up with a succinct description for The New Leaf Journal. You can learn a bit more about the concept for our site by reading these two posts in conjunction with “Welcome to The Emu Café.” Also notable on this page of articles, our current most-read post for the last 30 days, “Remembering Second Lieutenant Carleton Burr for Memorial Day.”
May 31, 2020: “The Trees Leaf in May” (N.A. Ferrell)
I am happy to see that people have been finding my most-researched New Leaf Journal article, “The Last Stand of Constantine XI,” which features on our current most-read list. Not as many readers found the post I wrote one day later for the last day of May, “The Trees Leaf in May.” The article title comes from definitions in several older dictionaries for the transitive verb form of “leaf.” The post explores these definitions and interesting dictionary usage examples, along with some aesthetic pictures.
June 14, 2020: “Some U.S. President Birthday Facts” (N.A. Ferrell)
For the occasion of President Donald Trump’s 74th birthday, I wrote an article containing U.S. president birthday and age facts, finally putting my party trick of being able to name all the presidents in order to good use (since I do not party, the trick usually goes unused). I figure that there is no better time to study some good presidential birthday facts than now, as the presidential election fast approaches.
June 28, 2020: “Examining the-Man-With-the-Hose” (N.A. Ferrell)
Our 100th article at The New Leaf Journal was about Victor trying to determine if his beloved kitty, Pumpkin, is deaf. That article is not, however, Pumpkin’s first New Leaf Journal appearance. Back in June, I wrote an article trying to get to the bottom of why men with hoses use gratuitous amounts of water to wash the street and sidewalk. Since I do not have a hose, I asked Victor to provide a picture for the article. He obliged with two, one of a hose on the wet ground, and a second with Pumpkin walking over the hose. I ended up using both, so you can find Pumpkin and some quotes from two pre-Socratic philosophers in this rigorous study.
July 15, 2020: “Please Ring the Doorbell – a Delivery Story” (Victor V. Gurbo)
Always looking for ways to produce a unique sound for his audiences, Victor ordered an intriguing microphone to try for recording music. This article is not, however, a review of the microphone. Instead, Victor recounts the saga of trying to procure his microphone delivery, which ended happily only after the expensive piece of equipment was left on his doorstep for any passerby to steal. I am sure many of you can relate to these kinds of delivery problems. I thought of Victor’s story when I had some difficulties obtaining a replacement motherboard for my new computer.
July 17, 2020: “Matt Damon’s Brooklyn Heights Crane Game” (Observant Misanthrope)
In our first contributor article, an Observant Misanthrope offered thoughts on the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights being graced by the arrival of Matt Damon. I do not know much about Mr. Damon, for I do not follow the goings on in Hollywood, but after reading the article, I have no doubt that any Brooklyn resident would be able to have a street shut down in order to easily move into his or her new abode with the aid of a crane.
August 2, 2020: “CNN Hides the Fruit of Forbidden Knowledge” (N.A. Ferrell)
This was one of the articles I most enjoyed writing in the first few months of The New Leaf Journal. CNN reported on new recommendations for cervical cancer screenings for “individuals with a cervix.” This seemed like a curious choice of words to describe the universe of individuals who may need cervical cancer screenings, and sure enough, it reappeared throughout the article. Are our betters at CNN hiding things from us? I asked what I thought were the important questions.
August 23, 2020: “New Computer, New Leaf” (N.A. Ferrell)
August 26, 2020: “Building an Airline Res-O-Glas Guitar Copy” (Victor V. Gurbo)
I will cheat a bit for page two of our article list. In an unplanned event, Victor and I posted consecutive articles about building things. First, I wrote about completing my new computer build and my experiences with the Manjaro Linux operating system. This post followed my earlier article about my build being thwarted by a lemon of a motherboard. A few days later, Victor published an article about his ongoing first guitar build. Although he has completed many guitars since he began his first, and offers great deals on his guitars online, his first guitar, which is an ongoing work-in-progress, holds a special place. In that article, you will also learn a about the interesting history Res-O-Glas guitars.
Please note that I may have only used Victor’s guitar-building article here if not for the fact that he shared my lemon motherboard article on Facebook after I published the new article, and did not for several days post the article about my working computer. As he put it, he was hoping to keep everyone in suspense. I will use this as an extra opportunity to end the suspense