We reach double-digit week-in-review posts with the tenth edition of the NLJ Week in Review. In this update, I will go over our content from the past week and discuss some things that you can look forward to over the coming week.
New Content From the Week
Victor and I combined to post four new articles over the past week. I will briefly summarize each new post below.
The Quarantine Sessions Return
Victor posted his newest Quarantine Session article on Monday. In this post, he covered Lead Belly’s iconic Goodnight, Irene. The article begins with a video of Victor’s and Mark Caserta’s performance of the song, accompanied by Victor’s striking artistic photograph. Victor then examines the history of Goodnight, Irene and Lead Belly. Victor focuses on comparing Lead Belly’s version of Goodnight, Irene, to the hit 1950s version of the songs by The Weavers. As you will see, changing just a few lines can radically alter the mood and feel of a song.
The First New Leaf Journal Book Review
I published The New Leaf Journal’s first ever book review, examining the artbook that came with copies of the original version of Persona 4, a Japanese role-playing video game, for the PlayStation 2. I begin the book review with a brief anecdote about the series of events that led me to the Persona series and the artbook. After my brief introduction, I shift all my attention to the artbook itself, carefully reviewing each section with a few photos. Although this might be a niche book review, I do plan to use and refine the format going forward for book and other kinds of review content.
College-Era Cartesian Doodles
In “An Unclear an Indistinct Idea of a Truth Tree,” I tell a story from 2010 involving Descartes’ concept of clear and distinct ideas, a truth tree that may or may not look like a mushroom cloud, and some professional-quality Microsoft Paint work. While brief, the article is not amenable to a brief summary – but I think you may find it to be a humorous read.
Is Twitter Necessary? I Hope Not.
Finally, I examine a story from the excellent sports and culture website, OutKick, about Tucker Carlson’s setting new records for cable news viewership while barely using Twitter. While Mr. Carlson’s show is an unusual case, it does stand at odds with common conceptions about the necessity of using Twitter to build and maintain a large audience. The content speaks for itself, but I do have a note about my picture for the article, pictured below.
I designed the article’s featured image – a Twitter-blue arrow with text against its complementary color – with the homepage thumbnail in mind. For the article itself, I used a larger version of the thumbnail image. It was only after I posted the article that I realized that the arrow was pointing to our newsletter sign-up box for desktop-users. We can consider it a fortuitous accident.
Looking Forward
Victor and I are working on sending out the first edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal tomorrow. If you have not signed up yet, please consider doing so at our newsletter sign-up page. We will make an archive of past newsletters available in the near future.
Besides our continuing work on the newsletter, I have no major updates to announce. Victor and I are still working on a site logo and examining whether we want to use a slider for the homepage. Other than that, the site is running well and I plan to keep focusing on publishing content over the coming week.
Some Upcoming Projects
For my part, I am starting work on a couple of larger projects.
First, in light of Turkey’s decision to convert the Hagia Sophia cathedral, which had officially been a museum for nearly 90 years, into a mosque (a disturbing decision, in my view), I am working on a couple of follow-ups posts to my May article on Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI’s last stand against the Ottomans in Constantinople in 1453. For now, you can read my first article in the series on the story of Constantine XI’s actions during the Siege of Constantinople, including his final visit to the hallowed Hagia Sophia.
My second project is a bit lighter. In one of Victor’s earlier Quarantine Sessions on Love Henry, he made reference to an anime most known for being a train-wreck. When he was writing the article, he remembered the basic story and asked me for the name so he could note it in his article for its thematic similarity to the much better folk song. I think that The New Leaf Journal can use some more on-site author discourse, so look forward to my forthcoming review of School Days, a review written for people who make the wise decision to not spend almost six hours watching a tire fire.
Victor is hard at work drafting our first newsletter, and I hope that he has some interesting content in store for us in the near future.
Parting Shots
Thank you as always for reading and following The New Leaf Journal. Please consider signing up for our newsletter, The Newsletter Leaf Journal, and signing our Guestbook if you enjoy our content. I look forward to reporting back to you with new content and things to look forward to one week from now.