It has been an eventful six days for The New Leaf Journal since my first site update. I will review our newest posts and New Leaf Journal news.
New Content
We posted five new articles on The New Leaf Journal since the first update. To read a summary with links of our first ten posts, please see my discussion from last Sunday. Let us look at this week’s posts.
A New New Leaf Journal Establishment
First, we have today’s post – Welcome to The Emu Café. As the name suggests, this post introduces our newest section on the site. I encourage you to enjoy the content-filled opening of Emu Café with your favorite coffee or tea and a snack. The post describes the Café and its focus on articles and art about aesthetics and the good life. In line with the theme, I worked to collect some appealing images from old books, dictionaries, and periodicals to complement the post. Going forward this introduction will also be accessible from The Emu Café category page.
Victor V. Gurbo’s Third Quarantine Session
Victor V. Gurbo posted his third entry in The Quarantine Sessions yesterday, this time covering The Railroad Boy. Like the previous entries, the post begins with a music video created by Victor and the talented musician and videographer, Mark Caserta, before going into Victor’s lengthy study of the song. I found the final passage of Victor’s piece comparing the dove symbolism in The Railroad Boy to the briar knot motif in folk music to be particularly interesting.
A Haiku and New Class of Post Pictures
On May 13, I published a brief haiku titled Boerum Blue Jay and Black Squirrel. The little poem was inspired by a story that I shared in a longer post six days earlier. For the post, I typed the haiku on my TI-89 graphing calculator and used downloadable software to capture a screenshot on my computer. I provide the backstory for my interest in using TI-89 screenshots and introduce a tag for TI-89 capture posts.
The Co-mingling of Confidence and Fear
One day after I introduced the TI-89 captures, I used another in a relatively long discourse titled Mosley on Mayweather: Confidence and Fear. This post focuses on interesting comments by retired boxer Shane Mosley about fellow all-time great boxer Floyd Mayweather. After providing background on the boxers and their 2010 fight, I examine Mosley’s assessment of Mayweather both with respect to Mayweather and as a point of general interest. The post ends with a question about the relationship between confidence and fear for you to consider.
An Animal Crossing Anecdote
Last but not least, I published a quaint article on May 12 titled NIXON and the Illness of Apple in Animal Crossing. One day, my Animal Crossing neighbor Apple was happily telling me about meeting NIXON from Watergate (NIXON is definitely not Victor). Rather than spoil the rest, I encourage you to see what happened for yourself in my short post – visual evidence included.
Site Updates
As promised last week, we have populated the Discourses and The Emu Café sections of the site. With that, all five of our sections now have content. I am also designating certain articles as belonging to two sections. For example, Victor’s three Quarantine Sessions posts are in both the Discourses and Original Compositions sections. This is owed to the fact that the posts include both a study of the folk song in question and a video of Victor’s original performance.
After some haggling behind the scenes, I figured out how to center videos in posts for desktop view. While I am sure this would be no challenge for the programmers out there, I have ambivalent feelings toward anything involving code. After properly formatting Victor’s most recent Quarantine Sessions video, I went back and centered the videos for his first and second entries in the series. Those who have not watched the videos yet should take this chance to do so, and those who already have can enjoy them again with better presentation.
Thank you as always for following the continuing development of The New Leaf Journal. I look forward to reporting back with more news next Saturday.
