Welcome to our third New Leaf Journal week in review. Today we offer fresh-baked rolls for our guests, pictured below. While I sadly forgot butter, I do have site updates to serve with brunch. Over the past week, Victor V. Gurbo and I posted five articles for your consumption. Furthermore, we have some exciting site news to report regarding our new New Leaf Journal Facebook page.
Articles from the Past Week
Let us begin with the week in articles.
The Great Wall
The Matter of Great Wall – But Not Those Walls
I started off the week with an article on an immigration issue pertaining to the matter of a certain Great Wall. While this may sound like the start of a joke about the border wall debate or entry restrictions, it is nothing of the sort. Instead, I examine a significant 1976 administrative precedent decision in immigration wall – Matter of Great Wall. After explaining what the decision is not, I explain what the decision is in a layperson-friendly way. It may be an obscure topic, but I hope that you will find that it is humorous and informative. (I will concede, however, that my occasional articles stemming from my day-job will not induce as much foot-tapping as Victor’s catchy professional content.)
Victor’s Insomnia Content
Insomnia Diaries: TikTok and Lucille Bogan
Victor began his week suffering from severe insomnia (I like to think it was because he was carefully studying the Matter of Great Wall). While lying awake in the dead of morning, Victor came across a very scandalous blues recording on TikTok at approximately 3:00 AM. Because this is a family website, Victor was unwilling to share the lyrics with you. (Trust me, it was for the best.) Victor did, however, share his discovery of the video and efforts to ascertain who was behind the song, along with some broader musings that grew from what he learned. The article is well worth your time, and I have heard that Victor may have some follow-up posts in the future.
My Response to Victor
Response to Victor: Tik Tok No
Victor wondered whether his Insomnia Diaries post would change my views on his TikTok usage. While the title may betray my answer, I invite you to come see my explanation along with some first-rate Microsoft Paint artwork.
Your Weekly Lost Peacock Story
Boston Police and Peacock Maintenance
A friend alerted me to a story about several officers from the Boston Police Department encounter with a wayward peacock near a local zoo. After reading the story, I decided that it was something worth sharing with the readers of the New Leaf Journal. I will refrain here from spoiling the officers’ ingenious peacock wrangling solution.
On-the-Ground Reporting
The Downed Stop Sign in Vinegar Hill
Our final article of the week came as a result of my intrepid reporting. Either that or I happened to find a fallen stop sign in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn and wrote about my thoughts on the subject. In addition to photographic evidence of the encounter, I offer a few downed stop sign jokes and a lead for authentic stop sign collectors. You will also learn about Victor’s continuing work to ensure that The New Leaf Journal remains a family website.
Earlier Posts
If you are a new reader of The New Leaf Journal, you can catch up on our 18 posts from before this week. A great place to start is by reading my first and second weekly updates, which contain all of the links in two articles.
Site News
We have a few site news updates to share with you this week.
Follow The New Leaf Journal on Facebook
Victor created a New Leaf Journal Facebook page for our growing website yesterday evening. Going forward, Victor will post links to all of our new content on Facebook and links to earlier posts that you may have missed. If you use Facebook, consider following the page to keep up with our newest content and offer us feedback. If you are already following us, we thank you for doing so.
Of course, some of you may be like me and not have a Facebook account at all. Fortunately, as you will see below, we are slowly adding multiple ways for you to follow the site.
Follow The New Leaf Journal on Feedburner
The New Leaf Journal is now on Feedburner as well. You can subscribe by clicking the orange RSS button on our sidebar or by following this link. Links to all of our new content will appear in the feed as it is published. I also enabled a subscribe-by-email option for our Feedburner feed. This will allow you to receive automated emails on any days we publish new content.
As I will explain below, however, Victor and I are in the process of creating a weekly newsletter for the site. The Feedburner email sign-up is not meant to be a newsletter but rather an extra option for those who want new content delivered to their inboxes daily.
A Newsletter in the Works
Victor and I are in the process of creating a weekly newsletter for The New Leaf Journal along with on-site sign-up forms. We hope to have it ready in the next week or two. I will provide more details about the newsletter and how to sign up when it is ready.
Looking Forward
Victor and I are working together to post daily, or close-to-daily, content updates here at The New Leaf Journal. For my part, I am working on the first post-introduction contribution to our new Emu Café section, and I will post it midday on Friday the 29th. We are also working on providing you with other ways to follow The New Leaf Journal in addition to Facebook, FeedBurner, and our in-progress email newsletter. We will provide more information as these things become available.
I am continuing to work on making several improvements to the website. These include, but are not limited to, the styling and layout of the header, fonts for desktop and mobile displays, and the speed at which the site loads. I look forward to improving the site bit-by-bit over the coming weeks.
As always, thank you for reading and following the development of The New Leaf Journal, a family website if there ever was one. I look forward to reporting back to you one week from today.
Cura ut valeas.