The Newsletter Leaf Journal XXII 〜 We March On (Pun Intended)
-N.A. Ferrell
We welcome March with the 22nd edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. This humble letter will go through our content from the past week and preview the week to come. But first, I begin with an update about the newsletter itself.
Newsletter Update
I will send next week's Newsletter Leaf Journal using the Buttondown newsletter service instead of Tiny Letter. You should receive the newsletter without any interruption. The only difference is that the sender will be Buttondown instead of Tiny Letter. I will keep our Tiny Letter account in case I need to return to it for any reason.
Those who are interested may learn more about Buttondown here.
Content From the Week That Was
We published articles every day during the past week. Below, I will run through our content.
On Monday, I published an article on a short children's story about keeping promises and being responsible from a 1914 magazine. Two young siblings, Lillian and Earl, were permitted to go to a party together under the condition that Earl promised to abstain from cold food and drink. Lillian pledged to their mother that she would guarantee that Earl kept his promise. Of course, it is easier to make promises than to keep them. What lessons do they learn?
Tuesday's article brought us into the Linux Terminal. In order to connect to my VPN service, I have to type "sudo protonvpn" into the Terminal. Because I know that this is true, why do I so often type "protonvon"? Who is Proton Von?
For Wednesday's post, I covered an old magazine poem for the third consecutive week. The elegant lady of the mansion set out for an evening walk. I included the original engraving that accompanied the poem in the February 1854 issue of Godey's Lady's Book in the content. Fun fact: Did you know that Godey's Lady's Book was the most circulated magazine in the United States immediately preceding the Civil War?
After the lady of the mansion completed her evening walk, I returned to the subject of Proton Von with my tenth Justin & Justina dialogue. Justin had, in multiple prior dialogues, claimed to have a "pitching injury" despite never having been a baseball player, much less a pitcher. In this dialogue, we meet Justin's high school friend, Proton Von, and finally get to the bottom of the matter.
As I noted in response to a kind Guestbook comment about the article - the story of Justin's "pitching injury" is partially inspired by true events. In the true story, however, Justin, as sacrificial pitcher, did not get hit by a line-drive. They say that truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes, however, fiction is stranger than truth.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about interpreting hair color in the Oregairu anime/lite novel series. Because it is my responsibility to ensure that our content is up-to-date, I published a follow-up article with information about the portrayal of the hair color of a relatively minor character in the series. In the anime (television) series, Kaori Orimoto is depicted with brown hair. However, the underlying novels upon which the anime series is based tell us that her hair is black. Shocking truth. The scales fell from my eyes.
Yesterday, I published an article that I had been promising since December - my review of the Tuttle Classics translation of six short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Akutugawa, who was active from 1914-1927, is one of Japan's most renowned short story writers. The collection is good - so the review focuses on providing brief previews of the stories in the collection. The book is available for as low as $1 in ebook form, so I recommend giving it a look. Another reason that I wanted to publish this article is because I have been sitting on a separate article tying one of the short stories to our own Emu Café project.
Finally, I rounded out the week with the return of "Around the Web." In this post, I looked at an interesting quote by Haruki Murakami, explaining why he does not use social media. The reason? The content is bad. While I cannot opine on Mr. Murakami's literary content, for I have not read his books, his critique of social media content is sound. I explored it in depth in an essay bringing together external posts and some of our own content from here at The New Leaf Journal.
Looking Forward to the Week to Come
I have a few interesting article projects in the works for the upcoming week that I hope you will look forward to.
First, as I noted above, I have an article sitting on my computer tying one of Akutagawa's short stories to our own Emu Café project. Now that I have published the underlying short story review, you can look forward to seeing my in-depth look at one upbeat passage from the last short story in the Tuttle Classics collection - "The Dragon."
Next weekend, I have two articles planned. First, in honor of White Day - which I described in a dialogue last month - I will have an article on a unique way of confessing love - attributed in legend to Natsume Sōseki. "The moon is beautiful, isn't it?" I even have a photograph to go with the content thanks to my new camera's heavy zoom. My other weekend article will discuss Calvin Coolidge's description of his mother from his autobiography. It is quite lovely, and it betrays the keen aesthetic sensibilities of both Coolidge's mother and Coolidge himself. Because I have two articles on tap for next weekend - I will either designate the love confession article as the Around the Web article or give that series the week off.
Of course, I will be publishing other posts throughout the week as usual. Although I have not decided on all of the specific content. You can expect to find the next article in my Bird Magazine series at some point during the week.
Thank You, As Always, For Subscribing and Reading
I have some fun content in store for the next week, so I hope that you look forward to it. Before I leave, please remember that you should expect a different newsletter sender next week. If I make any subsequent changes, I will be sure to let everyone know a week ahead of time.
We welcome March with the 22nd edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. This humble letter will go through our content from the past week and preview the week to come. But first, I begin with an update about the newsletter itself.
Newsletter Update
I will send next week's Newsletter Leaf Journal using the Buttondown newsletter service instead of Tiny Letter. You should receive the newsletter without any interruption. The only difference is that the sender will be Buttondown instead of Tiny Letter. I will keep our Tiny Letter account in case I need to return to it for any reason.
Those who are interested may learn more about Buttondown here.
Content From the Week That Was
We published articles every day during the past week. Below, I will run through our content.
On Monday, I published an article on a short children's story about keeping promises and being responsible from a 1914 magazine. Two young siblings, Lillian and Earl, were permitted to go to a party together under the condition that Earl promised to abstain from cold food and drink. Lillian pledged to their mother that she would guarantee that Earl kept his promise. Of course, it is easier to make promises than to keep them. What lessons do they learn?
Tuesday's article brought us into the Linux Terminal. In order to connect to my VPN service, I have to type "sudo protonvpn" into the Terminal. Because I know that this is true, why do I so often type "protonvon"? Who is Proton Von?
For Wednesday's post, I covered an old magazine poem for the third consecutive week. The elegant lady of the mansion set out for an evening walk. I included the original engraving that accompanied the poem in the February 1854 issue of Godey's Lady's Book in the content. Fun fact: Did you know that Godey's Lady's Book was the most circulated magazine in the United States immediately preceding the Civil War?
After the lady of the mansion completed her evening walk, I returned to the subject of Proton Von with my tenth Justin & Justina dialogue. Justin had, in multiple prior dialogues, claimed to have a "pitching injury" despite never having been a baseball player, much less a pitcher. In this dialogue, we meet Justin's high school friend, Proton Von, and finally get to the bottom of the matter.
As I noted in response to a kind Guestbook comment about the article - the story of Justin's "pitching injury" is partially inspired by true events. In the true story, however, Justin, as sacrificial pitcher, did not get hit by a line-drive. They say that truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes, however, fiction is stranger than truth.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about interpreting hair color in the Oregairu anime/lite novel series. Because it is my responsibility to ensure that our content is up-to-date, I published a follow-up article with information about the portrayal of the hair color of a relatively minor character in the series. In the anime (television) series, Kaori Orimoto is depicted with brown hair. However, the underlying novels upon which the anime series is based tell us that her hair is black. Shocking truth. The scales fell from my eyes.
Yesterday, I published an article that I had been promising since December - my review of the Tuttle Classics translation of six short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Akutugawa, who was active from 1914-1927, is one of Japan's most renowned short story writers. The collection is good - so the review focuses on providing brief previews of the stories in the collection. The book is available for as low as $1 in ebook form, so I recommend giving it a look. Another reason that I wanted to publish this article is because I have been sitting on a separate article tying one of the short stories to our own Emu Café project.
Finally, I rounded out the week with the return of "Around the Web." In this post, I looked at an interesting quote by Haruki Murakami, explaining why he does not use social media. The reason? The content is bad. While I cannot opine on Mr. Murakami's literary content, for I have not read his books, his critique of social media content is sound. I explored it in depth in an essay bringing together external posts and some of our own content from here at The New Leaf Journal.
Looking Forward to the Week to Come
I have a few interesting article projects in the works for the upcoming week that I hope you will look forward to.
First, as I noted above, I have an article sitting on my computer tying one of Akutagawa's short stories to our own Emu Café project. Now that I have published the underlying short story review, you can look forward to seeing my in-depth look at one upbeat passage from the last short story in the Tuttle Classics collection - "The Dragon."
Next weekend, I have two articles planned. First, in honor of White Day - which I described in a dialogue last month - I will have an article on a unique way of confessing love - attributed in legend to Natsume Sōseki. "The moon is beautiful, isn't it?" I even have a photograph to go with the content thanks to my new camera's heavy zoom. My other weekend article will discuss Calvin Coolidge's description of his mother from his autobiography. It is quite lovely, and it betrays the keen aesthetic sensibilities of both Coolidge's mother and Coolidge himself. Because I have two articles on tap for next weekend - I will either designate the love confession article as the Around the Web article or give that series the week off.
Of course, I will be publishing other posts throughout the week as usual. Although I have not decided on all of the specific content. You can expect to find the next article in my Bird Magazine series at some point during the week.
Thank You, As Always, For Subscribing and Reading
I have some fun content in store for the next week, so I hope that you look forward to it. Before I leave, please remember that you should expect a different newsletter sender next week. If I make any subsequent changes, I will be sure to let everyone know a week ahead of time.
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