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Editor’s Notebook

© by John Arkelian

The best of writing, photography, art, and argument – on everything from film to foreign policy.

“Ever dreamed of subscribing to a cultural magazine that doesn’t seem to be eating out of the hand of half a dozen media magnates? Something pluricultural and unassuming but nonetheless covering everything worth seeing, reading, doing or listening to for a season? Well, it exists, and in Canada to boot!”

“There is no on-line version or web site, which either makes John a dinosaur or a man of character. (I opt for the second, since the editorial team occasionally has a kind word for me.)”

John Howe — Canadian artist and co-conceptual designer on all three “The Lord of the Rings” motion pictures.

* Editor’s Note: The age of the dinosaurs has at last come to an end — with the arrival of this website!

The Lamentable President

On February 28, 2018

© By John Arkelian

In an interview with Larry King prior to the November 2017

“This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.” (So saith President Trump in February 2017; but, he didn’t specify what kind of machine he had in mind.) Illustration © 2017 by Linda Arkelian.

presidential […]

On Arms and the Man: Distorted Notions about the Right to Bear Arms in America

On February 27, 2018

© By John Arkelian

Should teenagers be allowed to have machine guns? Yes or no? It’s really as simple as that. The carnage wrought recently at a Florida school was perpetrated by a disturbed teen in legal possession of what amounted to a machine gun. In a sensible world, those words, […]

The Case for Intervention in Syria

On February 27, 2018

© By John Arkelian

Popular protests in Syria during the ill-fated Arab Spring in 2011 turned into a bitter civil war that is still raging seven years later. It’s a pity the West failed to intervene in a meaningful way in the beginning, before things turned intractably violent. The conflict has […]

The Transformational Yukon

On May 10, 2017

“I Hear You” – Copyright © 2017 by Priska Wettstein

© By John Arkelian

“I am among the giants. They loom below, immense, silent, and

insouciant – their unbowed crowns cloaked in the whitest of ermine, their enormous shoulders cast of rock primeval. I have come to the world […]

Of Mortal Life, The Flower

On February 14, 2017

Photograph © 2016 by Debra Konrad.

© By John Arkelian

“So passeth, in the passing of a day, / Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower, / No more doth flourish after first decay, / That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower.”

On […]

Presidential Politics 2016:  Cry the Beloved Country

On October 24, 2016

© By John Arkelian

How can it come down to this – in the greatest nation on Earth, the best hope for mankind, the land of the free and the home of the brave? Have the lights gone out in that shining city on a hill? The presidential election campaign poses […]