This piece was written for and printed in Vol. 55’s Issue Zero. Click here to read the it in full.
So now that we’ve introduced our good friend, our greatest teacher, our muse, Arthur – we suppose we ought to introduce ourselves – two of the friendly faces behind this peculiar publication. Pardon our discomfort as we talk about ourselves in third person.
The co-editors-in-chief for Volume 55 of Arthur Newspaper are Nick Taylor and Brazil Gaffney-Knox. They met in a second year philosophy class some years ago, and now they publish a newspaper together. Nick Taylor is a word-wrangling, terminally queer, deeply chaotic cowboy; a gadfly in perpetuity. Brazil Gaffney-Knox is a bread-bakin’, bee-keepin’, art-makin’ high priestess who once looked Medusa directly in the eyes and lived to tell the tale.
The past few months have been a whirlwind of pandemic-pandemonium, which is exactly what we were expecting our first few months at Arthur to be. We’ve become fully certified in “rolling with the punches” and “putting out fires.” We spent this summer sweating in our home office on George St, working hard to make sure that Arthur would survive COVID-19, and perhaps even thrive during it.
We started a radio show and podcast called A Hot Arthur Summer which you can listen to on our website. We chased down stories and published them all online for your reading pleasure. We wrote a lot about COVID, and the cops, too. We brought a baby zine into the world, and named it Oatmeal in honour of our favourite factory in Peterborough. (Check the map on page seven!) And we have even more exciting developments to come this fall – including a new website in the works made by our secret sorcerer, the king of all that is behind the scenes, Danny Taro.
The catch is that we won’t be able to print our beautiful and beloved paper this semester. Because of the pandemic we can’t distribute Arthur how we normally would (big stacks in public spaces) and with no means of safe distribution, we’re a little bit stuck. So we will be mostly online for the foreseeable future – with the exception of this glorious guide you now hold in your hands.
We see this Issue of Arthur as a roadmap for you – the newest members of our community – in a time when the path that lies ahead has never been more unclear. So go forth! Let it take you all over this campus, all over this electric city! Stay safe, wear your seat belts, and look both ways before you cross the river.