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Evernote's on-going stubborn dodging / not hearing the very strong arguments for notebook-level encryption.

What are you talking about? Their CEO, Phil Libin, has promised they were working on precisely this (notebook-level encryption), and planned to release it before the end of the year or shortly afterwards.

From the Evernote Podcast episode 40, from October 30th, around 51 minutes in:

"We actually got a super cool, uh, we're really really beefing up how we do client-side encryption across the board […] it's something we are hard at work now across multiple clients."

Hey GM,

That's why I think it is a good idea for Evernote to institute something like this. The debate really isn't about what Prism does or doesn't do (interesting as it  is), but about instituting a policy that (in large part) removes the "trust" factor from the equation. With a zero-knowledge encrypted notebook, Evernote wouldn't have access, their employees wouldn't, and neither would the government. We don't have to "trust" every govt. official (in several governments, if information sharing news is accurate). We take the power out of their hands and put it in ours. That seems like the safest course of action no matter how this Prism thing turns out.

I think you may be right here. Even though Evernote's business model doesn't depend on advertising/tracking (which is good for us!), they aren't immune from unreasonable government requests. I found an article that explains this quite clearly:

Indeed, the cooperation [between intelligence agencies and 'cloud' companies] was usually “voluntary” in large part because companies couldn’t afford to seem uncooperative, says another private-sector official who would speak about classified issues only on condition of anonymity. “The ways that pressure works in Washington are very subtle,” he says. “No one’s getting bribed, or punished outright. But it’s the good little Indian that gets rewarded. And these companies needed the goodwill of the NSA and other agencies.”

 

[…]

 

If industry refused, the NSA had the unique ability to both reward and punish, thanks to its implicit veto power over deals and exports

If the government wants something, they'll get it. I love Evernote, but I think that the Uplink motto "Trust is a weakness" applies here.