Featured Artist Heidi Marion As I worked through the articles of this issue my thoughts returned to the question "What do I believe in?" When I was a teenager my Dad told me that the earth is a test tube and that we humans are bacteria in it, multiplying ourselves into extinction. That revelation was decisive: I would be on the team that is working against the inevitable. Is there meaning in life otherwise? I reasoned to myself. I'm not a Christian, but it's not that I don't believe in "God". It's just that I believe in so much more ñ in all myths and deities, archetypes and rituals. I'm a pantheist, I concluded. I believe in everything about this planet and her spirits. I don't know if we are doomed or not. It doesn't matter.

Featured Poet Tommy Franck O'Connor Tommy Frank O'Connor, a native of Currow, Co. Kerry, runs his own accountancy practice in Tralee. His first novel The Poacher's Apprentice was published by Marino Books in May 1997. Leader of "Tralee Scribblers" writers' group, he has won the Kerry International Summer School Short Story Competition, 1994 and 1996. He was the only Irish finalist in "One Voice International", Swansea, 1995 (Short Story Section). His Short Stories have been published in The European, Madame Bull's Tavern (Canada), Asylum, and other magazines. Poetry published among anthologies, 1995, 1996 and 1997, including Cum, The Cuirt Collections 1996 & 1997, The Bard of Armagh Humourous Collection, Asylum, Podium, and The Edgeworth Papers, Vol. 2. His work for the stage includes the pageant Breanainn, at Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland and the play Changing Patrick, premiered at St. John's, Listowel Square in April 1997.