I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed.

-- G. B. Shaw, The Doctor's Dilemma

ANYONE CAN MAKE A YELLOW BALL out of a sun," Picasso is reported to have said, "but to take a yellow ball and make a sun out of it – that is art!" We believe that art should magnify, not trivialize humans. It should also magnify their language. In this age of dehumanization -- of joylessness, of alienation -- art's purpose of celebrating life is crucial, perhaps sacred. Artists should not abdicate this calling. They should strive to show death-in-life without becoming dead themselves (or allowing their language to become so). They should also at least suggest the vital beneath the mask. "God has shown me a fair city," Villon said. Surely that city is as real as the world we find ourselves in.

We believe that before being leftists, progressives, democratic socialists, we are humanists, that is, believers in the inviolability of the human personality. Kurt Vonnegut was honorary president of the American Humanist Association, but as we remember him in our Iowa days in the 60s, humanism meant more to him than simply not believing in a theistic god (as it does for many AHA members): it meant the preciousness of each person. Who can forget the Sirens of Titans' intergalactic spaceship that needs a spare part, and programs the entire history of Earth -- world wars, plagues, destitution, Inquisitions, holocausts -- just so that the Earthlings can throw them that part enabling them to go to a distant galaxy and spread the word GREETINGS across the sky? Absurdity! Kurt was a master of the absurd because he knew what life could and should be like. "Life is no way to treat an animal," Kurt's alter ego, Kilgore Trout, wrote. Yes, Kurt believed passionately in Villon's fair city, and he cried out against a world that, under whatever hypocritical mask, utterly devalued people.

Last year we asked Kurt to write for our journal. This was his response: "You are sure my kind of people, and I would be in the best of company if I could think of something really good to write for you. But at age 83 I find myself out of steam, clouds of which I set free years ago now. But in any case cheers and love from me today. Kurt."

Goodbye, Kurt. We loved you and miss you.

In this issue our authors have tried to look below the mask at the critical problems we face in the new century: war, environmental destruction, homelessness, immigration, and injustice. But Dan Gardner offers real hope: read his article on Finnish prisons and learn how an entire society can live by Nicos Kazantzakis' "Inside the most hardened criminal there is a saint who is weeping and waiting," a society that treats criminals as human beings capable of change. Villon's fair city lives, even today. We must keep it alive.

MARVIN AND BETTY