Letter from the Editor - March 2009

Welcome to Another Day in Paradise

It’s March 2009 and we have reached another milestone: Our 60th edition and the end of our 10th season publishing in paradise. Looking back at issue number 1, October 1999, eight black and white pages of bond paper—we are tempted to notice only the differences. Issue 60 is almost 60 full-color, glossy pages—
seemingly a different publication all together. But surprisingly they are very similar, with many of the same writers, photographers and advertisers, and many of the same themes: Mexico’s fascinating history, culture, art, and Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo’s many charms. With so much change around, it is heartening to see so many things are exactly the same: the natural beauty, the vibrant community, the fabulous food … and ADIP still right here trying to cram it all in, in too little time, in too few pages. Some things never change.

We chase many elusive things in life, usually some sort of self-imposed ideal—our own definition of paradise, and most of us feel like we never get there. Perhaps you spend so much time focusing on where you want to be, you don’t notice when you have already arrived. But I suspect it is in places like Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo—where the ocean breeze tantalizes, the ruffling of the palm trees lull and the horizon stretching off across the big blue ocean inspires—that we can pause long enough to put things in perspective. And sometimes that’s as close as you can get, and sometimes that’s more than enough.

Have a great summer and keep checking in with our website over the next few months. We will have lots of new additions to adip digital, as there’s always more to say.

Until next time,

EDITOR – PUBLISHER

Catherine Krantz
info@adip.info

March 2009 COLUMNISTS – CONTRIBUTORS

Sierra May Bishop
John Glaab
Michel Janicot
Ed Kunze
Epitacio
Lorenzo Marbut
Lisa Martin
Linda Neil
Hans Nystrom
Matthieu Pichenot
Ian Sheppard
Lisa Sheppard
Nancy Seeley

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Which do you prefer?

What big ideas and hard work can do when a community comes together.

14 years ago Marina Sanchez Hernandez started offering classes to indigenous children under a tree in their impoverished hillside community in Zihuatanejo, because they were too poor to even attend public school. Now The Netzahualcoyotl Multilingual Primary School and Kokoyotzin Kindergarten for Indigenous and Other Children educates almost 500 children in several native languages, from pre-school to high school and has already sent its first graduates on to college. The Netza project is unabashedly bold in its goals to eradicate poverty in their community through education and has brought together diverse groups of parents, tourists and community volunteers to build a school all can be proud of. www.netzaproject.org

By Lisa Martin Photos by Abby Ross

Netza school scholarship recipients and committee

There’s been lots of wonderful new developments in the Zihua community with the long-term work of The Netza Project surrounding education for the region’s migrant, street, indigenous and other children, the empowerment of women through literacy and new employment options, and sustainable community development. The parents and teachers of The Netzahualcoyotl (Netza) School for Indigenous Children, now 14 years old, hosted a native food and cultural celebration, a Convivio, for long-time donors, friends, and volunteer teachers on January 30, 2009. Netza School Founder and Director Marina Sanchez Hernandez gave a short talk and shared photographs of the unique dream and history of the school, while over 30 guests enjoyed the company of teachers, parents and children to celebrate the school’s progress from a cluster of shacks, to a well-maintained facility that’s making a lasting difference to advance literacy and cultural understanding, and end poverty in thousands of lives.

Netza Project Founder, Lisa Martin, with a few of her kids

Netza student with book

by Catherine Krantz

Aikeke Rose, director of the EMEC music school, local musician, and music professor at the Tecnologica de la Costa Grande (Zihuatanejo’s technical college), has released a new CD of Instrumental ballads called, Jahsvibes Series #1, and like all of his endeavors it is focused on promoting his passion, the EMEC. The Escuela de Música Ezequiel Cisneros (EMEC), (“Ezequiel Cisneros music school”) has been offering music and voice classes in various locations in Zihuatanejo for seven years. They have received donated land from the Zihuatanejo city government to build a permanent site and with the help of architecture students of the Technological school are in the process of surveying and clearing the land to be able to use it. In the meantime, they are now housed on Cuahutémoc street in central Zihuatanejo, across from the library. They have classes in guitar, piano, and drums for beginners, for children in grades 1 – 8, and most children provide their own instruments. They have twelve guitar students and a 20-member choir. They have ten drum students, four of them in the four to five year-old age range, and hope to build a performing drum corp.

EMEC pre-school drum student

By Lorenzo Marbut

With the world economy in tatters, Sailfest raised a remarkable 654,320 pesos for its Mexican non-profit, Por Los Niños de Zihuatanejo, A.C. Por Los Niños will continue to work in partnership with the City of Zihuatanejo and Rotary International to provide educational opportunities for disadvantaged children in Zihua and surrounding communities.

Zihua’s finest musicians and their International Guitar Festival friends have donated their talent to produce another fabulous CD, “Sounds of Zihua 2009.” Their three CDs and four benefit concerts have netted approximately 400,000 pesos for the kids. Imagine, building classrooms with voices and guitars. What a concept! The CDs are available at these community-spirited businesses: Casa Cafe, Sunset Bar & Grill, Casa Del Faro Bar, Jungle Pizza and the Inn at Manzanillo Bay.

On March 16th, Zihuatanejo will celebrate Mexico’s newest Federally-certified bilingual, indigenous school. After an eight-year struggle for recognition, the old Nueva Creacion primary school will be reborn as La Escuela Primaria Octavio Paz, named after Mexico’s cherished Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, poet, philosopher and human rights champion. The eleven classroom school serves 320 bright-eyed young scholars and was built entirely with funds donated by Sailfest, the local community and international friends.

For more infromation on Por Los Niños, Contact: Lorenzo Marbut, home: 755-554-2115, cell: 755-102-4463, Lorenzo@porlosninos.info

Mother Nature, My Nature by Owen Lee
Book Review by Douglas Beach

 The image on the cover of Owen Lee’s new book, a drawing of early man—let’s call him Homo erectus—is removing a mask from his face that is a caricature of the author. What are readers to make of this?

One might ask what sparks Lee’s interest in these topics, and what credentials qualify him to write about these subjects. For starters, the back cover copy states, “Owen Lee was the first American to join the crew of Captain Jacques Yves Cousteau aboard his famous research ship, the Calypso, first as an underwater cameraman, then as a traveling lecture spokesman promoting Cousteau’s thoughts about nature in over 300 cities.”

Captain Cousteau passed away in 1997. His legacy includes 120 television documentaries and 50 books. This prolific outpouring earned Cousteau a reputation as one of the early pioneers in bringing green issues to public attention, and Lee rubbed elbows with the great man for nearly a decade.

In My Mother, My Nature, Lee tells readers of dinner conversations aboard Cousteau’s famous ship that centered on nature’s rebellion against humankind’s gathering population outburst and other ecological blunders.

Said Cousteau; “Man’s road into the future leads smack into a wall . . . Until we learn to live in harmony with our ecosystem, survival of life as we know it is doomed. I give it fifty, perhaps a hundred years.”

The captain’s statement got Lee to thinking about man’s disregard for Mother Nature and he never stopped thinking about it. Some years later the Calypso sailed into Zihuatanejo bay and Lee traded the sailing life for a nature preserve at Playa Las Gatas.

Author Owen Lee

To put a proper foundation beneath his argument that the world is on the cusp of disastrous overcrowding, depletion of natural resources, and rapid environmental destruction, Lee hurtles the reader through the Big Bang theory, the ambling rise of hunter-gatherer Homo erectus, and the raw, gene driven sex habits of humankind. Along the way, his book argues that the planet is indeed warming, and the hole in the ozone layer is ever widening. The author backs up his pronouncements with research from an impressive bibliography that includes Al Gore’s Earth in Balance, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Willis Harman’s Global Mind Change, and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

In a particularly bold stroke, Lee encourages the devout to set aside their myriad gods in exchange for proven scientific facts and belief in Mother Nature.

Writes Lee, “Floating on the cherished beliefs of their forefathers, religious beliefs have survived on faith alone. But their survival has come at a heavy price…” The author infers that a worldwide commitment to living within the laws of Mother Nature is the single path that might avoid the bedlam ahead. “Throughout her annual migrations around the sun, Mother Earth blindly follows a strict code of quantum physics and a precise time schedule. She does not know if there is life aboard and cares less. She is on her own mission.”

With regard to the book cover, if you guessed that the author believes himself a descendent of Homo erectus rather than Adam and Eve, you are correct.

Random House and Fawcett, publishers of most of Lee’s earlier books, provided Lee with proofreading services. This book, published by Seahorse Productions, contains syntax errors that Lee says he is correcting in the upcoming second printing, though these faults in no way detract from the powerful message of Owen Lee’s magnum opus.

Mother nature, my Nature is available at Embarcadero near the Playa Municipal basketball court, and at El Rebusque (book store) on Calle las Palapas near the intersection of Calle Cocos downtown. An autographed book may be ordered direct from Owen Lee via e-mail owenzih@yahoo.com or cell phone 044 755 102 7111 is a wide departure from the author’s previous books, a novel, several skin diving manuals, tourist guides, and just last year, an autobiography. Owen Lee is the American expatriate proprietor of Las Gatas Beach Club. It follows that most of his earlier works were of a tropical bent featuring turquoise waters, coco palms, and white sand beaches. This new book is very different—the clash of science, religion, and Mother Nature.

About the Author: Douglas Beach is a writer living in Zihuatanejo.