Howdy y'all. I am leaving next week to Mexico where Maria Ros, Hector Reyes and I are continuing our work in rural Quintana Roo with permaculture demonstrations, local school curricula, transition towns, and constructing Ecoaldea Gratitud. During the Climate Summit, President Calderon made many pledges that we intend to hold the Mexican government to, and time will tell how all that unfolds.

In early March we will miss Carnaval to travel to Belize, where we will hold our 6th Annual PDC at the Maya Mountain Research Farm. We hope to have the usual group of local Mayan students together with international students, and this year we also are looking for participation from Belizian aid groups, who can improve their successes with a few simple techniques.

Following the course we are headed up into Guatemala to visit some Plenty projects and also pay a call on the folks who are experimenting with Georotational Energy -- using the spin of the earth to generate gigawatt-scale electricity by employing long water pipes oriented to Longitude.

In April I will be back at The Farm Ecovillage Training Center and ready to start constuction on our major remodeling project for the Eco-hostel, the first since 1994 on a building constructed from 3 Korean-War army tents c. 1972. We intend a new strawbale auditorium addition, more bathrooms (course graduates will be happy to hear), and an internet café (assuming Obama makes good on his pledge to erase the digital divide).

There will be lots more this year, including speaking at several Mother Earth News fairs, the IPC in Jordan, trips to Palestine, Finland and Estonia, and an audio book version of The Biochar Solution, so stay tuned!