Good evening everyone...
This will be the 8th consecutive year
projecthonduras.com puts on the Conference on Honduras
( http://www.projecthonduras.com/conference ). This
will be 5th consecutive year that we stage the event
in Copan Ruinas, Honduras. We keep returning to Copan
because we sense that it is the ideal location on
planet Earth for humanitarians and volunteers to meet
and exchange information, ideas, stories, and positive
energy... and brainstorm solutions to problems and
ways to work together on projects in Honduras.
There is a good feeling in this small town. There is
great space, color, and sound. It is the one place in
Honduras (for me, at least) that I can be in and be
re-energized to continue the long-term task of
contributing my time, experience, expertise and
talents to support efforts to empower the people of
Honduras.
My friend Flavia Cueva of Hacienda San Lucas has
recently shared with me some articles written in the
Washington Post and the Atlantic Journal-Constitution
about San Lucas and Copan Ruinas. Those of you who
might be interested, you'll find links to them at
http://www.haciendasanlucas.com under "Recent Press".
I think my favorite of these articles is the one by
Steve Hendrix of the Post. It's at
http://www.haciendasanlucas.com/washpost.htm
I encourage you to read it, particularly if you are
planning to be with us at the Conference on Honduras
2007. It should begin to get you in the mood.
Some of my favorite quotes (because they pretty much
transport me) from the piece include...
>
"These red tuk-tuk cabs are the transit water bugs of
Copan , scuttling around town, picking up passengers
and depositing them a few blocks away for a handful of
lempiras. Sometimes entire families of five or six
would jam into the three-wheeled carts for a bouncing
ride over the cobblestones."
"That's when I knew we had surrendered to Copan,"
"Suddenly we found ourselves in that idyllic
small-town comfort zone of 'The Andy Griffith Show,'"
"If Montgomery County were a disease, Copan just might
be the cure."
"Copan is a tight web of streets laid in a crevice of
Honduras 's western highlands. In a lush, flat river
basin at the foot of the town sit the Copan ruins, the
stone remnants of a city that marked the southernmost
reach of the Mayan empire from the mid-5th century
into the 9th."
"A town square anchored the grid of streets down near
the river, with residential streets leading off the
corners. Heading uphill, one or two houses on every
tightly packed block stood out with fresh paint or a
recent addition."
"Here and there a saddled horse was tied up, still
being the preferred conveyance for some of the
weathered old men who rode in from the campo for
supplies or to tie on a Sunday drunk. One clopped by
as the newbies found their school."
"Still, it was very much a tightly packed tropical
town of 9,000 souls, which meant going to sleep to the
sound of the neighbor's bedtime murmuring (and
sometimes arguing). And it meant waking with the
crowing of their roosters as the sun washed over the
ancient Mayan city a few hundred yards away. The slap,
slap of tortilla making soon followed, and Elda served
a full breakfast every day, always with tortillas and
cereal and rice and fresh juice and some of the
sublime local coffee."
>
In the past, I have described the annual Conference to
Honduras in Copan as kind of a pilgrimmage, akin to
the way Muslims visit Mecca, Jews visit Jerusalem,
Catholics visit Vatican City, Buddhists visit Lhasa,
Hindus visit Varanasi, and Elvis fans visit Graceland!
Every great movement or religion can probably identify
a physical place in the world where their people feel
a special connection to something greater than
themselves. projecthonduras.com has identified Copan.
Please join us there in October if you can.
Feel free to e-mail me at hondopost.....com if I can
answer any specific questions for you.
Thanks.
Sponsored By:
Adventures on Roatan: An exciting tour of the island on DVD
http://www.roatanvideo.com
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