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Presidents Update
September 6, 2007
By: Edward Yurica - President Fuentes Verdes
December 20, 2007
Greetings Fuentes Verde’s Members and Friends
For Decembers I like to drop out. I go to the beach, the clean ones. I play in the surf, rejuvenating, renewing, resting and reflecting. Cyber connections get suspended, my nutritional intake improves, and I practice music and read and write. At some point the fantasy of the dropping out fades and the notion that amongst many responsibilities I have chosen to take on, one is President of Fuentes Verdes, so first of all let me wish you all a
Very Happy Healthy and Joyous Holiday Season.
Next:
There will be the annual General Assembly Meeting on January 19, 2008 at the Hotel Tilawa at 1pm where the elections of officers as well as other important business will take place. You will receive more information on the full agenda.
A Year End Note from the president
So what is it to be the President of a grass roots ecological association in December 2007 in Costa Rica?
Our first name as some may recall was Puentes Verdes, Green Bridges. Now we are Fuentes Verdes, Green Sources. What were we thinking in 1995?I suspect we were humans joined by our organic connection to nature and not to so many urban requirements.
Then as it is now, each of us drew a line and said “NO MORE”. Today I ask, as then, No more what?
No more holes in the roads?
No more development?
No more cows and their boniga (bovine excrement)?
No more cutting down trees?
No more electrical power surges?
No more selling properties for unheard of prices?
No more loud youth music on Saturday nights?
No more commissions?
Who will decide?
I recently received two letters by way of association to Fuentes Verdes. So I had to ask myself does the president need to respond to every reference to our association?
Oh the complexity of responsibilities! Usually I would say no, however the issues by my reading were significant given the times. One concerned the Dynamics of Economic Intervention, the other about the all too common of the abuses of planet earth. With every written expression, such as those letters were, comes a culturally loaded expectation; like how things should be. I doubt there is an easy way and perhaps as some would suggest really no way to fix the things that are “wrong” and to make it the way it should be. Perhaps the problems are too deeply rooted to fix.
In these modern times it seems we listen to the loudest voices, accept standards that may be misleading, worship celebrities and embrace sound bites. We judge value and worth by dollars, thoughtless short-term behavior seems to be common, and what irritates me the most is we are often too intellectually lazy to go beyond the glib language of politics and money.
It seems that FV members as well as the community in general have been slow or unable to decide collectively exactly what is wrong and needs fixing and how to go about changing it, collectively. For me it has been frustrating to try, as our original name implied, to build bridges between the different sides of wrong and better and shoulds. Many of you have heard me use the metaphor of Dance. I still embrace the idea that the dance we as part of the community engage in, knowingly or unknowingly, is found between the dynamic poles of the Purists in ideology and Primitive Survival priorities. The dance between these two with the complexities of population and resources and security and the numerous other elements of society is not for the lazy of minds. It is all a very complex mix and there is no room for bashing, whether Tico bashing, gringo bashing, capitalism bashing, environmental bashing and on and on. The over simplification of matters is dangerous and not helpful.
It would seem that the modern market economies and “winner take all” attitude has and will continue to bleed the resources from the poor and disadvantaged and the lazy, and I like to believe that FV will not make it easy for individuals or groups to plunder. For this reason We in FV need to be able and willing and allowed to sit down at all the meetings that concern the development of the Arenal Lake Region and with those that have commercial interests and those that have health interest, those that are holding the social fabric of a government together, and those that could care less but have power.
So I want to tell you things are changing and I like to believe improving; more rapidly in certain areas, less in others. All the players seem to have raised the level of commitment.
Government agencies are working at the infamous Plan Regulador in good faith. Public and private groups are forming to express their own interests whether economic, social or political. A very big change that is coming is the Tax structure. More and more is transparent and FV is in the position to help add voices and build the bridges, sit at the conference table and address the need for plans of a sustainable future into the decades ahead.
Please be part of the process; the dance I would say.
To repeat; there will be the annual General Assembly Meeting on January 19, 2008 where the elections of officers as well as other important business will take place.
Bring your wisdom, your skills and talents, your critical thinking. We will not always see it the same way. That is not the point. The point is We need to take part in figuring this out.
Once again Have a Safe Healthy and Joyous Holiday Season
Pura Vida
Edward E.Yurica
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