Just in time for you to get serious about that New Year resolution to improve your Spanish, Ajijic writer Robert Bruce Drynan (Domain of the Scorpion; What Price Liberty) has published two bilingual books that offer fine stories and articles in both English and Spanish. Highly regarded Guadalajara teacher and writer Yolanda Ramìrez has provided all of the fine translations into Spanish.

Chapala will roll out the welcome mat for throngs of revelers as annual Carnaval festivities fire up on Friday, February, sparking high-spirited happenings that will keep the city jumping through Tuesday, February 17. 

With food truck dining now the latest rage with Tapatio diners, it’s no surprise that the January 24 Verbena Food Fest attracted a huge crowd of hungry customers flocking in from both local lairs and the nearby metro area. 

On January 22, the Chapala Sunrise Rotary Club, A.C., inducted their 42nd and 43rd  new members in a ceremony conducted by Membership Chair Sandra Loridans (left).   This makes the club the third largest in the District, following Guadalajara and Puerta Vallarta. 

President John Gonzales is pictured congratulating Dwayne Hartup, a former Police Chief in Michigan who is now associated with Love in Action children’s shelter, and Jacobo Lomelin (right), CEO of a charitable organization (seen here being pinned by sponsor Andres Rodriguez.)

The Chapala Sunrise Rotary club meets every Thursday at 10 am at the Hotel Montecarlo.  Persons interested in joining Rotary are welcome to attend.  More club information is available on the club website at www.chapalarotary.org.  

Chapala area householders, including at least one expat, have been recent targets of scam artists out to make a quick and easy buck by placing threatening phone calls. 

February 2 the day set aside each year to commemorate World Wetlands Day. The date marks the anniversary of 1971 adoption of the international convention on wetlands conservation, signed in the Iranian city of Ramsar.  

On February 2, 2009 Lake Chapala was officially designated as a Ramsar wetlands site, recognized for its values as a refuge for migratory birds, home to unique endemic species, a vital water source for the Guadalajara metro area and beneficial influence on Mexico’s climate.

And by a decree of Jalisco’s state congress issued in December of last year, February 2 has been also been declared as the Día Estatal del Lago de Chapala. The legislative initiative was proposed by District 17 congressman Jesús Palos Vaca, a former Jocotepec mayor Jocotepec who was seated as the sole Mexico Green Ecology Party representative in the state body. 

Palos tells this newspaper that in early in January the legislature instructed its Secretary General to issue notifications to the local governments of all seven lakeshore municipalities to encourage the organization of special activities, events, fairs or festivals in observance of the new state holiday.  It appears that neither Chapala nor any of the other municipalities have made plans to celebrate the occasion. 

Meanwhile, the comprehensive blueprint for Lake Chapala’s conservation, developed five years ago under Ramsar guidelines, seems to have been forgotten, left to gather dust somewhere in the depths of government bureaucracy.