As I finish off the last details of the new issue of La Chispa magazine, one of the final things to do is to include the glyphs on the front cover that represent the start date and end date of that issue in the 13 moon calendar. We have been running this for years now, and when we started we included articles that tried to explain what they were all about. Space considerations meant we couldn’t carry that on indefinitely but to maintain some recognition of the 13 moon calendar I decided to keep putting the glyphs on the front cover. Many people probably wonder what they are…..

The 13 moon calendar for me marks a shift from the classic ‘Time is money’ doctrine to a more creative ‘Tiem is art’ approach. Why? well, apart from being a more obvious way to count days and years (13 months of 28 days + 1 ‘day out of time’ to give us our accustomed 365 days), it also lends itself to being more prosaic. The 13 moon calendar is really an adaptation of the Mayan Tzolkein, and by making it fit into our 365 day count allows it to become more widely used. My hope is that the 13 moon calendar, with its poetic leanings and respect for natural rhythms continues to grow and one day become our standard for time keeping. Counting days is so fundamental toour being, that the founders of the 13 moon calendar believe that if we can change the way we count time we can change our very nature to be more peaceful and conscious. Ambitious ideals, and that is why the glyphs appear every issue on the cover of La Chispa. more information can be found at www.tortuga.com

The Chispa team would like to welcome everyone to the start of a new decade and a look ahead to the next few weeks. One piece of news that has been causing quite a lot of news is the detention of Greenpeace’s director, Juan López de Uralde, following the Copenhagen climate talks. He has been held with four other activists in Denmark and is due to be released on Thursday. There has been a massive show of support for the detainees and the Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior,delivered 16 kilos of mail for them the other day. People wanting to show their support can visit the Greenpeace page set up here.

This story can be read in full in our latest newsletter which went out on Monday here, along with other news and of course our events listing for January.

This is really a look ahead to 2010 as much as a look back at 2009, as we finally launch our blog pages on the La Chispa web site. Next year will see more updating and activity on the blog site although for now only in English - we will be looking for contributors to provide spanish information, but most bilingual parts of the web site can be found in the main body of the web site. 2009 passes and with it a difficult year for many people living here in southern Spain, but from that people are finding new and creative ways of developing their work and businesses, so we hope to see 2010 being more stable and productive. For La Chispa, we were very lucky to be able to host successful events with over 5,000 people attending Arte Sano healing arts festival in San Pedro, helping to spread the word about natural living in Andalucia. Our recent Christmas market was also well attended and next year we hope to be organising more events in the province. Locally we have also got involved with the Coín transition movement - one of the most positive responses to the energy-environment-economic situation I have come across. I have the Transition Handbook on my desk waiting to be read and anyone interested should start by looking at www.transitiontowns.org.

2009 also saw the launch of our new look web site with more content and better layout for advertisers and editorial alike. But the real work on developing the site will take place in 2010 as we continue to integrate print and digital publishing and expand our newsletter which goes out every two weeks.

I can’t finish a round up of 2009 without saying congratulations to Sara, our assitant editor and now proud mother of a beautiful baby boy. And to complete the circle of life to spend  a moment in reflection on the passing of our dear friend Anette Wolken, who sadly passed away a few weeks ago - we wish you well on your next journey.

It’s hard to know what 2010 will bring so the best way forward is to step into it with a positive outlook. Happy New Year. Phil