February 2011 in Revue Magazine

February is one of my favorite months—not because of Valentine’s Day. I love February because it means January is over. And except for New Year’s Day, I hate January.

Everyone who coasted since Thanksgiving is enthusiastically sending e-mails with ideas, projects and goals for the New Year. To which I ask: What have you been drinking?

If it’s a toad-juice cocktail, no worries, as the lethal mix will shorten the to-do list. See what I mean in Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth’s article on ancient reverence of the toad (p12).

A lot’s going on with the big-hearted NGO teams in Guatemala. We especially welcome volunteers from Canada returning this month with the Guatemala Stove Project. One of the volunteers, Liz Ballantyne-Jackson, tells us about it (p38).

How many times have you seen the quote from author Aldous Huxley extolling the beauty of Lake Atitlán? (Are your eyes already glazing over?) Well, you’ve never seen it in the context that our Panajachel scribe, Dwight Wayne Coop, presents it in his Lake Views column (p96).

If you’re looking for a rural getaway, read Linda Green Roesch’s travelogue from the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes mountains, where the modern era has yet to arrive (p14).

After the holiday lull, the calendar’s filling up, so check out this month’s DateBook (p22). Of special note: The annual Paiz International Festival of Art and Culture gets under way on Feb. 11th with a reunion concert in La Antigua (p19).

Hello, Houston, we have liftoff. January’s over, here we go!

—Matt Bokor