Welcome to 2011. Dictators topple in Egypt and Tunisia, civil war breaks out in Libya, social unrest boils to the surface all over the Mideast, floodwaters drown towns and countryside from the United states to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Australia, volcanoes erupt, and now a record breaking and devastating earthquake and tsunami strikes Japan. It is only mid March so fasten your seatbelts for there is much to come.

We have said that 2011 is a water year and certainly the element of water has been creating change everywhere. We also mentioned that water would be hot as we are seeing in the attempts to cool down the severely damaged nuclear reactors in Japan. Aggression is the mode for the year and as you can readily see, aggression is not limited to human expression but, because human emotion and Mother Nature are interconnected, severe aggression affects the intensity of earthquakes and tsunamis. Mather Nature is waking up and in her tossing and turning she will not be gentle. The environment itself will become aggressive because it is on the move and has much to shake up and rebalance.

Many of you have written requesting an explanation of the recent and ongoing events in Egypt. As of this writing Mubarek, the long term dictator of Egypt has been deposed and Egypt is under the temporary control of the military. Egyptians are ecstatic at their success in ousting the oppressive Mubarek regime that many have blamed for their poverty and oppression. While the Egyptians have been successful so far, no one knows what the final outcome will be because many similar revolutions in the past have failed to produce the freedoms that people sought. However, these are new times with probable new outcomes and results. Let us examine these stirring and world changing events in light of the trends forecast for 2011 and seek to understand it’s meaning for the entire world. I will begin by briefly listing the main characteristics for this year and then reviewing some of the year’s main themes.

My recent rather short eleven day trip to Vietnam was a much larger event than I could have imagined even though I knew that at some point in my life I was going to have to travel there for some completion. The trip was conceived of as both a family vacation and as a kind of pilgrimage to a land scarred not only by a war of my generation but from many past and present insults. Every once in a while my family likes to take a trip together that is not work related and so we look for interesting places we can go where air fares are bargains and this time it came up for Vietnam. My son Carlos needed a break from a heavy work schedule and the rains of Seattle as did his girlfriend Katie, and Anna, her husband Aaron, Lena and I all needed a break too from a long hard winter. So we arranged to travel together to Vietnam to get some southeast asian culture, some heat, and much desired time together. As a family we had a wonderful bonding experience and I am glad they were with me to support my own rather intense experience there.

During the month of October I had the extraordinary opportunity to travel from the Peruvian Andes to the Amazon jungle, visiting in sequence the Q’ero people in the mountains and the Shipibo of the upper Amazon. This amazing trip was only partially a result of long term planning. While the trip to the jungle was part of our long term schedule, the Andean part of the trip was, to be truthful, last minute. One of our students, Richard, had connected with the Q’ero people on a prior trip to Cuzco and became a godfather to one of their children. The child was now close to two years old and it was time for the important hair cutting ceremony that signals an infants initiation into the greater community. Until that time the child’s hair (whether male or female) remains uncut and uncombed and can appear quite scraggly. Because of high infant mortality it is unclear whether the child will survive or not. Between one and two years of age the child is deemed old enough to be received more fully into the tribe. Being the godparent, Richard was responsible to make the trip to Peru and cut the child’s hair along with the giving of proper gifts and financial support. He did not particularly want to make this extensive trip alone and asked my daughter Anna, my wife Lena, and myself a couple of months before if we would be interested in going. After brief consideration we decided that this was an unparalleled opportunity to visit a people we were very much interested in meeting, so we said yes.