“Where Stories Are Remembered”

Kewulay Kamara is a teacher and storyteller in the traditional vein of his native Sierra Leone. His wife Dionne, is a dancer and choreographer from Jamaica. Kewulay was a participant in the 2010 The Cathedral of St. John the Divine grant and attended the Invoking the Pause Convening.

Read Kewulay’s story in The New York Times

Are you a “taco diplomat?”

Do you savor, celebrate and promote the foods we share across the U.S/Mexico border to acknowledge our debts and gratitude to the indigenous and mestizo peoples of the Desert Borderlands for enriching our lives?  Are you ready to support their efforts toward greater food justice, food security, food democracy and food sovereignty?  Then you are a “taco diplomat”!

Each year Utne Reader puts forward its selection of world visionaries – people who don’t just concoct great ideas but also act on them.

Local and sustainable are on the tips of many tongues as more and more people try to eat food that’s good for them and the planet.  If you’re a part of this important conversation, you can thank Gary Paul Nabhan for helping to get it started…

After completing the overhaul of the ITP Website and Blog platform this Spring and Summer, I found myself in need of my own “Pause.”

The seemingly endless cascade of technology details, project roadblocks and challenges left me feeling both depleted and overstimulated.

With the start-up phase of the new website completed, we gratefully reached a plateau in our vision. It was time again to let the ground of my being lie fallow. I needed to empty myself to make room for a new phase of life.

And so I traveled to a yoga retreat in Bali.

I took a “Technology Chastity Vow” to go off the grid, including my cell phone, internet and email. This enabled me to have the space to “Drop in, Drop Down, Drop Under, and Drop Through” to a new vision.

These are just some of the mental meanderings from my journey.

Turning to arcs, circles and spirals to find our way home

Nina Simons exemplifies Mahatma Gandhi’s guidance to “Be the change you want to see in the world.” She’s always felt called to transform culture, to make it more inclusive, tolerant and just. And now, decades after a life rich with experience, she is being the change she wants to see by modeling women’s leadership in the world.

READ MORE

Stephen Antupit and I got a chance to talk with Nicole Heller, Ph.D., SPM3 Invoking the Pause Grant Partner, about her experience during and after the 2010 ITP Convening and her still-unfolding Google Fellowship invitation. These are just some of the excerpts of the discussion, which was inspiring and invigorating!

One of the many “Collateral Delights“ from the 2010 Invoking the Pause Convening was the ensuing mini-collaboration between ecologist and ITP Grant Partner Nicole Heller Ph.D. , and improvisational artist Nina Wise who performed at the Convening almost one year ago.

Following the Convening, Nicole invited Nina to attend a workshop that she organized at Stanford University to explore the link between the arts and sciences to visualize climate change. Here are some of Nina’s comments about that experience:

Gary Paul Nabhan is an internationally celebrated nature writer, seed saver, conservation biologist and sustainable agriculture activist who has been called “the father of the local food movement” by Mother Earth News. Gary spoke at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City, Oregon on redesigning our local food traditions and deepening out sense sustainable agriculture.

VIEW THE LECTURE VIDEO HERE

Britta Riley grew up on a ranch in Texas, so after four years of living in a one-bedroom apartment overlooking an airshaft, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, she felt deprived of nature. She decided to try growing food indoors, and three years ago began reading about hydroponic systems.

Click here to read the full article in The New York Times.