2010 Special Project updates look, logo, website

Trash transformed, lives changed.   XSProject transforms non-recyclable, plastic consumer and corporate waste into fun, functional products with innovative designs.  A special project supported in 2010 by Invoking the Pause founder Maggie Kaplan, XSProject shares the spirit and scope of the type of project in keeping with ITP’s intent.

Tucson Meet Yourself’s Sabores Sin Fronteras Farming and Foodways Alliance is a novel mobile exhibit in the form of a “heritage food wagon” or “taco diplomacy truck” to stimulate public discourse and community discussion at Arizona festivals and other events with regard to the sustainability and “foodprint” of traditional foods historically and currently eaten and produced in Arizona.
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Pause. Seed. Blossom. Or, in this case: Roast, Grow, Repair.

Fertile Grounds is the connective tissue that unites key components of existing businesses – coffee suppliers, retailers, farmers markets, city utilities – to develop and brand an urban food system process that is less wasteful, less carbon intensive, profitable and replicable. In this way, we hope to reduce the carbon impact of daily lifestyle choices related to food while promoting a sense of community and repairing the natural environment.

The Super Power Magic Motion Machine (SPM3) is a pedal-powered mobile art installation and performance piece in Lancaster, PA to raise awareness about energy consumption and human innovation: a custom-made bicycle with a trailer attachment to carry components to convert human power into electricity, initiating a public discourse about energy generation, consumption, and community empowerment.

Click here to see the PDF article about SPM3

Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has begun a new effort aimed at transforming the communication of science to diverse audiences. Their first class fellows will focus specifically on the message of Climate Change.

Nicole will join an impressive bunch of 20 other scientists at the Google headquarters in June to participate in an innovate workshop, bringing together “hands-on training and brainstorming on topics of technology and science communication.”

You can read about the program here >

There was a frost expected here two weeks ago, but Gary Nabhan of Taco Diplomacy a conservation biologist and inveterate seed-saver, was out in his hardscrabble garden anyway, planting his favorite food, hot chilies.  Chiltepin, chile de arbol, Tabasco, serrano, pasilla, Chimayo.  These are only a few of the pungent peppers that Mr. Nabhan and two other chili lovers, Kurt Michael Friese, a chef from Iowa City, and Kraig Kraft, an agro-ecologist studying the origin of hot peppers, collected on a journey that began two years ago in northern Mexico, and took them across the hot spots of this country…

Click here to go directly to the New York Times Article

Invoking the Pause is pleased to announce the 2011 “Blossoming Possibilities” Grants

a poem by David Whyte

“We shape our self to fit this world and by the world are shaped again. The visible and the invisible working together in common cause, to produce the miraculous. I am thinking of the way the intangible air passed at speed round a shaped wing easily holds our weight. So may we, in this life trust to those elements we have yet to see or imagine, and look for the true shape of our own self by forming it well to the great intangibles about us.”

by Maggie Kaplan

In our time together over three days of the 2010 Grant Partner Convening, we sought to invoke a communal pause in a few different formats.  We celebrated together.

We listened to and learned from each other. We reflected.

We were generative AND playful. We focused on cultivating many facets of our Return on Relationships.

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