“Change your thoughts and you change your world,” said Norman Vincent Peale. But he was obviously not reckoning on today’s political culture, which seems resistant to change–at least when it comes to minds.

Despite the results of the 2006 midterm elections here in the U.S., American politicians and pundits continue to laud the virtues of “staying the course” as sound strategy for political success–and not just when it comes to the Iraq war, but to all kinds of issues. Consistency, congruity, unswerving loyalty not just to people but chiefly to ideas and causes–these hold high value in American politics and culture.

There is no greater insult in America today than “flip-flopper”, a label anyone with political ambitions is eager to avoid. It’s as if the act of changing one’s mind as the result of reasoned self-reflection is somehow as shameful, as, say, lying about sex with an intern, rather than a mark of maturity and character.

Certainly anyone who changes their views with the prevailing wind as a matter of political expediency deserves our condemnation, as do those who fail to keep their promises, both political and otherwise.

But as a mediator I have to ask, what’s so great about consistency anyway? If you’re going in the wrong direction, what’s the problem with heading in a better one? When exactly did it get to be a bad thing to change your mind?

Maybe it’s because mediators see people change their minds all the time. A mediator, nudging disputants toward understanding, may help them walk around a problem, lift it up, turn it over, and examine it from all sides. We witness individuals gather new data, test their assumptions against that data, and reach very different conclusions from the ones they initially arrived with. We see them admit or address mistakes and make necessary course corrections. And watch how these acts open the door to new possibilities and greater gains.

As Charles Kettering once said, “Where there is an open mind there will always be a frontier.”

We mediators spend a lot of time helping people make decisions.

And not just any decisions–informed decisions. This is particularly important when you’re dealing, as mediators often do, with people whose decision-making ability may be impaired by the strong emotional response that conflict can produce. The desire to punish an opponent, exact revenge, or teach someone a lesson can override reason and trump common sense. Sometimes you have to spend time getting people to consider whether a decision they want to make today in the heat of the moment will be one they regret ten years down the road.

Mediators then may be interested to see this video of Penn and Teller’s recent experiment revealing how appeals to emotion over reason can sway people to commit themselves before they have all the facts–in this case to sign a petition banning “dihydrogen monoxide“–water.

(Via Boing Boing.)

During my first year of blogging I wrote one of my favorite posts: “More than we bargained for: does gender matter in negotiation?”

A meditation on gender, negotiation, and social behavior, this post began with a description of a Kia commercial depicting a husband and wife shopping for a new car, portraying the wife as bystander while the husband negotiates.

As it turns out, truth bears a striking resemblance to fiction. Here’s my story:

During the worst time possible–i.e., just one day before I was leaving for a long trip to the U.K.–my car expired. It did so in the most spectacular way possible–ignition, clutch, radiator, and exhaust system imploded simultaneously.

So the waning days of 2006 found me in the overflow lots of local car dealers hunting for end-of-year specials.

(For those of you who have not bought a car lately, recall that the negotiation begins the moment a member of the so-called “sales team” approaches you as you stand there peering hungrily into the window of a 2007 Mazda RX-8. This is the moment when the sales person attempts to gain your good will, earn your trust, and induce you to buy.)

On the first day my husband tagged along to keep me company. Even though I took the lead in the discussions and we both made it clear that the car was for me, sales staff (every one of them men) addressed most of their remarks and questions to my husband as if I’d been invisible. (I can only surmise that they they must have missed the memo that coverture is no longer the law in the U.S.)

I also noticed that they would point out certain features to him but not to me (the engine or the location of the spare tire and jack) or point out features to me but not to him (lighted vanity mirrors, cup holders in the backseat). This happened even when I made it clear that I wasn’t interested in backseat cup holders, it was engine performance, road handling, and fuel efficiency that I cared about. (Surely I can’t be the only woman who wants to see what’s under the hood.) This happened consistently from one dealership to the next.

The next day I decided to continue my search without my husband in tow. I figured it would be a lot less aggravating, and I was tired of being invisible.

The first day had been for looking only. I decided to devote this next day to test driving.

For me, manual transmission is a must. I’ve driven a stick since I got my license and enjoy the control it gives me over the car and the road. At every dealership I visited but one, car salesmen were amazed that a woman could actually handle a stick shift. At the conclusion of test drives, some even behaved as if they’d just seen a trained monkey perform a particularly good trick. Needless to say, this did not win any bonus points with me. One of them even commented, “Good girl!” (Lucky for him he did not try to pat me on the head. I would have beaned him with a cup holder.)

What was so deeply discouraging about this experience is how universally and openly held these beliefs about women’s competence seemed to be (at least at car dealerships in southern New England). Stereotypes die hard, even in the 21st century.

The behavior I observed was overt and obvious. It was impossible to miss or mistake.

Which led me to wonder about the extent of its covert manifestations.

If this is the tip of the iceberg that is visible, what lies below the water line?

If this is what it’s like at car dealerships, what’s happening in board rooms, on factory floors, in classrooms, in town halls and state houses–even, perish the thought, at mediation tables?

To what extent might any of us be complicit in perpetuating these archaic notions? What stereotypes do each of us still cling to?

America may have elected its first woman Speaker of the House, but it looks like it still can’t imagine a woman in the driver’s seat.

What we do has impact. Every deed, every word.

In just 90 seconds, the video “Children See, Children Do” shows how powerful that impact can be when it comes to the children whose lives we touch.

This video is part of a public awareness campaign of Child Friendly Australia, an initiative of the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN).

If you want to make the world a better place (and who doesn’t), watch this short clip.

(Thanks to the blog Dumb Little Man for the link.)

In a joint study that may ultimately teach us much about the prejudices humans harbor regarding class and privilege, Harvard and Stanford psychologists have discovered that children as young as 5 prefer lucky people over the unlucky:

“Our experiments show the difficulties that confront youngsters as they make judgments of those touched by luck or misfortune… Young children express stronger liking for the beneficiaries of good luck compared to the victims of bad luck and generalize this preference to those who share membership in a group. Because the disadvantaged are more likely to experience negative events beyond their control - such as the tendency for the poor to be most impacted by natural disasters - this innocuous preference for the privileged may eventually grow more harmful, further increasing negativity toward the disadvantaged. Such preferences may, in turn, help explain the persistence of social inequality.”

(Via Boing Boing.)

With Conflict Resolution Day just around the corner (October 19, in fact), conflict resolvers may be interested to know that today marks the official release date of the video game Bully, produced by Take Two Interactive Software, Inc. under its Rockstar Games label.

Bully depicts the adventures of teenager Jim Hopkins as he stands up to the obstacles–social, educational, and physical–that await him at fictitious private school Bullworth Academy (motto: canis canem edit—dog eat dog).
(For a post last year from this blog that covered Bully and pop culture depictions of conflict, please read “Seeing ourselves: conflict and negotiation in popular culture“.)

Many months before its release, angry parents, lawmakers, and educators on both sides of the Atlantic denounced Bully and called for an outright ban on its distribution and sale in protest of its purported glorification of high school violence–before any of them had even seen the game first-hand. One attorney, Jack Thompson, a conservative crusader against violence and sex in the media, is currently seeking to have Bully deemed a public nuisance in violation of Florida law.

Surprisingly, however, media and gaming experts who previewed the game report that Bully in fact has little violence. Clive Thompson, author of the blog Collision Detection, had this to say about Bully in a recent article on Wired.com:

It turns out the game doesn’t glorify bullying at all.

Indeed, it’s almost precisely the opposite.

…Instead, most of your early missions involve you defending the helpless: Escorting weak-bladdered nerds past phalanxes of threatening athletes, or sneaking into the girls’ locker room to retrieve an essay that popular cheerleader stole from a helpless she-geek…

Bully, however, may be subversive in ways that its opponents didn’t anticipate. According to Thompson, Bully functions as no-holds-barred polemic on the rigid social hierarchies and daily injustices that high school life is susceptible to:

Peel back the hood on the ludic violence, and Rockstar’s games have a surprisingly consistent moral view: Those with power will inevitably abuse it. It is a conclusion that would not displease Thomas Hobbes, or even Thomas Jefferson.

That’s why Bully is, in many ways, the ultimate Rockstar game. By turning to high school, the designers have found the perfect locale for exploring the cliquishness, unfairness and brutality of everyday society.

Which proves once again that things are not always what they seem.

Although this blog is, generally speaking, not political in nature, on rare occasions I do weigh in on political issues when there is reason to do so.

I have a reason today.

To learn why, simply read on. If you prefer to skip this, no hard feelings.

No matter where you are in the world, you have probably read about last week’s vote by the U.S. Senate to pass the innocuously titled Military Commissions Act of 2006–a bill governing the detention and prosecution of terror suspects.

It is, of course, disastrous for what it means to U.S. standing in the world court of public opinion and to American democracy and justice. It broadly redefines who may be deemed an enemy combatant to now include permanent residents of the U.S., strips detainees of their right to challenge their detentions in court through the centuries-old mechanism of habeas corpus, denies detainees full access to the evidence against them, allows for the use of aggressive interrogation techniques, and immunizes the executive branch from prosecution.

Bad enough in the abstract. Consider for a moment what that means on a personal level.

My husband, a British national, has been a permanent resident of the U.S. since 1972. Since that time he has raised three children, all born here in the U.S. As a professor of law, he has educated and mentored thousands of American attorneys, and as a mediator and arbitrator has assisted countless people resolve difficult disputes. Like most of us here, he is a taxpayer. He has been a productive and contributing member of American society since he arrived here 34 years ago. The U.S. has been both physical and emotional home to him for a very long time.

That has all changed for him.

Now, under the bill the Senate passed, permanent residents like my husband could be detained. He would be unable to challenge his detention in court. I would be denied information about where he is being held. And he could be held indefinitely by the U.S. government.

For the first time since he arrived in the U.S., he no longer feels safe. His position here feels precarious and uncertain. This is not the America he first knew. It’s not, for that matter, the America I grew up in.

We don’t think we’re being paranoid. Not when you stop to consider that our elected leaders are regularly accused of a lack of patriotism or even treason simply for speaking out against the war in Iraq. And if that’s what members of Congress can look forward to, is it paranoia or just good common sense to wonder what might lead to detention for a mere permanent resident like my husband? One too many leftist letters to the editor of the local newspaper? An unguarded comment to his students about American constitutional law? A donation to the wrong charitable cause?

As one letter writer to the Boston Globe put it yesterday:

I grew up in Argentina during the rule of a military junta that disappeared more than 30,000 people. I know that when a president has the sole power to detain people he deems to be enemies, when he alone can set the rules for interrogation, when detained people don’t have the right to go to court, and when laws are written to immunize officials who have already committed torture, one is no longer living in a democracy but in a dictatorship.

The political is now personal. The question is, What will you and I do about it? Before it’s too late to ask, What can you and I do about it?

American mediators looking to relocate where need for their services will be greatest will want to read “How Angry Is Your City?“, an article by Men’s Health magazine that ranks the 100 angriest U.S. cities.

Factors considered include percentage of men with high blood pressure, rates of aggravated assaults, statistics on workplace violence, and road rage.

My own city, Boston, renowned for its hot-tempered motorists, ranked far lower than I anticipated, at #39 (due perhaps to the high percentage of practicing mediators within city limits).

This morning a friend, knowing my interest in the use of digital technology to foster human interaction, forwarded to me a link to the Yellow Chair Stories, one postgraduate art student’s experiment in using a wifi connection and one yellow wooden chair to create some community and conversation in the London neighborhood she lived in.

Anab Jain, as a project for the Royal College of Art, placed a brightly painted wooden chair together with a welcoming sign outside her flat which read, “My Wifi network is open for neighbours and passersby – FREE ACCESS FROM THIS CHAIR!”

Jain explains her experiment in art and social interaction this way:

By placing this sign and a yellow chair outside my house, I conducted a live service design intervention and extended the boundaries of my home to encompass the boundaries of my wireless network.

This ‘grass roots’ design approach illustrates how wireless technologies could become interfaces to recreate transient spaces for conversations at the threshold of the public and the private, the physical and the electronic.

Jain is bringing her work to California to ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge & the Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art beginning on August 7.

(Thanks, Connie, for the link!)

Kevin O’Keefe makes the case today that lawyers should rally to support net neutrality, the notion that the Internet should be a level playing field for all who participate. For that matter, mediators (whose stock in trade after all is neutrality) should, too.

When the inventor of the Internet himself (Tim Berners-Lee, not Al Gore) speaks out in its support, we’d all better listen. You can do just that by watching Berners-Lee’s impassioned and convincing video plea to preserve net neutrality. Amanda Congdon, host of the daily videoblog Rocketboom, has posted an editorial today you won’t want to miss that takes viewers on a road trip illustrating the impact of net neutrality’s demise.

To hear both sides of the issue, read these two dueling perspectives on net neutrality via Slashdot, which aired on National Public Radio this week, one by Scott Cleland, CEO of the Precursor Group, and a spokesperson for the telecom industry, and the other by Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, and a proponent of net neutrality.

Before you make up your mind, ask yourself how much you trust Comcast or Verizon or any of the other telecom giants. Given the inexcusably rotten customer service experiences I’ve had with both of those corporate weasels, I know which side I’m on.

To join the good fight, visit SaveTheInternet.com.

Technology has utterly transformed our ability to communicate with each other. Linking to each other both literally and figuratively, many of us connect through cellphones, email, instant messaging, blogs, and networking web sites, yet ironically we may be less connected to each other than we think.

According to a study to be published today in the American Sociological Review, Americans are becoming increasingly socially isolated. The study reveals, for example, that one quarter of Americans say that they have no one to discuss important personal issues with, and that the number of close friends that American have has dropped from three to two, according to this report from MSNBC. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe reports that this spreading isolation is experienced more acutely among those with less education, people of color, and older Americans. Unsurprisingly, those who are young, white, and well educated tend to have stronger social networks.

This study seems to vindicate the views of scholars like Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, published in 2000, who have been saying that America’s social capital is in serious decline.

From my own experience I have to say that I’ve never felt more connected, thanks to a web of friends, family, and colleagues. One of my closest friends is someone I met through an online discussion group who lives hundreds of miles away from me. We have met face-to-face only twice, yet our regular electronic correspondence and cellphone calls sustain our close friendship. Email keeps me connected with other close friends scattered across the globe, who, incidentally, read my blog as a way to stay in touch (hi, guys!). And, speaking of blogging, my blog has introduced me to people I would never have met otherwise and has led to enduring and important friendships.

On the other hand, I recently saw a scenario unfold that demonstrated to me how deeply disconnected we as Americans have become. I had just wrapped up a presentation on mediation at a family therapy center. As I was leaving, I noticed a mother and her teenage son who had just completed their session with their family therapist. After making their next appointment, they both simultaneously whipped out their cellphones, placed calls, and began loud conversations with whoever was on the other end, both of them ignoring the conspicuously positioned “Please No Cellphones” sign in the reception area. I walked out behind them to the parking lot to my car. They both jumped into their SUV, and, as I saw them drive off, they were still talking on their cellphones.

But, alas, not to each other.

Those of you who are on the alert for depictions of attorneys in popular culture should take a look at this pizza ad campaign for Donatos Pizza, which hilariously lampoons ambulance-chaser web sites.

(Via the Duct Tape Marketing Blog.)

Technorati tags: Culture and Society, Lawyers

Last June the odr.info weblog linked without comment to an article by right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin on the threat which peer mediation allegedly poses to the American way of life:

The left-wing Kumbaya crowd is quietly grooming a generation of pushovers in the public schools. At a time of war, when young Americans should be educated about this nation’s resilience and steely resolve, educators are indoctrinating students with saccharine-sticky lessons on “non-violent conflict resolution” and “promoting constructive dialogues.”

One year later, guardians of “traditional family values” (whatever those may be) warn of a similar lurking danger that threatens the nuclear family, the sanctity of marriage, and, apparently, the foundations of civilization itself: tolerance towards homosexuals.

Via Objective Justice comes this report of an initiative launched by Concerned Women for America to involve parents in a nation-wide effort to audit their children’s schools for signs that they are promoting the “radical homosexual agenda”. Among the indicia of moral corruption that parents are asked to be alert for?

• anti-bullying policies that include sexual orientation as a protected category
• federal funding of “objectionable programs” such as peer mediation
• programs teaching tolerance and diversity

To see CWA’s “School Audit Form” for yourself, click here for the PDF download.

Technorati tags: conflict resolution, mediation, peer mediation

Here in America, in a political climate which increasingly abandons the reasoned debate and factual analysis that once characterized public discourse in favor of logical fallacies, cheap appeals to emotion, and personal attacks, there is evidently little popular support for intelligent dialogue between political parties, let alone between the U.S. and its adversaries abroad.

Against that backdrop, a question that emerges time and again is, “Should we negotiate with terrorists?” In the public imagination, negotiation has unfortunately come to be synonymous with compromise, appeasement, and weakness, and the answer for many here is “no”.

In his latest edition of Negotiating Tip of the Week, Josh Weiss poses and ponders exactly that kind of tough question. He begins by challenging the popular definition of negotiation and proposing instead one that mediators will be familiar with.

To join Josh in asking what it means to negotiate with extremists, listen to his podcast here. As always, Josh welcomes listener input, along with ideas for future programs. This is one place on the web at least where public discourse remains welcome.

Technorati tags: conflict resolution, negotiation, Mediation

Every journey begins with a single step. In the case of Canadian Kyle MacDonald, his began with a single red paper clip.

Kyle, who could teach the contestants on the reality show Unan1mous a thing or two about negotiating, decided to barter his way from a red paper clip to a house, using a series of upward trades to move closer to his goal, which now looks increasingly attainable.

You can read about Kyle’s adventures in bargaining here at his web site, One Red Paperclip.

As anyone knows who has tried to get through to customer service by phone, probably nothing is more frustrating than being trapped in phone menu hell.

The Boston Globe reports this morning that Paul English, of Arlington, Mass., has come to the rescue. Today marks the launch of English’s online campaign, gethuman.com, a web site aimed at helping stressed-out consumers beat automated voice response systems to get through to an actual human being.

gethuman.com features a handy list of “gethuman cheats” arranged alphabetically by company, as well as some all-purpose tips to help you avoid spending eternity on hold.

To learn how you can join Paul’s cause and rage against the machine, click here.

A continuing fascination for me is the depiction of conflict and negotiation in popular culture. As I have discovered, while depictions of conflict are common, depictions of conflict resolution in the media are quite rare.

Back in March I reported here on “Families at War”, a British television series which exposes the dynamics and roots of family conflict and documents the efforts of specially selected families to resolve their differences under a mediator’s guidance.

Media-watching mediators may be interested to learn that plans are underway here in the U.S. to turn the camera’s lens on divorce mediation. Independent television producer Kate Hudec is working with Massachusetts mediator Diane Neumann to create a documentary which will explore the experience of divorce mediation.

Neumann is currently seeking a divorcing couple willing to participate in this first-of-its-kind project. Information and a contact form are available here.

I really miss my friend Ashok Panikkar, who left Boston earlier this year to return to his native Bangalore to launch Meta-Culture, an ambitiously innovative and rapidly growing conflict resolution center.

Besides being a very dear friend, Ashok was for me a kind of 21st century de Tocqueville, a keen but affectionate observer of American political institutions and social mores.

One aspect of American culture that Ashok found especially curious (me, too, for that matter) is the schizophrenic way in which Americans construe the notion of privacy. On the one hand, we Americans insist that privacy is paramount, particularly in the home (which is, as everyone here knows, a man’s castle).

We place great value on our right to be free from governmental intrusion, and we insist that our medical histories, our video rental habits, our reproductive choices, and our handgun purchases are no one’s business but our own.

Yet we think nothing of using our cellphones to describe in the most intimate details—in public and at top volume in the presence of total strangers—our digestive ailments, in-law problems, and sexual escapades. We are also desperately eager to bare our souls and personal failings on reality television programs and talk shows. (I hasten to reassure my readers that I have personally not done any of those things. Yet.) The distinction between the private and public self has grown increasingly blurred.

“Public” versus “private” matters a lot to mediators: Those words can be said to define the line that separates alternative dispute resolution on the one hand from litigation on the other.

Litigation is a fully public activity—which to some measure is what makes it such effective leverage for settlement, particularly for swaying defendants who may be eager to avoid the embarrassing revelations discovery and trial could yield.

Mediation, on the other hand, by definition is confidential, a process unfolding privately behind closed doors. Privacy is what makes mediation eminently suitable for fruitful settlement discussions. Arbitration as well provides a private adjudication and resolution of issues.

One would suppose that privacy is a universal constant which all of us, regardless of which corner of the globe we occupy, value—and value similarly. It might therefore be easy to presume that all of us, particularly here in the West, recognize the concept of privacy as a means of honoring personal dignity and the inviolability of the integrity of the self.

As it turns out, defining privacy is not so easy—even among culturally similar societies: an enormous gulf in fact exists between American and European understandings of privacy. European traditions regarding privacy focus primarily upon the protection of personal dignity and honor; while Americans, on the other hand, often understand privacy to mean the sanctity of the home against intrusion by the state.

Yale Law School Professor James Q. Whitman illuminates and explores these differences, along with the legal, political and social traditions which explain and gave rise to them, in “The Two Western Cultures of Privacy: Dignity versus Liberty” (downloadable here in PDF).

Simultaneously serious scholarship and entertaining romp, this article takes readers from the public latrines of Ephesus (a phrase I never thought I’d ever find myself typing) to the scandals of the 19th century Parisian art scene to modern-day Washington and Monica Lewinsky. This is a fun and highly stimulating read.

A couple of weeks ago, just for kicks (and also because I was frankly too tired to get off my butt and change the channel), I watched Hell’s Kitchen, the latest reality television offering. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years, you’re probably all-too familiar with the standard premise behind reality television shows: contestants compete for some prize (whether to marry an eligible bachelor, achieve fame and fortune as a vocalist, or, in this case, to win your own restaurant), usually under the supervision of an egotistical tyrant with serious anger management issues.

Reality television programs like this are indeed a curious phenomenon. If aliens from outer space visited Planet Earth and the only glimpse they were afforded into American culture was achieved through the satellite signals of reality television, they would undoubtedly reach the mistaken conclusion that above all things Americans value aggression, treachery, self-aggrandizement, and naked ambition. Oh, yes—and conflict. Definitely conflict.

Conflict is indeed the high-octane fuel that popular entertainment runs on. You will never see a reality television program depicting a boss who is a skillful teambuilder with good listening skills and a collaborative approach to problem-solving. It just ain’t going to happen. Conflict is exciting. Peace, on the other hand, is pretty dull stuff. Let’s face it—watching people get along with each other is just no fun. (One can only wonder to what extent the prevalence of workplace bullying may be attributable to the influence of popular culture.)

I was struck by a comment that one of the Hell’s Kitchen contestants made when she was instructed to select two of her fellow contestants to be ejected from the game: “I’m not here to make friends”.

That phrase really struck me. “I’m not here to make friends.” Too bad really. And richly ironic when the goal of each contestant is to win their own business—a restaurant of their very own. No business, whether a restaurant or a restaurant supply manufacturer, can run without a good team to support it or without the good will of employees and customers to sustain it. (For an instructive example of what happens when qualities such as backstabbing and betrayal are openly encouraged among employees, and toxic practices flourish, consider Enron.)

As the famous 1960’s study by social psychologist Stanley Milgram demonstrated, each of us is only six people away from everybody else. This is the “small world phenomenon”, as Milgram described it, and the reason why networking in careers and businesses can be so effective. It’s also a good reason to cultivate connections, not burn bridges behind you.

It’s just too bad that bridge-burning is what keeps Nielsen ratings so high and viewers tuning in.

I couldn’t resist the following headline from today’s Orlando Sentinel: Could barbecue succeed where mediation fails?

According to the story that followed, mediation has unfortunately been unsuccessful in a long-standing dispute between Volusia County, Florida, and the City of Deltona over Deltona’s intended annexation of 5000 acres of land. Therefore, in a moment of civic inspiration and Southern hospitality, a resident of Deltona has invited municipal and county officials over to his place to sit down and work out their differences over a plate of barbecued ribs.

My thought is—hey, why not do both? Mediate and eat barbecue? After all, if collaborative law, which envisions the use of a team of attorneys and other professionals, including financial planners and therapists, to help disputing parties resolve differences cooperatively, why not apply the same team-based approach to mediation–pairing mediators with barbecue pitmasters to break down barriers to agreement and foster collaboration?

All kidding aside, quite a few mediators I know make a point of feeding their clients, not only because providing coffee and pastry is a nice thing to do, but for other reasons as well. Consider that the act of breaking bread with another human being is deeply symbolic, a reminder of the link between each person at table. (Note that the English word “companion” is derived from the Latin words for “together” and “bread”, signifying “the one with whom I share bread”.) There’s anecdotal evidence to suggest there might be something to this: a friend of mine, a community mediator who works primarily with families with teenagers and who often bakes brownies and cookies for her mediation sessions, insists that there’s something about the aroma of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies that puts everyone in a much more collaborative frame of mind–something which I can well believe.

Bon appetit. (And please pass the napkins.)