Vignettes from a new life

So today, I am really, truly moved to Olympia. Even if it’s to a temporary furnished apartment with the rest of my belongings crammed into every square inch of a 10×20 storage unit :) Our first few days here (this being myself and my cat, Sophie), we’ve been a little off-kilter, not sleeping well, jumpy at all the new noises. The heaters turn on at random times, and every time they do, I can still feel Sophie start next to me. There’s a little neurotic dog who will get used to us and bark less eventually. Other than that, the apartment and the property are pretty much perfect.

I haven’t had a second to relax, really, between getting back from Mexico and packing the house, getting the utilities and mail transferred, moving, trying to work, etc. I think the day and night that I can finally relax I will start to feel at home here. Sophie was feeling better yesterday after she got to stretch out on the ledge in the sun and explore the front porch a little. She is no longer meowing loudly and plaintively at me, like “when are we going HOME??”

The famed Olympia Farmer’s Market is opening in two weeks, and I can’t wait. It’s open Th - Sun, so I should be able to go every week and get fresh and locally-produced food. Yay!

Seen today on a bumper sticker: “B.A.D.D. Bicyclists Against Dumb Drivers” :P Very Olympia.

Yesterday was like a mini-amalgamation of all the different things I am trying to do with my work life, with five different income streams converging. First, I spent the morning in conference calls on environmental consulting issues. Then, I had a noon training session on the new technology for InstantAssist, an online conflict counseling start-up I am involved with (more on that in a later blog). I managed to fit in some quick editing that I do freelance on Guru.com, and then it was off to meet a new mediation client and introduce them to the process they will be going through as they mediate their separation and parenting plan. Finally, I did a tarot reading :)

All paid except the InstantAssist training, which is still in start-up mode. I had some issues with my headset that I hopefully solved tonight (by buying a better one… for $29.99). It’s interesting to look at the breakdown of income for the day:

Environmental consulting $240
Editing $60
InstantAssist -$30
Mediation $250
Tarot $35

Of course, the rest of this week I’ve hardly had time to work. But all in all, it seemed like an interesting and worthwhile day. Mexico was also interesting from the standpoint of my eventual hoped-for lifestyle. I worked about 3 hours a day, slept a LOT to the sound of soothing waves, read books, talked and played games with my family, walked, and just generally had a very nice and relaxing time. And still made enough money to support myself, especially in the local economy. So I came back feeling like my plans are not entirely ridiculous.

And tomorrow I am going out to look at houses that have been on my “to-see” list for a while, but which I’ve been too busy to visit. On the week-end I may fit in a little relaxation :)

Obama - the Mediator’s Candidate

I received this from a fellow mediator, Ron Kelly. I agree with him 100% and just wanted to pass these ideas along. For those of you Dems reading this in Washington State - please make this your year to go to the caucuses, it’s the only way your vote will count!
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Obama - A Mediator’s Candidate?

I remember early on in the campaign, before I had formed a preference, I heard an experienced Washington reporter discussing the candidates. He found Obama puzzling. He claimed that if you were in a disagreement with Obama, he would summarize your arguments even better than you could yourself. This got my attention.

Then, in an early debate, Obama was asked if he would negotiate directly with the leaders of countries with whom we have strong differences. He said yes. He was attacked by many who said this just proved how naive he was. He didn’t back down. He pointed out that we negotiated with Stalin and we negotiated with Mao. He asserted that you do not need to give away anything to enter negotiations with people with whom you strongly disagree.

In speeches, he consistently advocated sitting down to negotiate with, and respectfully listening to, the heads of oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, and health care companies. He was roundly attacked as “wanting to bring Kumbaya to a knife fight”. He responded that he could afford to listen respectfully to the other side, especially if he was able to reach across the aisle to enlist even a few opposition Senators to his efforts.

I was skeptical. I read one of his books, “The Audacity of Hope”. I went back to read an article he wrote twenty years ago on why he was a community organizer. I concluded he had been consistent his entire adult life about reaching out to those with whom you disagree to build effective working coalitions.

I listened to his January 3 Iowa speech. He said he understood 9/11 not as a way to scare up votes, but as “a challenge to unite America and the world against our common threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease.” His speech moved me deeply.

The next morning I woke up realizing that Obama inspired me like no other major presidential candidate has in decades. I have not heard any other politician currently on the national center stage asserting these core beliefs as consistently and effectively as Barack Obama.

Then, yesterday, I saw the letter that finally prompted me to send you this. It was signed by eighty lawyers working to preserve our rights to habeas corpus. It says: “When others stood back, Senator Obama helped lead the fight in the Senate against the Administration’s efforts in the Fall of 2006 to strip the courts of jurisdiction, and when we were walking the halls of the Capitol trying to win over enough Senators to beat back the Administration’s bill, Senator Obama made his key staffers and even his offices available to help us. Senator Obama worked with us to count the votes, and he personally lobbied colleagues who worried about the political ramifications of voting to preserve habeas corpus for the men held at Guantanamo.”

If you have decided to support Senator Clinton, please know I will be working enthusiastically for your candidate in November if she is the Democratic nominee. As a mediator, I have felt inspired and uplifted since deciding the morning after Iowa that I would put in some work for Obama every day until my state’s primary. If you want to help him, I urge you to go now to http://www.barackobama.com and to contribute as much of your time, money, letter writing, etc. as you can.

Enthusiastically yours,
Ron Kelly

Random carbon-reducing thought

Someday I’m going to collect all of these somewhere… This one goes back to our food again, a continuing theme this year. We’ve talked about all kinds of ways to reduce the carbon footprint from food consumption, including eating low on the food chain, eating local foods, using cloth grocery bags, and limiting bottled water consumption. Here’s an even simpler one:

Don’t waste food.

That’s all - simple to say, simple in concept, harder to do. Every bit of food and drink that we buy costs energy to grow, process, package, ship, and sell. Even if we eat a steak, at least we’ve eaten it - and gotten some value for that energy that’s been used. When we don’t even eat it or drink it, all that energy is wasted and garbage is created for nothing at all. Only in this western world of over-consumption could such a thing really even be possible, not to mention done every day without a second thought.

When you’re not starving or lacking for money to buy food, and there is a massive abundance of food all around you, there is a tendency to forget how important this is or to take the extra time to make sure that whatever you buy will be used. Example - at a recent staff meeting that would go through lunch, most of us brought our own lunches. One group showed up with donuts and pastries to share - a nice gesture, right? But we all eat pretty healthy and a lot of them didn’t get eaten, and no-one wanted to take them home because we all knew we’d eat them if we did. They were thrown out, since the meeting room had to be clean when we left. It probably would have been better not to bring them and to let staff buy their own in the cafeteria if they wanted them.

Our busy schedules contribute also. I don’t know how often I’ve bought groceries that I didn’t get around to using, and had to throw out because they went bad. This is especially true since I started buying more vegetables. It’s harder for single people to use up all that comes in a package (a loaf of bread for example). My horribly busy work schedule has resulted in a lot of food getting thrown out, which is really sad and wasteful. So now I am really focusing on learning how to freeze things (yes, if you’ve never done it you have to learn what works and what doesn’t). In this situation it is really important to be careful what and how much you buy in the first place. Which takes recipe planning and careful shopping, which takes time. Knowing that it’s contributing to global warming to throw stuff out may actually give me an incentive to work on this more.

Make it a challenge to look around your kitchen and see what odds and ends of things can be used up. You know all those sauce bottles in your refrigerator door? How many of those stay there forever and then get thrown out because when you want to use it, you’re not certain it’s still good? A little bit of planning might help there too. Each of those little bottles takes a lot of energy to create.

So as your parents always said - “clean your plate” and don’t put too much on it to start with :) Learn to make casseroles with odd bits and ends, freeze leftovers and portions of raw foods before they spoil, buy in smaller quantities that you will actually use, plan your meals, and if you really have to throw something out - compost it!

Small victories of the environmental kind

If you’d like to read some good news for a change :) check out the Environmental Defense Fund’s list of Twelve Environmental Victories in 2007. We all need a little reminder of the things we’re working for, and hope that we can make a difference now and then.

How to say “no,” positively

You may have heard of the book “Getting to Yes” by Bill Ury - a book that revolutionized negotiations and formed the basis for most of what we do in mediation. He put into words the idea of negotiating from underlying interests rather than surface positions, and creating solutions that benefit both parties’ basic needs rather than simply compromising - which tends to make neither person happy.

Now he’s written a new book, called “The Power of a Positive No.” I learned about it at a dispute resolution conference last week, but I’m writing about it here because I think everyone can use this book and the ideas in it to help set boundaries, stand up for yourself and for social justice, and learn how to say no anytime you really need to in life.

So what is a positive no? Not surprisingly, it’s a “no” that starts with a yes and ends with a yes. The first yes is to yourself - why are you saying no? What alternative principle are you saying yes to which requires you to say no to the other person? Being very clear with yourself about this and being able to affirmatively communicate it to the other person is key to saying no positively.

The second part is the actual no. What is it that you don’t want to do or can’t do? What principle or part of the other person’s proposal are you not accepting? Saying no in a respectful and firm way is important for this part.

Lastly, there is a final yes, this time to the other person. This comes in the form of another way that that person can get their needs met, or another alternative you can propose that you can say yes to. This final yes reaches out and reaffirms that you value your relationship with the other person.

So what does this look like? Suppose your boss comes to you and asks you to work weekends for the next month in order to finish a critical project that the company has fallen behind on for an important client. You need and want to say no, but you are afraid of losing your job, losing your boss’s respect, disappointing your client, not pulling your weight with other co-workers, etc.

The negative no: “No way! Thanksgiving is coming up - I can’t believe you would ask me to do that.” or “I don’t get paid enough to work weekends!” or even “Sorry, I just can’t. My wife will kill me.” All of these are negative nos that don’t come across very well. Don’t make excuses, stand for a positive principle.

The positive no: “In our family, Thanksgiving is the main holiday of the year, and we will have relatives visiting from out of town. My daughter’s soccer finals are also next weekend. It’s important to me to be with the family for these events. So, I can’t work weekends for the next month. But, I can work this weekend and I can work late Wednesday and Thursday evenings. I can also talk to June and see if she’d be willing to help out. We’ll find a way to get it done!”

Of course, if this boss is always asking you to give up your weekends and holidays, you might be less forthcoming about putting in the extra time. In that case, you have to really look at your values and what’s important to you. You may need a Plan B if your boss doesn’t accept your positive no - for example, looking for a new job.

Thinking about it this deeply whenever you feel like you want to say no helps you identify your underlying priorities, and take whatever action is appropriate. In the first case above, it may be to find a way to get both of your needs met. In the second case, it may be to recognize that your current job is incompatible with those deeper values.

Notes from Phoenix

I’m here in Phoenix at an Association for Conflict Resolution conference. Since I don’t know anyone here, I was determined to try to overcome my natural shyness in situations like this and TALK to people. Right away, I discovered that mediators are nice people :) I’ve never been to a conference before where so many people just in the lobby, elevator and standing in the checkout line would make eye contact, smile, and talk to you - actually engaging in meaningful conversation with people they don’t even know with apparent interest. Since mediators are naturally curious about other people (or we couldn’t do our jobs), that may explain some of it.

In any case, it bolstered my resolve and I’ve been practicing all day, talking to anyone who appears accessible and interesting. There was a dinner and dancing party out in a local park, and that gave me lots of chances. It was a warm Phoenix night, which in itself was enough to make me want to stay out in it. One memorable visual image was from my hotel room on the 19th floor, of the full moon hanging over downtown Phoenix in late afternoon, with the red hills ringing the city behind. I’m sorry I don’t have a photo to share with you (when I left I couldn’t think of a reason I would need my camera…).

This morning I had a session on metaphors and their value in mediation. All kinds of metaphors - verbal, visual, kinetic, even musical. Then later in the day I was watching a group of people dancing to YMCA (which totally dates us) - and they ALL knew the YMCA move. It was pretty hilarious to watch. There was one lone man out there, probably from another country, who was looking around in bewilderment ;D Now THAT was a cultural metaphor if I ever saw one - for what, I’m not entirely sure.

So that’s what I’m up to this week! Brrr… my room feels cold at 72 after the Phoenix night.

You go, Al!

Woohoo!! Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize for doing an incredible job of publicizing the issue of climate change and having a real impact. What just adds spice to the cake is that the Nobel committee also named the UN IPCC, the group which publishes and has been publishing for many years reports on the science of global climate change. It’s not everyday that a bunch of hard-working scientists from around the world are recognized at this level. Along with Al Gore’s work, their most recent report did a lot to galvanize public and politicians alike in realizing the true dangers caused by global warming and finally putting to rest the naysayers.

Now all we can do is hope that the Nobel committee wasn’t overly optimistic in recognizing the possibility that these very real threats could help bring the world together to peacefully work on a solution. I wish I could say I see some evidence of that, but I don’t :(

In the meantime, though - congratulations, Al. This may have been an even more important contribution than becoming President, though I whole-heartedly wish you had.