Brad Heckman
Articles and Video:I am a tenant in a garden apartment of a brownstone in Brooklyn. My landlords live above me, and while I like the family very much, they have two children that are becoming an increasing disruption. Mensch of the month! Dr. Tammy Lenski Dr. Tammy Lenski! You just won the prestigious Mary Parker Follet Award, which makes you a big deal around here. Congrats! And you told a delightfully unorthodox story in your acceptance speech. Care to share a snippet? How to Cure Beef in Your Apartment Folks, here’s an article in the current TimeOut New York about roommate conflicts, with tips by yours truly and my colleague Sheila Sproule, Prez of the Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York. Dealing with roommates: How to resolve three common space-sharing problems. Extremely Sketchy and Incredibly Graphic I recently joined NYC Sketchnoters Group, and tonight is our second meeting. Sketchnoting is all about using usual visual images — drawings, symbols, shapes, icons, color, etc. — to record ideas and convey meanings. For visual thinkers, it’s a great companion piece to traditional chicken scratch note-taking. Visuals for Change founder Amanda Lyons helms the group, and for a mere 10 bucks, you get yourself an evening of shame-free sketchnoting and infotaining interactive exercises. Guest Blogger: Ashok Panikkar on the Right to Offend Here’s a guest post from my friend and peacebuilding agent provocateur Ashok Panikkar, Executive Director of the Indian conflict resolution organization Meta-Culture. I’m not sure I agree with everything he says below. But he is quite persuasive…even moreso in person, where he’ll augment his reasoning with infectious laughter and impish charm. Remembering Ray Shonholtz This week we lost a great peacebuilding visionary and pioneer, Raymond Shonholtz. I, along with many others, lost a friend, teacher, partner and mentor. As founder of Community Boards, Ray practically invented the modern community mediation center — transforming the idea from a quasi-court apparatus to full-service hub for community dialogue, intergroup conciliation, and peer mediation — using mediators who reflect the diversity of the community. Guest Blogger! Ray Shonholtz on Occupy Wall Street Folks, enjoy my very first guest blogger, mediation visionary Raymond Shonholtz, founder of Partners for Democratic Change and Community Boards. Ray based this post on his keynote address at the Oregon Mediation Association conference on November 4th. Reflections on our First Half Year Folks, I’d like to reflect on the amazing, whirlwind year that’s coming to a close. We officially became the New York Peace Institute this year, building upon three decades as a Safe Horizon program. Peaceful, Devilish, Stalinesque and Grotesque Museums So it’s about time we honor peace as a New York thing with our very own Peace Museum, and join our brethren in cities all over the world. On Halloween, Masks, and Mediation. A colleague of mine mediated a particularly difficult noise complaint (we get tons of these in NYC) between neighbors, and the conflict only escalated during the session. I don’t remember the specifics of the case (nor would I violate clients’ confidentiality anyway), so let’s say it was between an upstairs nocturnal flamenco dancer — what with the stompy shoes and clattering castanets — and a downstairs curmudgeonly insomniac, down to his last Ambien.  |
