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Crawfish, It’s Not What’s for Dinner

A beautiful West Texas morning was in the offing. As I pulled into my regular spot I noticed them. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty reddish somethings were scattered around the parking lot. With the winds of spring, my first thought was that some flowering plant had been forced to give up its blossoms and that this [...]

New website launched – fully operational soon!

For some time, I’ve wanted to have a website dedicated to ideas about conflict resolution and peacemaking. Well that site, PeaceBytes, is now online. There’s not much there at the moment — I’ve spent bits and pieces of today just getting the site operational. But if you’d like to go and take a look, go [...]

Foster Dog Revisited 16

Once again, we reach back into the hallowed halls of Twitterdom to retrieve a few of Foster Dog’s micro-adventures from years past. Follow us at http://twitter.com/joeycope Watching White House Easter Egg Roll on TV, Foster Dog noted, “Much more entertaining if they would roll squirrels – or even the kids.” When told that her degree [...]

Mind Over Brain Matter

As peacemakers interact with individuals in conflict, we sometimes marvel and sometimes grieve over our perceptions of the way people think. Easy decisions from the view of the “neutral and impartial third party” slip past combatants as they maneuver to either claim absolute victory in the moment or to navigate to a place of avoidance. [...]

The Survivor of Bethlehem – Part 2

The smell of food cooked on open fires spun over the cart. Andy was hungry. But at this moment he was more interested in the buzz of activity in the streets ahead of him. Bethlehem wasn’t a large town, at least not in comparison with those he had known in Syria. What he found most [...]

Foster Dog Revisited 15

Another look at Foster Dog tweets from the olden days – a couple of years ago. Follow Foster Dog and me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/joeycope). This set of tweets comes from Spring 2010. Lightning crashed. Thunder rolled. “Think I’ll come inside,” Foster Dog said. “You know. So you guys won’t be scared.”   Apparently, the savings [...]

The 3 Most Important Words

For years, I’ve been passing on the three most important words in mediation to my students. I say “passing on” because I was taught these three words by my professors, Randy Lowry and Peter Robinson. In those special moments when I share this valuable advice, I’m met with one of three reactions. The most prevalent [...]

Foster Dog Revisited 14

These are past tweets from Foster Dog’s venture into Twitterdom — through my account. She’s been asking for her own Twitter account. What do you think?   So how did you talk Foster Mom into the organic dog food? I asked. Have you never gazed into my lovely blue eyes? Foster Dog queried. In the [...]

Brain Freeze

Growing up, I had an aversion to ice cream.                 Don’t get me wrong, I loved it — perhaps too much. I loved it so much that I ate too much, too fast. And the result was always brain freeze. You know what I’m talking about. That intense [...]

The Survivor of Bethlehem – Part 1

As the cart made its way up the rutted pathway, Andy sat, balancing precariously on the sack of grain that topped the load. Early that morning, his mother had told him that they were “going home.” From the conversations around him, Andy knew that their destination was Bethlehem. He was puzzled. In his six years, [...]