Category Archives: Church

April 21, 2014 · 2:21 pm

P-Phenylenediamine – Allergy to Hair Dye

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I have regrettably developed a severe allergy to P-Phenylenediamine and possibly other dye substances. Over the last month, this has taken the form of violent Contact Dermatitis (think about what happens when you touch Poison Oak): inflammation, rash, blisters, itching – all the nasty ways your skin tells you that it is very  unhappy about something you touched. I just finished taking Prednisone for several weeks – Prednisone is a synthetic corticosteroid drug that is particularly effective as an immunosuppressant – and am getting ready for a full allergy test at University of California at San Francisco – Dermatology Clinic.

I am writing this blog not so much to share my woe as to spread the word in case my readers may also experience this allergy. It certainly took me by surprise!

Paraphenylenediamine turns out to be a very common substance, found in:

  • hair dye, coloring rinse, comb-in hair tint, shampoo-in highlight, lowlights
  • skin paint, dark makeup, dark lipstick
  • henna tattoo
  • dye for socks, support hose, shoe dye
  • textile, rubber, and fur dyes
  • violin chin-rest stain
  • antioxidant in antifreeze, fuels, corrosion inhibitor in oils, gasoline sweetener
  • plastic manufacture, rubber antioxidant
  • printing ink, antiozonant
  • milk testing reagent, water testing reagent
  • retarder in acrylate production
  • lithography, photocopying
  • photo or x-ray film developing

A generalized reaction to PPD can also occur from taking closely related saccharin sweeteners, thiazide diuretics, sulfanamide antibiotics, sufonylurea antidiabetic agents, PAS, or celecoxib.

Some persons allergic to PPD will also react to black rubber mix, parabens, benzocaine group anesthetics, PABA family sunscreens, and azo dyes, especially orange and yellow, often in ballpoint pens.

This information is from the American Contact Dermatitis Society (ACDS).

More information:

Image Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson – detail showing vanity – from a stained glass window at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Saratoga, California by Mark Adams

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April 20, 2014 · 10:19 pm

Easter Egg Hunt 2014

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This morning was our annual backyard Easter Egg Hunt – a very popular event among our friends, family, and neighbors. About 15 children (ages 18 months to 21 years) joined the search for hundreds of plastic eggs filled with chocolate candies. For the adults, there were two specially hidden eggs: gold and silver. Only the following poems gave clues to their locations:

I know a bed where the wild thyme blows,
Where iris and nodding rosemary grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious lemondrops,
With sweet musk-roses and with nasturtium:
There sleep sweet bees sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there snake throws her cold enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

I have 3 guards for my home-place
The same number of eyes and legs between them
They keep for me in a safer space.
One would walk if he were fitted for a mind-Chem
but instead keeps me in the cool.
One is anxious but smiles except when asleep
One at ball’s drop can only drool
One was born only to be buried down deep
Can you find my comfy ark?
Or will you get lost in the barks?

Thanks to the Associate Easter Bunny, my daughter Jessica for her contributions to the poems (from Washington DC), and thanks to Paul and John for helping create today’s festivities! Clara and Paul and Dan teamed up to find the gold and silver eggs – and were rewarded with Peeps Chocolate Eggs for their hunting prowess.

Each Spring, I work for weeks to make our garden a demi-paradise for this event – full of flowers and rock borders suitable for hiding eggs.  Easter coincided this year with the seed storms of the cottonwoods on the Guadalupe River in San Jose. Fluffy white seeds blow over everything like dry snow – so much spiderweb removal was needed, especially on WP668, our backyard caboose.

It is such a joy to watch the children filling their baskets, then re-hiding eggs for each other once the hundreds of eggs hidden in the morning by the Easter Bunny have been collected. A delightful celebration of new life and renewal!

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21 April 2014 – On the day after the Easter Egg Hunt, I am still finding eggs in the garden (some after the dogs have chewed them)…

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Images Copyright John Plocher and Katy Dickinson

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February 14, 2014 · 2:11 pm

Swords to ploughshares, Rwanda

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Machete caked with garden dirt, in Kigali, Rwanda

Swords into ploughshares is from the Book of Isaiah:

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. — Isaiah 2:3–4

I thought about Bible verse many times while in Rwanda last week, particularly when watching machetes being used for gardening. I have many garden tools and, despite living on the Guadalupe River and regularly clearing brush as part of my work on the bank, I have never needed a machete. In Rwanda, I several times watched a machete being used as a hoe or to clear an overgrown path, and reflected that it is a good general-purpose implement if other tools are lacking. However, I also remembered Immaculée Ilibagiza writing of her 1994 experience during the Rwanda genocide:

There were many voices, many killers. I could see them in my mind: my former friends and neighbors, who had always greeted me with love and kindness, moving through the house carrying spears and machetes and calling my name. “I have killed 399 cockroaches,” said one of the killers. “Immaculée will make 400. It’s a good number to kill.” (from Left to Tell, 2006)

Rwanda is essentially twenty years old – its remarkable success since 1994 being all the more impressive because of the depths from which the country has risen. Last week, the TechWomen delegation visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre (in which a machete is prominently displayed as the signature weapon) and saw graveyard/memorials along the road into the mountains.  There must be few parts of Rwanda entirely free of the memories and events of 1994’s savagery.  Yet, Rwanda has indeed turned swords into ploughshares (or, machetes into hoes in their case) and gotten on with the necessary business of making things better.

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Some of my garden tools, in San Jose, California, USA

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

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December 28, 2013 · 11:08 am

After Christmas

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Only a few Christmas presents are left to be distributed. We sadly bid farewell to Jessica and Matthew, who have traveled back to their jobs. John and Paul and I are still happily investigating our own presents here at home. For me, this means watching the Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing” and the four movie set of The Hollow Crown (Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, “Henry IV” i and ii, and “Henry V”). Yesterday, John posted his code and instructions on how to program a Christmas tree, on: http://www.spcoast.com/wiki/index.php/Christmas2013.  Paul is enjoying post-final-exams, pre-quarter-start downtime. John and I went out on a movie date to see “Ender’s Game”, which was a good representation of that disturbing and superb book. It is pleasant to have some quiet days together.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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December 21, 2013 · 2:35 pm

Highway Angels

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The Highway Angels of St.Andrew’s met at 7 am this morning to clean up our adopted section of California Highway 85, near the Saratoga Avenue exit. This was my first time picking up trash along the freeway and, despite our very early start, it was fun and interesting. Since 1999, our church has participated in the Adopt a Highway program, sending out a volunteer crew with trashbags, hardhats, tongs, and yellow safety vests about once a month.

Most of what we picked up was paper (cups and food wrappers, cardboard) and plastic bags, plus bits of metal, glass, and plastic off of cars. There were very few recycleables and only two big items – an old rug and a cardboard box. We found one empty wallet and quite a few gift cards: 2 from Starbucks, one from Jamba Juice, and one from Powell’s Sweet Shoppe. I also  found a library card, a dime and a marble but everything else was trash. I shared a road section with Bob who started the Highway Angels ministry, who said he once found a $100 bill – which he donated to St. Andrew’s. We left the trash bagged along the road for Caltrans to pick up next week.

While pulling plastic bags out of the bushes, I thought about how much cleaner the public roads are than when I was a kid. I remember on our cross-country drives at night, the highways back then were lined with cans and bottles reflecting in the headlights. The strong culture of recycle-reuse-reduce has eliminated most of that, in California at least.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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December 16, 2013 · 5:18 pm

Silicon Valley Bethlehem and Cable Car

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We enjoy Christmas events old and new here in the Silicon Valley. Our EfM class went to the Bethlehem – Walk Through the Christmas Story together a week ago – followed by dinner at Mio Vicino in Santa Clara.   An unofficial highlight of the show was watching one of the flock headbutting all of the other sheep in turn while the shepherds and angel said their lines.

Last night a group of us current and former-Huawei staff got together for dinner (at Il Postale in Sunnyvale) followed by a motorized Cable Car Ride to see the holiday lights in Willow Glen.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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December 12, 2013 · 4:06 pm

Reading Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” Aloud

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The St.Andrew’s Shakespeare Reading Group decided to read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in honor of the season. Above you can see our hostess, Melita Thorpe, with John Watson-Williams dressed for his lead role as Ebenezer Scrooge. It took about 4-1/2 hours to read the entire short novel aloud (with breaks between staves for refreshments and a potluck dinner). We considered using one of the plays but decided that reading Dickens original 1843 text was better – since the plays both add and remove some of Dickens’ excellent prose. We distributed the text among our dozen readers:

  • Taking turns reading narration (about half a page before going to the next reader).
  • Dialogue was spoken as assigned parts.  Some famous parts (including the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) have no spoken lines. We doubled up on small roles.

It was a delightful evening! Several of us plan to follow up by going to the Dickens Christmas Fair (at the Cow Palace) and to the ACT “Christmas Carol” stage play in San Francisco.

Image Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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