Category Archives: Church

March 11, 2013 · 6:16 pm

TSA Afraid of Rocks

Ever since I read “Why It’s Time To Break The Code Of Silence At The Airport” by Christopher Elliott (15 February 2013, TheHuffingtonPost) and my daughter’s TSA posts (including “TSA Touching Crosses The Line: Update”), I have been considering how much more invasive and offensive the TSA has become over time and how we enable this behavior by not objecting to it.

This weekend, I flew from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles for training (to renew my mentor certification with Education for Ministry, a program of the University of the South – School of Theology), and to visit my brother and family in La Crescenta. I used two small-ish airports, San Jose (SJC) and Burbank (BUR) for convenience.

This morning, I walked quickly to the head of the extremely short security check point line at Burbank, hoping to have time for a quiet coffee before boarding my flight home. However, I was pulled out of line in the nearly-empty security area not once but twice.

The first time I was pulled from line was so that the security lady could feel my face – after her full-body scanner drew a little yellow box around my apparently-dangerous earring. As you can see from the picture below (and as she herself could clearly see), there wasn’t anything for her to find while she patted down my ear, cheek, and short hair.
The second time I was pulled out a few minutes later was so that the security man could unpack my small roller bag, re-scan my toiletries, and try to take away my rock. I was bringing home a small piece of granite as a souvenir of La Crescenta. He said, after feeling my rock, that I had to get rid of it or check my bag because a rock could be a weapon. It seems that there is a TSA rule saying that rocks over five pounds are dangerous. I chose to keep my rock, so I was escorted out of the security area, then had to walk back to the airline counter (where the counter lady told me that she hears an unusual number of complaints about the Burbank TSA), check my carry-on bag, and go through security all over again.

I made my flight home, but no quiet coffee for me. I object.

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Filed under Church, Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews, Politics

Tagged as Education for Ministry, Episcopal church, Mentoring, San Francisco, San Jose, teaching

December 22, 2012 · 11:58 pm

Merry Christmas

Best wishes to you and your family for a happy holiday season, from all of us here in the Silicon Valley!

Between trying to get the construction workers finished enough to be out of our house by Christmas, and all of the usual holiday preparations and activities, December 2012 has been particularly busy. There has finally been sufficient progress on the new porch to allow us to have family and guests in the house. The roof and final plastering were finished just before dinner yesterday – barely in time for us to go Christmas caroling on the cable car in San Francisco. Jessica and Matthew were able to get off from work to join us for Christmas – for which we are very joyful!

I went shopping in Chinatown with Sally and Lorene (our tradition for over twenty years). We were sad to see the closed up Sam Wo restaurant where we used to eat raw fish salad for lunch during our annual walking tour of Grant Street stores.
John and I were delighted to hear our young friends Max and Beth perform as part of the Cantabile Youth Singers at the ornate St. Joseph Basilica in San Jose.
My son Paul and I picked out and walked home a Christmas tree – which sat in a bucket of water on the driveway for two weeks until the contractors left and we could move all of the furniture back. Jessica and Matthew and Paul brought the tree inside and decorated it tonight. The decorations are eclectic but cheerful. I still need to put out the nativity figures John bought in Bethlehem.
My EfM class went to see the Bethlehem Christmas story re-enactment, and then went out to dinner together and exchanged gifts.
Last Sunday was the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church children’s pageant.
We have very much enjoyed Willow Glen’s enthusiastic Christmas light displays – which give every street its own twinkly charm as we go about our holiday business.
Today we went to the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco to enjoy a Victorian Christmas, high tea, and last-minute shopping.
Tomorrow, John starts cooking for our Christmas feast on Tuesday!

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Tagged as Charles Dickens, Education for Ministry, Episcopal church, Jessica, John, Matthew, Paul, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Willow Glen

November 3, 2012 · 11:02 pm

El Camino Real Convention

This weekend was the annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real on the Central Coast of California. I was a delegate to convention from my home parish of St. Andrew’s in Saratoga. My husband John and our neighbor, the Reverend Stephenie Cooper, ran the computers and visual system for their fifth year. In front of the big screen were about 300 lay and clergy delegates and in back of it were Stephenie and John sitting amidst a dozen computers in a nest of cables keeping the business running.

My contribution was being a roadie (helping them move equipment in and out) and providing photographs to spice up the presentations. Our much-loved Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves has a good sense of humor and enjoys the funny pictures. She even brought her two Bishop Barbies to the convention. In 2010, the women of St. Andrew’s gave her the first doll (in red robes), who has now been joined by a second in white vestments.

One of the impressive presentations was by a youth group who brought a chain of 508 plastic bags, representing the number thrown away every second in California. The chain wrapped around the convention hall twice – making a powerful visual point about taking better care of our world.

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Tagged as Episcopal church, John, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

October 31, 2012 · 7:52 pm

Silicon Valley Halloween

Halloween is serious fun here in the Silicon Valley. Spooky house decorations go up weeks in advance, people come to church in funny hats and silly outfits (for “Boo Sunday”), companies have costume parties, waitresses work dressed as clowns, stores give out candy to kid parades, and tonight the sidewalks are full of children dressed as cats, bugs, princesses, super heros, and monsters walking from house to house trailed by their parents, greeting neighbors with “Trick or Treat!”.

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Tagged as Episcopal church, Huawei, San Jose, Silicon Valley, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Willow Glen

September 23, 2012 · 10:51 pm

Shakespeare Reading Group

The community at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church has just started a Shakespeare Reading group, with me as the official Shakespeare Mentor. Tonight, 13 of us met to read Midsummer Night’s Dream together. Melita Thorpe hosted the event and organized the pot luck supper. As the Shakespeare Mentor, I recommended MSND movies to watch in advance, sent out an email with background on the play and recommendations for how to read Shakespeare, brought texts to read from, and distributed roles for the evening. My favorite MSND films are those of 1935, 1968, 1996, and 1999 (see details on the Midsummer Night’s Dream wikipedia page section on films).

My advice on reading Shakespeare socially:

Shakespeare wrote play scripts – not literature – reading a Shakespeare play is entertainment and you should enjoy yourself!
Trust the punctuation – pause not at the end of a line or at a rhyme but only at the period ending the sentence.
Read as quickly as you can using a normal tone – no special accent is needed for most roles.
Keep going – do not pause between speeches or scenes – the characters should sound like they are responding to each other.
If there is a word you do not know, give it your best guess and go on (or you can ask for advice!).
The gender of the role and of the reader do not have to match – remember that Shakespeare had an all-male cast.
If the lines in your script do not match the lines in someone else’s, don’t worry about it – Shakespearean scholars don’t always agree on the text – just keep reading.

Everyone enjoyed the evening – several of the readers made us all laugh. I am looking forward to future meetings!

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Tagged as Episcopal church, Mentoring, Shakespeare, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

September 2, 2012 · 11:23 am

Play in a Garden

Last night, my husband John helped to run the light board for a community theater group presenting the short play “Christ in the Concrete City” by Philip W. Turner. The production was by the Saint Andrew’s Players, directed by Melita Thorpe, and was held at dusk in the garden of St. Andrew’s Episcopal School (Saratoga, California). It was an interesting play, at times disturbing, and a fun evening.

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Tagged as Episcopal church, garden, John, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

August 26, 2012 · 5:24 pm

San Francisco Bay Area Labyrinths

California Pacific Medical Center – courtyard, Pacific Heights, Buchanan at Clay, San Francisco

Labyrinths are maze-like paths used for thousands of years in design and public structures. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have seen two types of public labyrinths: those inspired by the design on the floor of Chartres Cathedral (from around the year 1250) with 11 circuits and a distinct flower-like center, and the much-older classical Greek or Cretan patterns. Walking a labyrinth is a popular form of meditation, particularly in hospitals and Christian church buildings and gardens. Some groups think so highly of this calming exercise, that they have painted portable labyrinths on canvas for spiritual retreats in places where no permanent labyrinth exists. Some of the public labyrinths in the San Francisco Bay Area may be visited at:

Grace Cathedral – main floor inside, San Francisco – Nob Hill
California Pacific Medical Center – courtyard, Pacific Heights, Buchanan at Clay, San Francisco (pictured above)
All Saints Episcopal Church – courtyard, 555 Waverly Street at Hamilton, Palo Alto (pictured below)
El Camino Hospital – inside main lobby, 2500 Grant Road, Mountain View (pictured below)
Saint Thomas Episcopal Church – courtyard, 231 Sunset Avenue, Sunnyvale (pictured below)
Saint Francis Episcopal Church – courtyard, 1205 Pine Avenue, Willow Glen – San Jose
Lincoln Avenue downtown bench near Meredith Avenue, Willow Glen – San Jose (pictured below)