Lovely to sit in my office in WP 668 (the 1916 railroad caboose in our San Jose backyard) and listen to spring rain. Lovely to have spring rain in the middle of California’s big drought!
Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson
Category Archives: Home & Family
Dumping the Landline
Northern Californians who lived through the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 often have a fondness for landlines – phones that use a metal wire telephone line for transmission rather than a mobile cellular line, which use radio waves. After Loma Prieta, only the landlines worked. Nonetheless, this week, we are dumping our landline phones. Beside that our family uses our personal iPhones much more frequently – even within the house as an intercom, the number of daily telemarketing calls have become overwhelming.
Our energy company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is proud that they “…have helped customers connect more solar systems than any other utility in the country”. However, that means we get far too many landline calls from companies aggressively wanting to sell us solar systems. While I support the installation of home solar power in general, our house in Willow Glen has a beautiful 80+ year old ceramic tile roof in good condition – not appropriate for solar panel installation. We only receive about six landline calls a day and usually four or more of them are telemarketing calls from solar vendors. I called PG&E and they say they are not responsible. We are on the Do Not Call Registry and routinely ask the companies to “Take Us Off Your List!”. Nothing has helped against the relentless tide of telemarketing. Enough!
The calls that we get that are not from solar power shills are often from companies trying to sell us new construction or carpet cleaning. Only one or two calls a week on our landline are from friends and family. Now that I am working from my home office daily, I would rather take my chances that the cell phones will work after a major earthquake than talk to six telemarketers every day. At least on an iPhone, I can easily block unwanted callers.
John is now transferring our home phone number to Google Voice on our temporary ZTE phone. In a week, we will have reduced our daily frustrations, saved $71/month in payments to AT&T, and have more space on our desks where the landlines used to be. Hooray!
28 Feb 2015 Update:
Our house is old enough to have a niche for a wall telephone. What do I do with that now that the landlines are dead? Maybe a sculpture niche? The birds are not sure if they want to share their corner with a cat sculpture…
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Photos Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
Giving Voice to Kings: Richard III, and the Bible
The St. Andrew’s Shakespeare group read The Tragedy of King Richard III last Saturday night, with John Watson-Williams and me splitting the title role by acts. Laura Biche was kind enough to host our dinner and reading in Redwood City. The next morning in church, I was the Old Testament Lector at St. Andrew’s in Saratoga, reading the lesson from Second Kings 2:1-12. Even though these two texts are extremely different, I enjoy using my voice to bring a story to life – whether the charmingly evil Richard or the story of a great prophet.
The St. Andrew’s Shakespeare group meets every two months, taking turns hosting. (John and I are hosting Comedy of Errors in April.) Sometimes we become the St. Andrew’s Players to act out a lesson for the church congregation.
Richard III, Act I, scene ii
Richard III vies among Shakespeare’s characters with Iago as being the greatest villain who is most satisfied by his evil deeds. Here is Richard (still the Duke of Gloucester) gloating over his seduction of the Lady Anne Neville:
Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?
Was ever woman in this humour won?
I’ll have her; but I will not keep her long.
What! I, that kill’d her husband and his father,
To take her in her heart’s extremest hate,
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of her hatred by;
Having God, her conscience, and these bars
against me,
And I nothing to back my suit at all,
But the plain devil and dissembling looks,
And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!
Ha!
…
2 Kings 2:1-12
Kings presents the biblical view of the history of ancient Israel and Judah after the death of King David, for a period of about 400 years, including cycles of stories about various prophets (c. 960 BCE – c. 560 BCE). Elijah was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Ahab (9th century BCE). Elisha was a disciple of Elijah and lead the prophets after Elijah was taken up into the whirlwind.
… they both were standing by the Jordan. Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” He responded, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.” As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.
Images Copyright 2013-2014 by Katy Dickinson
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Filed under Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews
Guadalupe River – Happy to Be Wet
When you live on a river, its lifecycle is of daily concern. The Guadalupe River in San Jose was dry in summer 2014 for the first time since we bought our house 18 years ago. California is in a major drought, with last month the first completely rainless January since 1849 (presumably, when record keeping started).
We are now in our second rainstorm of the winter. The Guadalupe riparian corridor is home to a wide variety of wild animals which are dependent on its water and ecosystem. Some of the larger creatures we see regularly in our garden include: Jerusalem Cricket (Stenopelmatus), garter snake (Thamnophis), Alligator lizard (Elgaria coerulea), American swallowtail butterfly caterpillar (Papilio polyxenes), arboreal salamander (Aneides lugubris), California Slender Salamander (Batrachoseps attenuatus), Horsehair worm (Nematomorpha), as well as the more common ducks, geese, song birds, humming birds, hawks, vultures, raccoons, opossums, cats, skunks, and squirrels (grey, black, and gold). The river is also home to both steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and chinook or king salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). I am sure they are as happy as we are to be wet this week!
Here is what the Guadalupe looked like yesterday from the bridge at Alma/Lelong:
Roughly the same views five months ago (September 2014):
Images Copyright 2014-2015 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
TechWomen Delegation to South Africa
I am still catching up from my trip to South Africa with the TechWomen Delegation. Some of the highlights for me of this inspiring trip to Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and nearby Townships were spending time in a professional workshop or coaching session with girls and women, particularly at the Phateng Secondary School (in Mamelodi, Pretoria), TheBarn incubator (in Khayelitsha, Cape Town), and at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (in Muizenberg, Cape Town) where I was honored to give a talk on mentoring. It was a great pleasure to spend the week with the other two 2011 TechWomen Alumnae in the SA Delegation – my dear friends Sukaina Al-Nasrawi and Maysoun Ibrahim. We have not seen each other in-person since Jessica and I visited them in Beirut in 2012.
Eileen Brewer and I gave away dozens of “TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Africa and the Middle East” posters and card decks (now for sale!) – often in a brief formal presentation at the end of the Delegation’s visit. We hope that these educational materials will continue to inspire women in their technical aspirations for many years to come. This trip marks the farthest South I have ever been!
Our Delegation was all technical professional women with the addition of two brave husbands!
Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
108 Technical Role Models and Mentors
As of January 2015, these cards and posters are available for sale on Notable Technical Women.
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I am proud to present 108 role models and mentors. Each of these technical women has earned her place through remarkable accomplishments and experience:
- 54 Notable Women in Computing who are pioneers or have received multiple, high-level awards from more than one institution (such as being named an ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, elected to a National Academy, or receiving the Turing Award).
- 54 TechWomen Emerging Leaders (2011-2014, from 16 countries in the Middle East and Africa) – alumnae of the US State Department, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs mentoring program hosted in Silicon Valley annually.
You may know that after selling out the first edition of Notable Women playing cards at the Hopper Conference, Dr. Susan Rodger (Computer Science, Duke University), Jessica Dickinson Goodman, and I created the Notable Women in Computing Kickstarter, which was crowd funded by generous backers at five times our original asking. Since then, Jessica has ably managed our production and shipping. Card decks and posters shipped last month to not only our backers but also to 500 educators around the world (USA, Netherlands, Scotland, Nigeria, Lebanon, New Zealand, India…). We are now getting many photos of the cards and posters “in the wild” from teachers and schools, companies, and even from honorees. Susan and Jessica and I are discussing our next steps for the project, since we are still getting new requests for decks and posters. Jessica is setting up an ecommerce site for future purchases and new customers. More news on that soon…
“Notable Women in Computing” has also inspired many daughter projects – including the “TechWomen Emerging Leaders” poster and card decks (for which Jessica was also the designer!) – now in production to go to South Africa for the TechWomen Delegation next week.
A role model is a person whose behavior, example, or success is emulated by others, especially by younger people. That is, a role model can inspire without ever communicating directly with the person whose life they have touched. Mentors, on the other hand, advise and inspire directly. In short, practical terms:
- Mentors make introductions.
- Mentors give recommendations to resources.
- Mentors give feedback for the mentee to consider.
I am lucky to know many of the 108 women honored here personally. My respect for this group could not be higher. Most of the “Notable Women in Computing” group have been role models and mentors to generations of students and rising professionals. When I have served on the selection committees for TechWomen Emerging Leaders, one of the most common hopes I read in their application essays is for an opportunity to give back to their community and to help girls learn to use and love technology. I have also heard this aspiration over and over from my own amazing TechWomen mentees.
Please help spread the news of these amazing technical leaders. In August 2013, I wrote about Getting Beyond Marie Curie – developing information and awareness about other great women tole models. Here are 108.
Both Posters: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 U.S. License
New Playing Cards Honoring Women of Africa and the Middle East
As of January 2015, these cards are available for sale on Notable Technical Women.
| Adla Mahmoud Chatila – Lebanon |  |
. | Nezha Larhrissi Taghi – Morocco |  |
| Patience Mthunzi – South Africa |  |
. | Arwa Yahia Al-Eryani – Yemen |  |
| Maysoun Ibrahim – Palestine |  |
. | Josephine Kamanthe Ndambuki – Kenya |  |
TechWomen Mentor Eileen Brewer, Jessica Dickinson Goodman and I are partnering with Arezoo Miot (IIE TechWomen Director), Jill Finlayson and Julia Lovin (Council Co-Chairs of the TechWomen Alumnae Organization, and TechWomen Mentors) to create a new playing card deck honoring 54 of the remarkable TechWomen Emerging Leaders – from 16 countries in the Middle East and Africa since 2011. We are building on the success and structure of the “Notable Women in Computing Card Deck” that Jessica and I developed with Professor Susan Rodger (Duke University) to develop this new deck honoring global women of STEM.
TechWomen is a professional mentorship and exchange program developed in response to President Obama’s efforts to strengthen relations between the United States and the Middle East and North Africa.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton first announced the TechWomen initiative on April 28, 2010 during President Obama’s Entrepreneurship Summit. In June 2011, TechWomen launched with 37 participants from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories. In 2012, the program expanded to include women from Tunsia and Yemen. In 2013, the cohort doubled in size with the addition of women from Cameroon, Kenya, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
TechWomen – Who We Are
The card design above is Jessica’s first draft proposal – still under discussion! It honors my 2012 TechWomen mentee and friend: Adla Chatila of Lebabon. This project is a labor of love for the women behind it, which is why we are licensing the card deck under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 U.S. License. We will make $0 profit from this project. We are still discussing how to fund production.
Thanks to the 70+ TechWomen Emerging Leaders who have already submitted their information to be considered for inclusion. I am very much enjoying my email communications with this inspiring and energetic group as we develop this exciting new project!
Filed under Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
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