Category Archives: Home & Family

March 18, 2013 · 12:47 pm

Shakespeare Reading Group – Update

Since the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California) Shakespeare Reading Group started meeting in 2012, we have read:

Last night was Antony and Cleopatra. I had great fun as the ambitious and deadly Octavius Ceasar (whom Rome later called the Emperor Augustus). John read Domitius Enobarbus (who gets most of the famous lines in this play) with delightful energy. Melita Thorpe was the subtle Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, and John Watson-Williams read Antony (Marcus Antonius, Consul and Triumvir) with verve. All of the other major characters had great fun dying dramatically – it being a tragedy after all.

As is true for many Silicon Valley social events, the professional backgrounds around our table were highly varied. In addition to the expected high-tech gurus and computer company executives, our cast included among others, a church Deacon, mortgage expert, haematologist, astronomy travel director, social worker, physiology professor, technical writer, video director, artist, and physical therapist – all of who enjoyed an evening with The Bard. We will read Othello in May.

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Filed under Church, Home & Family

Tagged as Egypt, Episcopal church, John, Middle East, St. Andrew's Episcopal 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.

Digging the Past – Making a New Garden

Between professional duties, I have been creating a garden around my new porch. This has required days of digging – both to remove concrete, boulders, brick fragments, wood, nails, wire and trash from the dirt and to add compost to improve the soil. Most of the bushels of concrete bits I dug out were hand-sized or smaller, with a few the size of my head. The big surprise was an exceptionally heavy boulder, more than twice the size of my head, which for some reason was sunk deep in the planting bed. It took an hour to dig around it enough to pry up an edge, then roll it out without cracking the PVC water pipe it was nestled against. I dug through old patches of sand, concrete rubble, sawdust, and clay from the various uses to which this ground has been put since 1930. Other than ornamental rocks, the only item I discovered worth keeping was half a fork with a drilled end, probably part of an old wind chime.

The major plants I put in are drought-resistant and should do well in our hot San Jose California summers:

Phormium (“Pink Stripe” and “Black Taya” New Zealand Flax)
Lavandula (“Goodwin Creek” and French Lavender)
Rosemary (prostrate)

Ground covers include Dymondia and Blue Fescue. The only plant to survive the construction (and heavy-booted construction workers) is the Meyer Lemon which seems much happier since we took away the fence and vine that were next to it. I hope we get more rain to help settle the new plants before the weather gets much warmer.

January 2013:

December 2012:

July 2012:

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Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as garden, House Work, San Jose, Willow Glen

February 27, 2013 · 5:14 pm

New Porch Done

The breakfast bar tile was installed this morning on our new porch in Willow Glen, California. This was the last major work to be done. I am very proud of our creation. My husband and I designed a completely new space (with much-appreciated advice from friends, relations, and professionals) and it came out beautifully. Best of all, the addition looks like it was always part of our 1930 house. Our son Paul is already using it to work on his art. As the weather gets warmer, I am sure the porch will become our preferred location for informal meals. I am half done installing the new planting bed in the garden around the new foundation. So glad to be done with contractors!

Here is what the same space looked like in July 2012:

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Tagged as garden, House Work, San Jose, Willow Glen

February 21, 2013 · 11:31 am

Wade’s Favorite Ties

My father, Wade Dickinson, liked to dress very well. When he passed away in 2011, my brothers and I distributed his excellent clothes to family members or charity, depending on the condition. In rearranging our basement to make room for installing the new furnace, I found a bag of six of my father’s favorite neckties, pictured above. It was interesting to see how many of his lifelong areas of study and passion were reflected in these sartorial accessories. From left to right, top to bottom:

Eagle and shield – silver on navy – probably a West Point momento. My father was graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1949.
Bah Humbug – red and navy – reflecting my father’s lifelong Scrooge-like hatred of the waste and expense of Christmas.
Pigs – silver on red – in honor of my father’s many years (and many patents) studying how to promote food animal growth through the application of Physics. His company name for this work was AgroPhysics.
Bears and stripes – The Cal Golden Bear mascot, from his many years teaching the University of California at Berkeley class Engineering-110, “Venture Design: The Start-up Company”.
Cows – Black and white on blue – in honor of my father’s many years (and many patents) studying how to promote food animal growth through the application of Physics. His company name for this work was AgroPhysics.
Owls – silver on red – the mascot of the Bohemian Club of which my father was a lifelong member.

Here is a 1993 portrait of Wade Dickinson, taken by my mother, Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson:

Heating, Cooling, New Ironwork

Since I returned from my most recent trip to the Middle East, we have installed a replacement home heating and cooling system (furnace and air conditioning units), plus the last pieces of ironwork for our new porch finally arrived. Our 1930 Willow Glen house upgrade is almost done!

We won a certificate from Valley Heating and Cooling for a new, efficient Lenox furnace in the auction at last year’s VIA charity ball and just got around to having it installed. We needed to balance the house air flow in any case, so we added two more air registers plus cooling and humidifying units at the same time. Given the changing climate patterns (“Seven of the top 10 warmest years on record for the contiguous 48 states have occurred since 1990” according to the US Environmental Protection Agency), it seems wise to plan for hotter summers.

At the same time, Brian’s Welding finished our porch railing, breakfast bar, and handrail. We still need to get the tile installed on the breakfast bar. I am glad that we added the elegant scroll handrail – and am very happy to get this project almost completed – we started work in July 2012! Now that the railing is in, I can finally replace the mud in my former-lawn with new garden plants.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as garden, House Work, San Jose, Willow Glen

February 1, 2013 · 1:58 pm

MentorCloud, Seoul National University, TechWomen

Busy week… I have been working with MentorCloud on mentoring programs from Ethiopia to Afghanistan to Korea to the USA. A group of three graduate students from Seoul National University, who have been hosted at Global Fluency here in the Silicon Valley, have been discussing their mentoring research with us. Their big presentation on mentoring in Korea compared to the USA was very interesting.

The San Jose city inspector signed off on our new porch construction (hooray!). The iron work railing, breakfast bar, and handrail got fitted by the blacksmith crew – and was carried away for final welding and powder coating. We hope all porch work will be done by the time I get home!

I am leaving today for a two week trip to Jordan and Lebanon with the TechWomen delegation. I already finished and sent off for translation my presentation materials, one is a talk on mentoring and the other a workshop on e-commerce for crafts. My husband drove me to the airport right after MentorCloud held its user experience walk-through with customers, at the Plug and Play Center in Sunnyvale. A long airplane ride sounds restful about now…

19 October 2019: Links Updated. For more about MentorCloud business practices, see Collecting a Labor Judgement (15 January 2016).

Category Archives: Home & Family

Shakespeare Reading Group – Update

TSA Afraid of Rocks

Digging the Past – Making a New Garden

New Porch Done

Wade’s Favorite Ties

Heating, Cooling, New Ironwork

MentorCloud, Seoul National University, TechWomen

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