Category Archives: Home & Family

We are back from our trip to Houston, Texas and Rice University.
Jessica enjoyed her visit to a Shepherd class and she came away impressed
with the music school. Jessica also
enjoyed her dorm stay. Rice is a “wet campus” and the girls who were
kind enough to host her were on a party hall. So, Jessica learned
two beer drinking games. One involved tossing pingpong balls into a cup
of beer and the other seemed to be a speed drinking contest. She said that
the students were chill and did not pressure her to participate beyond her
comfort.

At least a hall-wide drinking party meant that the students were
talking and enjoying each other’s company. It was better than her experience
last summer at U.C. Santa Cruz where the students just stayed in their own dorm
rooms and smoked. We need to wash her sleeping bag because of the fresh and
used beer that was on the dorm carpet. Even though she had fun, Jessica said she
does not want to be on a party hall when she goes to college next year.

We spent Saturday seeing something of Houston.
In the Museum District, the Menil Collection,
Rothko Chapel, and
Byzantine Chapel nearby are very impressive. The Rothko chapel in particular
is a remarkable space. As we sat in the dim light of the quiet 8 sided room, the
deep colors of the large canvases felt increasingly complex. The sizes, positions,
and relationships of the panels became more interesting. Those which were all deep
matt purple revealed their horizontal brush and vertical drip patterns while those
painted in glossy bordered rectangles shone softly under the skylight. The 14 paintings are presented in three sets of triptychs, one of which is set into an apse
or large recess, plus 5 panels. We were there on a cool overcast day . I imagine that
bright light and heat outside would make the chapel feel quite different.

Jessica has an audition next month for Lawrence Univ.
(the school is in Wisconsin but they hold regional auditions in San Francisco).
There are a number of schools to which she is re-sending materials she
submitted earlier which they can’t find. Plus, she has a few more interviews.
After all that is done, we wait until the college acceptance decisions
arrive in the mail on 1 April.

My daughter and I are in Houston, Texas visiting Rice University and
the Shepherd Music School. Jessica is now staying over in one of the
dorms (at Jones College). Of the universities she and I have visited,
Rice feels most like Carnegie Mellon U in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
They are both strong Engineering schools with excellent programs
in the humanities, sciences, professions, and music. We had to come
to Houston because Shepherd only offers on-campus auditions (no
regional auditions).

We walked from our hotel to Jessica’s audition at Shepherd this morning.
Houston is cold and rainy and there are vast puddles and red mud everywhere.
The most common trees seem to be big oaks, many of which are edged in tiny
ferns and moss. The flat campus is bordered with huge parking lots.
Most of the signs relate to parking rather than to the buildings or
life of the university.

The only graffiti I saw was on a section of
the Berlin Wall in the lawn outside of the Baker public policy building
(that is, Official Historical Graffiti). Very few of the buildings have
more than a discrete identification label. Our student tour guide said
that about 3/4 of the students
live on campus but cars still seem a big part of campus life. I saw some
bicyclists but this is clearly not a bike school like the University of California campuses at Davis or Santa Barbara.

The campus has all been built since 1912 and there are clear generations
of architecture among the brick and stone buildings. The school’s founder

William Marsh Rice was murdered in 1900 (yes, the butler did actually do it) but his money ended up creating an impressive and clearly well funded
institution. The center of the school is the bronze statue of founder “Willie”. Interestingly, it was James Baker the lawyer who found out
Willie’s murderous butler. His descendent, James A. Baker, III founded Rice’s
Institute for Public Policy.
This is the same institute which recently issued the controversial

Iraq Study Group Report.

Jessica was happy with her very brief vocal audition but we will not know
until 1 April what their acceptance decision is. The Director of Admissions said it was mostly a “numbers game” and that excellent students were turned away every year. Shepherd only accepts about 30 students a year in
all areas (instrument, voice, music theory, etc.). We were surprised to
find out that Rice has an “all or nothing” admissions policy. If a
student applies to a school in Rice and is not accepted, they are not
accepted to Rice at all even if they have other academic interests. I
am not sure how Rice manages students who enter with an undecided major.

During our brief orientation at Shepherd this morning, we were told that
music students are discouraged from trying to double major. However, the
Rice Senior with whom we went to lunch
said that “Musies” (music school students) often did double major and should
not let Shepherd push them around about their life choices. He also said it
was easy to transfer from school to school, which does not seem to go with
the all or nothing admissions.

After she left with her dorm hostess, Jessica was going to visit a class by
one of the Shepherd teachers she asked for. Shepherd has students apply to work with individual professors rather than to the school as a whole. Since
I did not see a class, I have less of a feel for Rice than I do for other universities.

I was concerned to hear one of our tour guides, a Mechanical Engineer,
say that most Engineers have either a desktop or laptop computer but some
don’t have either. Coming from the Silicon Valley, I know very few High School
students who don’t have their own laptop. In the dorm room we visited,
both students had up-to-date desk computers. It feels odd for a famous
and well funded Engineering school to have students without their own computer.

Another concern was physical safety. There is a prominent framed sign in
the women’s bathroom at Shepherd about sexual harassment and rape,
giving very detailed instructions about what to do if it happens. When
I was walking back to the hotel, a man stopped me and said I should hide
my gold necklace chain because it might be stolen.

I liked the Rice institution of college Masters. These are professors
and their families who live in an on-campus home located near the dorm
which is part of each college. Our tour guide said that the masters
provided all of the good parts of family (an emergency ride, a shoulder
to cry on) without complaints about finishing homework and room cleaning.

I walked over to Rice Village after visiting campus. In addition
to national chain stores, there were a few local shops and a wide variety
of restaurants, including many international choices. The campus
area seems prosperous. This is not a student slum with funky stores but
rather an upscale community outdoor mall: more like Stanford Shopping Center
near Stanford Univ. than Telegraph Avenue near U.C. Berkeley or
Isla Vista near U.C. Santa Barbara.

The two edges of campus I walked along were more designed for cars than
pedestrians. The sidewalks were often broken or tilted and there were
sections roped off where the walkways were ripped out entirely. The
family homes were interesting with varied architecture. Most
provided large private parking areas in front with small border gardens.

I look forward to hearing what Jessica has to say about her dorm visit.
Her hostess said they planned to have dinner tonight at Rice Village.
We plan to visit the Menil Collection and
Rothko Chapel tomorrow (they are
about 2 miles from Rice). My mother’s old friend Walter Hopps was Menil’s
first Director and the collection is the listing for Houston
in one of my favorite travel guides 1000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler’s Life List by Patricia Schultz (2003).

Yesterday, Lucy Sanders of the National
Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) had lunch with Sun’s
“Succeeding @ Sun as a Woman Engineer” (SASWE) networking group. Lucy talked
about NCWIT’s mission to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing. I came away from
the lunch with questions about why young women aren’t more fascinated by
computing.

Last night, my 18-year-old daughter was studying for her final High School
exam: Java programming. (Jessica does not have to take another exam until the
end of her first college semester in a year.) She loved her Java class and
wished she had more time to learn programming. Sadly, with just one semester left in
High School, Jessica has run out of class slots and it is too late for her
to join the Advanced Placement in Programming year-long class.

Jessica’s High School required her to take introduction to computing in her
Freshman year. She was miserable and never wanted to take another computing class.
Now as a Senior, she loves her new Apple MacBook Pro laptop and wishes she had
known how much fun programming can be. When she took a break from studying for
the exam, I asked Jessica what made this class different and why she loved
programming. Here is what she said:

• Teachers need to be comfortable with computers. Computers are just
  a tool, like a pencil, not something you have to use or something that
  is special or different.

• It would be good to have both men and women role models. Her High School
  has women math and science teachers but no women in its tech department.

• Practical tasks, not abstract concepts, are fun. This programming
  class taught Jessica how to make an on-line robot walk and beep and
  do things.

• Programming class should have no stigma. There should not have to be
  a big push to get in. It shouldn’t just be the prizefighter girls
  who take programming and join the Robotics Club. It should be normal to
  take programming.

• Some work, like learning how to write a perfect bibliographic
  citation, is better done by computers. Time is better spent programming
  the computer.

• Computing teachers should hold themselves to a high standard and
  expect the students to do well. Teachers should be disappointed when
  their students don’t work hard. (Jessica described great teachers
  as “battleaxe” – a good thing!)

• Geeks get enthusiastic. Teachers who are really into it are cool,
  are better role models. Honest geeks do not pander to
  the subject or condescend to the students.

• Talking with senior women who are succeeding in Computer Science helps.
• Lego robotics are fun. They are good for a beginner: practical,
  effective, with immediate results. Show the future action
  potential or beginning students get discouraged.

• Reading books like She’s Such a Geek (Ed. by Annalee Newitz and
  Charlie Anders, Seal Press 2006, ISBN-10: 1580051901) helps to keep Jessica excited
  about computing. It’s not just that she has an essay included the book – it
  is being part of a group of excited girl geeks.

Some of what Jessica said reminded me of a section called “More
Attention to Good Teaching” in Unlocking the Clubhouse
(p.131, by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, The MIT Press, 2003, ISBN-10: 0262632691).
This section addressed some of the changes made by Fisher and Margolis in
Carnegie Mellon’s undergraduate Computer Science program:

…good teaching is especially important to women because failures
in pedagogy or in curricular integration affects women disproportionately.
Our main effort in this regard was to use the teaching assignment process
to put better, more experienced, and more senior teachers (note that these
are not always correlated!) into the earliest courses of the curriculum,
where women reported having the most distress.

In March, after we find out which colleges have accepted Jessica, I hope
she will choose a school with a great undergraduate Computer Science
staff. It would be sad to see all of her computing enthusiasm trashed by bad
teaching.

My son’s High School Freshman English class at
Paly has been studying poetry
all semester. Paul has been writing poems in 7 forms: haiku, limmerick,
cinquain, free verse, narrative, and sonnet. He told me on Tuesday that
he had 5 done and needed to write 2 more poems by Thursday (the last day
of class). I haven’t written a sonnet in years but we sat down and
worked out the following on the subject dearest to his 14-year-old heart:
Xbox video games.

Gaming Sonnet

X-box video gaming is fun to do,

You can choose to be on the Red Team,

Or you can choose to be on the Blue.

You must always want to sneakily scheme:

Your reflexes must be fast and sure.

People that are good at an X-box game,

Have intentions that are not often pure.

Most people play Halo2 about the same,

But some gamers are very fast,

So they win their matches clever and quick.

Imagination makes a good game last,

Crushing Red soldiers bloody and slick.

X-box gaming is never boring,

So gamers minds are always soaring.

The meter and number of syllables are flawed but it seems like
a good first effort.

We are still finishing up and following up on all nine of Jessica’s
college applications. My daughter gave her first vocal conservatory
audition this morning at 9 a.m. in San Francisco. We started driving
at 7:15 a.m. She was singing two songs for evaluation by Oberlin Conservatory:

• La lontananza (Gaetano Donizetti,1797-1848) in Italian
• American Lullaby (Gladys Rich) in English

We arrived about 20 minutes early with Simona (piano
accompanist), Jessica’s resume with an 8×10″ glossy black and white
photo, and the music binder. The amount of arranging it took to
get the accompanist, the photo, and the girl to the audition
on time was tiring even though the audition itself only took half an
hour. We now have Jessica’s audition photo on-line so
we can print as many as we want. We will hear in March whether Oberlin is
interested in taking Jessica as one of their 15 vocal music students
for next year.

Carnegie Mellon school of music has already listened to Jessica’s
audition CD and declined to hear her in person. Since the audition is
80% of the acceptance decision, this means that CMU music will not take
her. She was disappointed
but still hopes to get into CMU as a regular student even if she cannot
be a conservatory student there. In two weeks, we fly to Houston, TX to
audition for the Shepherd School at Rice Univ. Next month,
Jessica sings for Lawrence (in San Francisco). Simona will
play piano again.

We have mailed out all of the audio CDs to the other schools
(Princeton, MIT, Brown, Smith, and Univ. Rochester). Jessica is
working out the remaining in-person interview dates and also
checking with each school to be sure they received everything
they need. She has already re-sent some materials to Rice.

Jessica sent her Advance Placement test scores out last month. However,
when she got the confirmation letter from the College Board, she
found they had sent a set of scores to the Massachusetts Maritime
Academy instead of to MIT. She called the College Board and got
them to send in the scores to MIT. The next day, Jessica got an
application packet from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. I guess
they liked the scores even though they were sent in error!

On top of all of this, Jessica has first semester final exams next
week. She already turned in her final project for the Great Novels
class. She composed and then recorded a CD of four songs from Toni
Morrison’s Song of Solomon (one of the Great Novels they read).
It’s a great deal of work to be a High School Senior.

John and I decided to get our family a new water heater for Christmas.
We started this project months ago, researching options in terms of
energy use, price, and longevity. Our old water heater was still going
after 12 years of service but it mostly produced either scalding or cold
water and the last one to take a morning shower had a choice between tepid
or cold water (or sometimes just cold or colder). The main problem is that
the water in our San Jose area is very hard (full of minerals), so the
calcium builds up in the water tank, lines, and in crusty deposits on the
shower and faucet heads.

Our first plan was to get a tankless water heater. We researched this
and particularly liked the energy savings. However, it took us months
to find a plumbing company in our area which could supply and install
a tankless water heater system. When we finally did and the plumber
eventually came out to look at the old water heater in our basement, it
turned out that the equipment and labor
would cost about $4,000. Worse, even though tankless systems have
been in use elsewhere for a long time, they are just recently approved
for use in our area so there is less than 2 years of history of how they
work with our kind of water and home plumbing. We regretfully decided not to
install a very expensive “1.0” system.

Our next choice was an energy efficient tank water heater. John
again researched the options and called the plumber back to talk. Again,
it turned out that the hard water made our choice. We looked into
getting a water softening system but even though this would double the
efficency, it also doubled the cost. At the end of all of our research
and discussion, it seemed that any new tank replacement would provide improved
energy efficiency if we drained it once a year to get rid of the calcium
build up. So, we might as well get the biggest model that would fit in the
space. The equipment and labor ended up costing $1,575.

Yesterday, our new 75 gallon hot water heater arrived and after much noise,
and carrying of bits and pieces up and down the basement stairs, was
installed. The old 40 gallon tank from 1994 went away on the same truck.
The water flow in
our house has increased dramatically and we are still getting bits of rust
and grit every time we turn a spigot. Apparently, because the new water heater
isn’t full of calcium, it is pushing more water through the pipes and
cleaning them out. We had a choice of temperature settings A, B, or C. (Reading
the manual would probably help but we are not desperate yet.) We
started off at setting B but that produced scalding tap water, so we
lowered the temperature setting.

I must admit as a native Californian I feel more secure having 75 gallons of
water in our house in case of earthquake or other emergency. John is from
the Midwest and feels more comfortable with the tankless option.

It is frustrating to do all sorts of research only to find that our energy
conservation choices are limited by the hard water in our very local
environment. However, we figure by the time we are ready to replace the
tank we just installed, tankless water heaters will have some history and
we can look at that option again.

We went to Christmas Eve church service with our daughter Jessica’s
boyfriend’s family. The modern Christian service featured a large rock
band, words to the Christmas carols projected onto big screens
flanking the podium, a pastor ventriloquist with a puppet giving the
sermon, and lighted candles for the congregation to hold up at the end.
It was very different from the traditional Episcopal service (with
processions, classical music and incense) with which we usually celebrate.

The next morning, our family had a lovely Christmas morning opening
presents in front of the fireplace. Jessica made waffles for
breakfast. We then cooked and hosted dinner
for 12 (plus 3 visitors after) that night. I set out all of the
china in the kitchen for John to plate then Jessica and Paul served
the courses to the table. It was fun to try that instead of everyone
serving themselves from big platters and bowls. By serving courses,
nothing gets stuck (unpassed and uneaten) at the end of the long
table or on the sideboard. I enjoyed being able to use lots of china,
crystal, and silver. We are still working our way through the leftover
food.

Jessica’s big present was an Apple MacBook Pro with Intel dual processor. This computer was both a Christmas and birthday present. She has
transferred everything from her old Apple PowerBook (which she said
was very easy to do) and has been working on it happily ever since.
John and I wanted to give her the new laptop during her last semester
in High School so she was used to it before going to college. Jessica
is also reading Terrier, the new Tamora Pierce book in her Tortall
series.

Paul has been dividing his time between his three new movie
DVDs (The Tuxedo, X-Man Trilogy, and Pirates of the
Caribbean – Dead Man’s Chest), and reading Eldest, the sequel
to Paolini’s Eragon. We go to see the Eragon movie
tonight since I finished reading it yesterday. The book was long
(needed editing!) and felt like a mishmash of four or five other
sword-and-sorcery life journey novels. Some parts were just silly
(metal armor for a dragon) but it is still an impressive first novel.
I have also been looking through our other new books: The
Complete Guide to Growing Cacti & Succulents – A Comprehensive Guide
to Identification, Care and Cultivation and The Railroad Caboose.

There has been a rain and windstorm the last few days. Plastic buckets
and palm fronds were flying around the neighborhood all yesterday afternoon. Today is cool and clear, good gardening weather.