Category Archives: Home & Family

My husband and I are having a special dinner Thursday night. Jessi called
from school at lunch break today to say that she had not talked with us
about anything but college, grades, and SATs for weeks and could we please
have a meal at which those topics are banned?

She has a point. For the next 12 weeks, every kid in the USA who is applying
to go to college in September 2007 will be preparing and sending in their
applications to their preferred schools. Even those who have already sent in
their Early Admittance or
Early Decision requests are probably working on the applications for their
backup choices. (It is a little disturbing that I now know the difference
between Early Admittance and Early Decision.) After years of discussion
and preparation, it is strange to be this deep in the process of deciding
where to send our beloved daughter and eldest child off to college.

Jessi’s college advisor at Harker
recommended that she and we read The Gatekeepers by Jacques
Steinberg. This is the story of the Class of 2004 admissions process for
Wesleyan, a university in Connecticut.
I found the book of particular interest because the SEED Engineering mentoring
program I manage for Sun has many similar application and admission processes.
The volume of college applicants far exceeds anything SEED gets,
thank goodness; however, we do hold the same discussions of how to value one
set of accomplishments over another. In Wesleyan’s case, the choices often seemed
to be high SAT test scores or grades
vs. demonstrated leadership vs. writing or dance or music talent vs. cultural origin.
In SEED discussions, it is often work history vs. demonstrated creative
ability vs. patents or publications vs. high recommendations vs. demonstrated
leadership or technical excellence. Few candidates excel in all areas and, just
like the admissions officers in the book, I always wish I could accept more than I
have spaces for.

It is hard to read The Gatekeepers just now because I keep thinking
over my own daughter’s academic, athletic, musical, and personal profile
and wondering what a college admissions officer will make of her. I think
Jessi is wise to call an occassional time out from college discussions
to reconnect as a family who loves each other.

I admit I can’t cook. While I have a green thumb for gardening, it is
definitely a black thumb when it comes to cooking, particularly baking.
I am blessed in having a husband who cooks like an angel who has taught
our kids to cook. Our daughter bakes to relax. When Jessi has a week of
exams, she brings muffins and cookies and cakes to each test (a habit
much encouraged by her classmates, you can be sure).
However, I have a strange fascination for
Nordicware.

“Nordic Ware is a family-owned, American manufacturer of kitchenware products
founded in 1946. … Nordic Ware is best known for its Bundt® Pan. Today,
there are nearly 60 million Bundt® pans in kitchens across America.”

I have proven myself unable even to cook a bundt cake (famously the easiest
cake to make) but I have developed a collection of the fancy cake pans for
use by my family. I was originally seduced by the Cathedral pan (modeled
after Notre Dame Cathedral, my favorite), and went on to buy the heart, rose,
sand castle, and bouquet muffin pan. I find it amusing to arrive at a
meeting or pot luck party with a cathedral shaped cake as my contribution.

The Nordicware Christmas catalogue just arrived. They are now offering
a stadium-shaped cake pan but the carousel pan looks more fun. What confuses
me is the catalogue section on “Natural Commercial Bakeware”. What is
natural about bakeware? Wikipedia lists many meanings of “natural”, but
bakeware?

Sputnik and I have almost the same birthday. The space age dawned
the week after I was born. My mother says she showed my older
brother and me Sputnik when it was just a tiny speck of light in
the evening sky above San Francisco. I also share my birth year with
Dr. Seuss’s Grinch and the Cat in the Hat.

To read a history of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite,
check out
NASA’s website.

I took some golf lessons years ago but wasn’t very good at it.
My grandfather loved golf after his retirement and I think my
younger brother plays. However, golf was not a big part of my
life until our neighbor took it up. He has been practicing in
his back yard. For months now, we and all the surrounding
neighbors have been finding his golf balls in our yards. A few
weeks ago, five of us surrounded him at a neighborhood BarBQ to
tease him about his new passion and gently ask him to practice
somewhere else.

Early last Saturday, we heard a great THUMP! on the side
of our house. Another golf ball appeared in the yard. Last Sunday,
we came home from church to find a second floor window shattered and
a golf ball below. Our neighbor was very responsive to our request:
he has been busy measuring the frame and getting someone to replace the
window. The sliding glass is double paned and tinted, with a
metal frame, so it is not an easy fix.

He says he has sworn off golf.

I am still learning to use our new photo scanner and enjoying
the discovery of historic, memorable, and funny family photos
as I sort through old boxes. Here are some of the recent
best finds:

2003, Katy and Angel Fish off Grand Cayman:	2005, Paul’s First Dive, Monterey:
2006, John and church kids:	2006, family computing:	.

Images by John Plocher, Katy Dickinson, John Sack (Copyright 2003, 2005, 2006)

We recently bought an HP full page scanner and I have been learning
to use it and to post the photos to our family web pages. I am
making selections from the many dozens of large plastic boxes
of family photographs from the late 1800s to the present that line
our basement walls. I spent much of the 3 day weekend sorting and scanning. Some of the changes shown in these pictures over time
are fascinating.

For example, here is my parent’s 1884 San Francisco Victorian house
in 1969, 1976, and now:

1969:	1976:
2006:	2006:	.

In almost 40 years, you can see that the house has been repainted
and restored a bit and of course the trees and yard plants have grown.
The real changes are in the surrounding houses, both of which have been
remodelled and restored extensively as the Victorian style and neighborhood have become more popular.

Last Thursday, as part of our vacation at 10th week of the
Lair of the Golden Bear family camp, we spent a day at Natural Bridges
near
Columbia, California. Columbia is a former California Gold Rush boom
town that lives on as a state-preserved historic park and a National
Historic Landmark. Natural Bridges is about an hour’s drive downhill
from
Pinecrest, the tiny town near the Lair.

The turn off to the Natural Bridges trailhead is just past the long bridge
over the reservoir:

If you go to Natural Bridges, bring a swim suit, water shoes, towel, lunch,
water and an inner tube or some kind of big water float. The deep stream
running through the caverns is very cold; it is more fun if some of you is above
the icy water. Water shoes help when walking on the slippery stones.

Even in summer, the floor of the big cavern is under water but the
stalactites, limestone
formations, and waterfalls of this living cave are spectacular. There
are three areas in the cave: the entry chamber at the base of the trail,
the vaulted middle chamber, and the exit chamber where the stream enters
the cavern. There are crawdads (crayfish – like tiny lobsters) and
little fish in the water.

The abundance of water makes for lots of plants outside the cave,
including poison oak and
prickly blackberry vines. The steep hike downhill from the trail head
goes through a dry grassy border then enters a scrubby forest of
madrone and live oak and manzanita and California buckeye, with poison oak everywhere. At this time of year, hikers must avoid poison oak on
the ground and even vining through the trees. “Leaves Three – Let
Me Be”!

Images by Katy Dickinson (Copyright 2006)