Category Archives: News & Reviews

I saw the delightful cover of the current issue of the free
Metro Silicon Valley
newspaper and immediately thought of QTIP.

Metro Silicon Valley Cover

QTIP

I don’t mean Unilever’s
brand of
cotton swab but rather QTIP, the acronym for

Quit Taking It Personally.

Even someone like me who does not watch TV has heard of the embarrassing squabble
two weeks ago between our presidential candidates over the phrase

Lipstick on a pig and who was calling whom a pig. The Metro cover image of three
piggies with crowns dancing around the big lipstick captured the silliness of the
debate beautifully. If I could say one thing to Obama and McCain right now, it
would be to ask them to set a better example for adult behavior
and just QTIP.

Back on
June 11, 2008, I wrote a blog entry about the 19th century backless couch
my mother gave me, which is now being restored. I thought my mother
bought the couch as an antique but it turns out that the piece has been
owned by our family for at least my mother’s lifetime (it was in our cabin
at
Elkmont, in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee for many years).

This weekend, we got to see the completion of the second phase of work, by John Gibbs
of The Workshop (500 E Mcglincy Lane, #G, Campbell, CA 95008-4919, Phone:
408-371-7166). When we went to see the fainting couch, John Gibbs said the
wood is probably a combination of mahogany, birch, and maybe elm. He also
showed us a reproduction furniture catalogue from 1875-1905 which featured
a “Turkish Couch” similar to ours (so now we know more about the date of
our piece). It probably cost under $40 when it was new.

Here are the phases of this project:

• Phase I (June – July) – the couch was stripped of its upholstry and
  padding
• Phase II (August – September) – The Workshop reglued and braced the frame,
  then repaired and refinished the visible wood
• Phase III (Starting Soon) – Reupholstry

Photos of the work so far:

Before Starting Work (June)

End of Phase I (July)

The Workshop Sign

End of Phase II (September)

John Gibbs and The Workshop

Turkish Couch Image

Images Copyright 2008 Katy Dickinson

One of the odd and fun offerings of Bay Area nurseries and garden centers
is the statuary section. It seems that it’s not enough to have plants,
gardens need decorations too.

By tradition, around 500 BCE, Siddhartha Gautama was sitting underneath a
Bo-Tree when he was
“awakened” (Buddha). Around 1220 in Italy,

St. Francis of Assisi gave a sermon to wild birds, earning
himself a place in hearts and gardens around the world. In the last century,

Flower fairies have become very popular among the less orthodox.
Representations of these and a variety of other religious statuary are
presented for sale at our local Orchard Supply Hardware, along with frogs
and less likely garden inhabitants.

Cool Cats

Penguins, Hedgehog

Frogs

Cross, Mary, Francis

Bunny Truck

Tribal heads

Bunnies, Cats

Buddha

Fairy

St. Francis

Heron

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

As the owner of WP668, the railroad
caboose in my backyard, I know something about having a passion for odd
transport. I wrote on
May 7, 2008 about Silly Vehicles. This is an update on that theme.

My husband John found a set of pictures of some of the strange vehicles
created for the
Burning Man gathering held in the Black Rock Desert, 120 miles north of
Reno, Nevada, around Labor Day each year. One of the pictures was of a

three-wheeled tugboat car which we last saw in the parking lot
of our local hardware store. A few of the unique vehicles we see in
the Silicon Valley are from Burning Man but others are just expressions
of their owner’s taste or fantasy.

Stretch Limo Hummer

Kit Car

Old Rolls

Tug Car

Advertising Truck

Modified VW Bug

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

I recently purchased a
finch feeder and hung it on the railing
of our upstairs deck – well above where the neighborhood cats lurk. The two nearest
trees are a lemon and an almond with no big branches within cat leaping distance.
Living on the
Guadalupe River in San Jose, California, our yard is home to wild birds of
all kinds. This is at least the third finch feeder in our immediate neighborhood –
Jamie has one and Linda does too – but there seem to be more than enough little
birds for everyone.

The lady in the shop where I bought the tube feeder (an Aspects Nyjer Mesh Feeder) said
there are seven types of finches in California. She recommended Nyjer Thistle (or
black thistle) seeds as a favorite food. I don’t know the names of our birds but
they are mostly green or yellow with black and white accents. I am reading about
finches on the
Cornell Lab of Ornithology “All About Birds” web site.

No finches showed interest when we first put up the
feeder; however, a month later the little greedy guts are going through a full
tube of seed every few days. The brick walkway below the feeder is black with
chaff and spilled seed. My husband said our local mourning doves and smaller songbirds
eat the thistle seed that falls.

The finches constantly squabble and peck and peep at each other when not
actually eating. They do not seem to care whether they are up, down, or sideways
when eating. They look around and shift position regularly and all flit off at any
danger sign. (We slowly sneak up on them to take pictures.) I feel peaceful watching
these lively little birds.

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher

I have written from time to time about the subway and metro map collection
Sun Distinguished Engineer
Danny Cohen and I have been building for some years in
Sun Labs Menlo Park, CA. Last May, a
large part of our map collection was destroyed due to a misunderstanding
on the part of a facilities contractor. I am pleased to announce that
our Homage to Beck metro map boards are back –
better than before! After facilities staff and others donated new maps, Danny and I now
have enough for two extra-large bulletin boards in addition to our original board.
We have maps of:

* Amsterdam     * Bangkok     * Barcelona
* Boston        * Budapest    * Cairo Egypt
* Chicago       * Frankfurt   * Hamburg
* Helsinki      * Hong Kong   * Houston
* Kuala Lampur  * London      * Lyon France
* Madrid        * Marseilles  * Moscow Russia
* Munich        * New York    * Oslo
* Paris         * Prague      * Rome
* San Francisco * Santa Clara * Seoul
* Singapore     * Sofia       * St. Petersburg Russia
* Stockholm     * Sydney      * Taipei
* Tokyo         * Washington  * Wellington NZ
* Zurich

All of the maps in our collection present a design that derives
at least partially from

Harry Beck’s 1933 London subway map. The point of the display is that excellent
design communicates across cultures and can perpetuate itself through inspiration.

New bulletin boards

Original collection down the hall

Danny and me

“New Yorker” Subway Man

Maps close up

Maps posted so far

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

For photos of the original map display, check out my blog –

February 07, 2008.

For your own instant map collection, buy

Transit Maps of the World – The World’s First Collection of
Every Urban Train Map on Earth

by Mark Ovenden, Penguin, 2007


ISBN-10: 0143112651,
ISBN-13: 978-0143112655