Category Archives: News & Reviews

December 10, 2013 · 4:53 pm

Caboose Clinic: The Adventures of WP668

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I presented a “Caboose Clinic” to the Coast Division of the National Model Railroad Association on 8 December 2013 in San Leandro, California. The title of my talk was “The Adventures of WP668 1916-2013: Buying and Restoring a Western Pacific Caboose”. You can see additional information about the backyard caboose in which I have my office on WP668’s web page: http://wp668.org. About forty guys and one woman attended my clinic. I was glad that they asked so many questions and seemed to have a good time.

As always, my thanks and appreciation to all who have made WP668’s long adventures possible, especially:

WP668 today:
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WP668 in active service, 1971:
Used with permission of Don Marenzi
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Images Copyright 1971 by Don Marenzi, and 2013 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher

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December 9, 2013 · 5:41 pm

Honoring Nelson Mandela

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Working on my Christmas shopping, late Friday I made my annual trip to the Artifactory Holiday Fair craft sale at Hoover House in Palo Alto. I was touched to see that Inja (of Inja Ink Calligraphy) had stopped her other work to write out a  Nelson Mandela quote on the day he died. The new piece was on display for consideration and honor, not for sale.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

I had been feeling sad at the passing of a hero and role model.  Inja’s gentle tribute lifted my heart.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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November 21, 2013 · 6:30 pm

Paul Applying to San Jose State University

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I am delighted to write that my son Paul is finishing up his last year at Foothill College and applying to transfer to San Jose State University (SJSU) in 2014. In addition to studying Studio Art, Paul is interested in becoming a credentialed art teacher for children with disabilities. Samples of his art are below – with more in his online portfolio: Paul’s Element.

Raising a kid with disabilities is a challenge and I am proud of Paul and of our whole family for his successful progress. Paul has been blessed with some remarkable and excellent teachers – to whom I am forever grateful:

Paul also had more than his share of poor teachers but we survived them. I only ask that they and…

  • …the teachers who did not want disabled kids like Paul in their class:
  • …the administrators who told us that Paul would be lucky to get to college:
  • …the head of school who kicked Paul out because his disabilities were bringing down her scores:
  • …the career counsellors who took Paul and the other disabled kids on a tour of the sewer plant:

Please consider this…

Jane Goodall went in the back door to become an ethologist. That’s something I’ve thought about a lot, because people with autism usually have to go in the back door. We have a lot of trouble following the normal paths. We don’t do very well in interviews, which are a big problem for us, and a lot of autistic people also have extremely “uneven” academic skills. An autistic person can test at the bottom of the IQ range on one subscale and at the very top on another. For example, I had great difficulty with algebra because there’s no way to visualize it.  I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing if there weren’t any back doors.

– Dr. Temple Grandin, 2009
In 2010, Dr. Temple Grandin was listed in the Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world in the “Heroes” category.

Wish Paul luck in being accepted!  We will hear back from SJSU by March 2014.

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Images Copyright Katy Dickinson and Paul D. Goodman 2011-2013

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November 20, 2013 · 12:15 pm

Blimp Copter Flying High in SOMA

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The 100,000+ Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference attendees are creating traffic gridlock in the South of Market (SOMA) area of San Francisco this week. I was there on Monday, visiting the Everwise mentoring company at Impact HUB (in the old Chronicle Building at 5th and Mission).  Everwise was busy that day converting a shipment of Mentos candies into MENTORS freebies for distribution to the Smurf-blue hordes of conference goers.

I also visited eVault (at 3rd and Howard) where my husband John Plocher is the Principle Architect for Open Storage. Over the Dreamforce installation, the large Engajer blimp copter flew freely, sometimes coming very close to the eVault windows overlooking the Moscone Center.  Blimp copters are a fun development since I last wrote about quadricopters in 2010.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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November 15, 2013 · 8:42 am

Unemployment Reporting, EfM

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Last summer, as soon as I was laid off from MentorCloud (great vision and staff, being paid would have been better…), I filed my unemployment claim with the California Employment Development Department (EDD).

Things have changed with EDD since I last wrote about it in 2009. The every-two-weeks reporting forms are the same but instead of a check in the mail, now they send a VISA credit card from Bank of America. This has lead to some problems.

Unfortunately, BofA is not my bank and the name on the BofA card is not precisely the same version of my name that is on my regular bank account, so they will not set up an auto-transfer. I get no notice when EDD puts funds into the VISA account, so every week, I have to: go to the BofA ATM to ask for the balance (the teller inside BofA cannot do this for an EDD card), if there is any money in the account, I go to my regular bank and tell them the precise balance, then my bank can transfer the funds into my checking account. I could just use the EDD VISA card to pay for stuff but not knowing how much is in it and telling EDD exactly what I spend money on do not work for me.

The EDD reporting form asks questions like:

  • Was there any reason (other than sickness or injury) that you could not have accepted full-time work each workday?
  • Did you look for work?
  • Did you work or earn any money, WHETHER YOU WERE PAID OR NOT?

That last one is difficult for me to answer, because of my work as an accredited Education for Ministry (EfM) mentor for the University of the South – School of Theology. The EfM program pays me a $126/month stipend during nine months of the year. I tried reporting that amount to EDD once a month during the week in which it was deposited but that did not work.  EDD stopped deposits and after two fussy letters, scheduled a phone call for me to explain about EfM. The call time was set for sometime during 3 pm to 5 pm Wednesday. When the EDD representative finally called at 5:15 pm, I explained that EfM is a weekly adult formation class for the laity – a four-year program of Bible study, church history, and theology I joined in 2010. The small payment is not per-hour or per-session but per-month and only for nine months – even though I work on the EfM program year-round. Nonetheless, the EDD representative asked me to report as if it were paid $28/weekly. Now that is sorted out, I hope that they will resume payments to the BofA VISA card.

Image copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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

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November 14, 2013 · 1:25 pm

Dunk the Bishop and Other Convention Activities

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Last weekend, the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real on California’s central coast held its 2013 convention – and celebrated the start of our seventh year under the inspiring leadership of Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves. I have been honored to be elected to serve as a convention delegate (or alternate) for the last ten years. My home parish of St. Andrew’s hosted the convention this year in Saratoga.

ECR includes 13,000 people in 47 congregations:

The Diocese of El Camino Real stretches from south of San Francisco to north of Santa Barbara. The congregations of El Camino Real are found in the five counties of San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Monterey. Although the youngest diocese in California, ECR’s Trinity Cathedral, in San Jose, is the oldest cathedral structure in the State of California.

Conventions are for celebration of our ministry, updates, and managing the business of the church. However, this year we also enjoyed dunking Bishop Mary. She gamely “volunteered” to get wet as a fundraiser for our youth mission trip. Tickets were sold: $10 for 3 balls to try to dunk, or $20 not to dunk the Bishop. The youth raised $1,200 from ticket sales in one night!  As always, the Rev. Stephenie Cooper and my husband John Plocher were the “Assistant Secretaries for Everything Else” – that is, running the computers and displays for the ECR  convention.

Other more-conventional (ahem) activities included:

  • Celebrating the two month visit of The Rev. Fred Kalibwami to ECR from the Diocese of Western Tanganyika (DWT)
  • Bishop Mary’s annual address to the diocese, including announcing the purchase of  Sargent House for the Bishop’s new offices in Salinas.
  • Honors to notable volunteers and lifetime contributors:
    • Bishop’s Cross Recipients: The Rev. Roger Barney, and The Rev. Canon Linda Taylor
    • Simple Servant Awards: Don and Diane Cooley, and Rosemary Tisch
  • Lunch gathering of the Education for Ministry mentors in ECR (including me!)
  • Reports on key ministries – outreach to the jails, campus ministry at four universities, and caring for the poor and homeless in our communities.
  • Election of delegates to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church (held every three years). I was elected as first Alternate for the 2015 General Convention.
  • Displays by diocesan and charity groups, plus sales of crafts and Bishop Mary’s newest book Unearthing My Religion

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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November 6, 2013 · 11:23 am

TechWomen: Next Steps, Open Source

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We Mentors are sad to see our 78 TechWomen Mentees start their travels home today to their 16 countries in Africa and the Middle East. This has been a life-changing program for all of us.  It will take time to process our experiences and understanding and to decide what to do next. Larissa and I just sadly said goodbye to our Mentee Imen who just started her long trip home to Algeria. Our parting advice to her had to do with open source.

All TechWomen emerging leaders are impressive and accomplished.  This group of 78 was selected from almost 2,000 applicants.  Some of them already know their next steps. Janet (pictured with me above, at the US State Department) is raising four sons, teaching Electrical Engineering at a technical college, and running a K-12 school with 450 students in Cameroon. Busy lady!

Imen spent this month working with Larissa at Mozilla working on open source software. When she gets home, Imen’s co-workers, family, and friends are going to ask about her TechWomen experience – and open source will be part of that discussion. Here are some of the websites Larissa and I recommend for newbies to open source:

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Image Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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