 |
. |  |
Our San Jose Guadalupe River cottonwood trees are filling the air again. Even though I have written about this before (2009, 2008), being caught in a dancing seed storm and having delicate fluff settling all over my garden still surprises and charms.
Images 2012 Copyright Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
Some years ago, my husband John bought an estate collection of 820 photographic slides taken by a Mr. J.R. Benedict of Redwood City, California. During 1970-1975, J.R. Benedict took pictures of Southern Pacific railroad equipment in the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly on the Peninsula. Pictures of BART and the 1975 bicentennial American Freedom Train are included.
Recently, John sent the slides to Scan Cafe for digitizing. This was an experiment to see if this digitizing service produced quality scans at a reasonable price. The results are good. John posted all of the slides in a collection on our family photo archive site so that railroad fans (including Southern Pacific enthusiasts, railroad modellers, and historians) can have access to the 26 sets of images.
Sadly, although there are a few pictures of steel-strapped wooden cabooses which are sisters to WP668, our backyard caboose, there do not seem to be images of our own particular piece of rolling stock. John is looking to donate the physical slides themselves (an a DVD full of the digitized images) to a railroad historical society in the hopes that others will find the images interesting and useful.
Images Copyright John Plocher 2012
Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family, News & Reviews
Living on the Guadalupe River in San Jose, California, we have had a variety of unwanted creatures move in with us, including: squirrels, mice, and recently, roof rats. We discovered the roof rats because they eat the outside of our lemons and the inside of our oranges, then leave the cored or peeled remainders hanging on the tree or all over the walkway under it: nasty! Apparently, the smart rodents eat citrus fruit to counteract rat poison.
Our latest move-in is a hive of honeybees under our roof tiles. A neighbor who is a beekeeper looked them over and said that the hive is healthy, not aggressive, and doing no harm at the top of the house. He advised leaving the insects in place and said that we would not have problems with squirrels or roof rats in the future because the bees would drive them off. He also observed that our garden (especially the roses) was perfect for bees – and offered to put two hives on our riverbank and split the resulting honey with us. We are looking forward to becoming beekeepers ourselves!
Images by Katy Dickinson Copyright 2012
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
One of the interesting parts of owning an older house is discovering how it is built. Our 1930 Spanish Mission Revival home in Willow Glen has delightful arts and crafts style details, including oak parquet floors downstairs and on the upstairs landing. When my husband John first bought the house in 1998, many of the floors were covered with icky dark pink carpet. We ripped most of that out and refinished the upper floors and stairs ten years ago.
There was one room downstairs that still had the pink carpet. This is the only downstairs bedroom, so person using it does not have to share a bathroom. Our son Paul had the room until his sister Jessica moved out last summer, just before she got married. In 2002, Paul and his grandmother painted a mural of the Pokemon fire chicken Moltres on the wall. Late last year, Paul moved into Jessica’s old room upstairs so that my mother could move in after my father died. She and her cats recently moved into a senior community nearby, so we have finally gotten rid of the last of the pink carpet.
Under the horrible cat-stinky carpet, we discovered an equally smelly rug pad. Under that was amazingly ugly linoleum. Today, the linoleum came off and we discovered that we have a potentially-lovely wooden floor of Douglas Fir wood. We are delighted – Doug fir is not as good as oak parquet but it is much better than pink carpet. We will get the boards refinished and the room will become John’s new office.
Pink Carpet:
Linoleum:
Douglas Fir boards:
Images by Katy Dickinson 2012 Copyright
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
I have been reading a fascinating article in the March 2012 Smithsonian Magazine called “Hive Mind” by Carl Zimmer. The article describes the work of Cornell University biologist Thomas Seeley, an expert in honeybees, swarm intelligence, and collective decision making.
The decision-making power of honeybees is a prime example of what scientists call swarm intelligence. Clouds of locusts, schools of fish, flocks of birds and colonies of termites display it as well.
Seeley and his colleagues have discovered a few principles honeybees use to make smart decisions:
Seeley draws comparisons between how a honeybee hive makes decisions and how both the human brain and a democracy work:
Both swarms and brains make their decisions democratically. Despite her royal title, a honeybee queen does not make decisions for the hive. The hive makes decisions for her. In our brain, no single neuron takes in all the information from our senses and makes a decision. Millions make a collective choice. …Groups work well, he argues, if the power of leaders is minimized. A group of people can propose many different ideas – the more the better, in fact. But these ideas will only lead to a good decision if listeners take time to judge their merits for themselves… Groups also do well if they’re flexible, ensuring that good ideas don’t lose out simply because they come late in the discussion.
Just because animals do something does not mean it is also appropriate for people. Nonetheless, comparing human systems to patterns in nature presents both in an interesting context.
Image Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under News & Reviews, Politics
We had more than a dozen children over with their families and friends for our annual backyard Easter Egg Hunt and potluck brunch in Willow Glen (San Jose, California). Among the kids, our son Paul was the oldest egg hunter at 19 and Howard was the youngest, at age 3. The devious Bunny and his helpers came up with the following poem hints about hiding places for the coveted Gold and Silver eggs:
GOLD:
My roost once used to roll and pitch
My halo exists at other men’s whims
In finding me please don’t twitch
The creek where you’d fall, nobody swimsSILVER:
I creep at the edge of an –ito
Don’t over-step or you will cheat-o
Chameleon-like I hide
Hurry quick! I won’t abide.
The Gold egg was found quickly (on top of the electrical box behind the light on the porch of WP 668, our caboose), but the Silver egg eluded all hunters until late afternoon. It was wrapped in tape and painted to look like a stone in the arroyito. The rules of the hunt are the same year after year:
 |
. |  |
Images Copyright 2012 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher
I brought home a load of thirty boulders on Sunday.
My late father loved his garden. On family vacations, he and I would compete for who could find the best stones to wedge into the car to take home to our rock gardens. Since the family house in San Francisco sold and the new owners will be redesigning the landscaping, I am moving the boulders out of my father’s garden into mine. Each rock has to be fitted into its new place – like flower arranging but much heavier.
Long ago, our family used to rent a vacation cabin at Fallen Leaf Lake in the mountains near Tahoe. We were last there in 1996 for my father’s 70th birthday party. The cabin was in an area where the rocks are grey and white striped. Both my father and I brought some of these wonderful stones home. On Sunday afternoon, I gardened with my father – arranging his boulders with mine around my silly concrete hippo.
Image by Katy Dickinson Copyright 2012
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
KatysBlog 