KatysBlog

June 30, 2010 · 4:27 pm

Paul Graduates High School!

After much struggle, my son graduated from High School! Hooray! Paul graduated with his Palo Alto High School class of 2010 in a ceremony attended by his parents and grandparents. His sister Jessica listened by cell phone to Paul’s name being announced as he walked to receive his diploma. Jessica is in Washington DC, where she is working as a summer intern for the Polaris Project (“For a World Without Slavery”).

Paul made his way through High School despite his social-cognitive learning disability, dyslexia, dysgraphia, brain surgery, and debilitating headaches. He stubbornly continued to do six or more hours of homework every day (including weekends) up until the week of finals – catching up after we were Stranded in Egypt over Spring Break. He took a CPR Saturday class just before finals after a last-minute note from the school said he needed that training to graduate. Other kids in Paul’s class were honored for their academic, sports, and musical achievements. Paul won through to the end, and that was good enough. We are so proud! This week, Paul is going to visit Jessica in Washington DC (his first solo trip). He starts at Foothill College in August.

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Tagged as Disabilities, Egypt, Foothill College, Jessica, Paul

June 28, 2010 · 12:14 am

Lover’s Cove with ten kids

Yesterday, my husband John and I went to Lover’s Cove in Pacific Grove (on Monterey Bay) with ten kids from the SMUM (Santa Maria Urban Ministry) Studio after school program. We have been weekly tutors for these kids (and their brothers and sisters and cousins and friends) for three school years. During the summers, we and the other teachers take them on field trips. Last year, we went with the Studio kids to The Tech Museum of Innovation, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the San Francisco Zoo. This year, they voted for the beach, Gilroy Gardens, and Raging Waters water park.

We had a great time at the beach. John and I brought our wet suits and showed the kids the tidal animals: anemones, crabs, barnacles, chitons, and snails. Then, we rented a kayak and I took them on individual tours of the cove so they could see seaweed, starfish and seagulls on the rocks. Lewis and Lawrence and the kids and we had a wonderful time. On the way home, we were held up by a family of Canada Geese which decided to walk down the middle of the road in front of us.

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Tagged as Episcopal church, John, Santa Maria Urban Ministry, SMUM

June 22, 2010 · 7:44 pm

FEMA Flood Map Fiasco

For more on this story, read: $1,453 Refunded for FEMA Mistake (23 July 2010) on San Jose Metblogs.

Tomorrow, we are mailing the final letter in an absurd and expensive year-long adventure in bureaucracy. On 7 July 2009, my husband and I received a letter from our mortgage holder that FEMA (the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency) had changed their FIRM (Flood Insurance Rate Map) such that our house was now in a high-risk SFHA (Special Flood Hazard Area). We were now required to buy annual flood insurance for the life of our mortgage loan because of FEMA’s map change.

Our house was built around 1930 next to the Guadalupe River, also known as the Lewis Canal in what is now San Jose, California. The Lewis Canal is named after its engineer, Frank Lewis (who was husband to Martha “Patty” Reed Lewis of the Donner Party). The canal was built about a hundred years ago. The property line behind our house runs down the middle of the river and includes a steep embankment that rises five feet above ground level and then drops twenty feet to the river water.

How did the FEMA map of a hundred-year-old canal and eighty-year-old house change? FEMA maps used to be drawn on a plain background. Some clever person decided to take the old maps (as is – with no change) and superimpose the lines on a background of satellite photos. The resolution of the original map and the satellite map were different. The old map was drawn on square grids and the satellite photos were taken with a round lens – so there was some mismatch and alignment error. A flat picture of the round Earth will always have such errors.

The creation of the new map caused the mortgage company’s flood area determination company (LPS National Flood) to review the situation of the mortgaged properties which might be effected. Although FEMA’s new FIRM did not include any new information with regard to the relative location of our house and the river, the new picture’s misalignment appeared to make the line indicating our house touch the line of the river. That our house is ten feet from the edge of the embankment’s retaining wall did not matter. Taking the most conservative approach, the mortgage company now required us starting immediately to pay $1,453 annually for flood insurance for the duration of the mortgage.

We talked with our mortgage company with no good results. We contacted FEMA with no good results. We contacted LPS National Flood with no good results. We talked with the insurance company with no good results. Everyone said that even though the new map did not correctly reflect the physical circumstances of our house and the river, the mortgage company could require us to buy flood insurance in perpetuity based on the map. We signed up for flood insurance and continued to fight. We eventually hired J.P. Tanner of Scotts Valley to work with FEMA to correct their map. We learned in the process that hundreds of other home owners along the river were in the same bureaucratic map-insurance mess as we were. Eventually, in April 2010, FEMA issued a LOMA (Letter of Map Amendment) formally removing our house from the flood zone.

Once we had the LOMA in hand, we had to convince the mortgage company and the insurance company to withdraw their requirement for flood insurance. I had to send them the LOMA several times but, as of the letter we received this week, we are finally being allowed to cancel our flood insurance. We hope to get a full refund for the 2009 flood insurance fee which we were required to pay because of the map error. Halleluja!

Of course, two days after the mortgage company sent us the letter saying we did not have to pay for flood insurance, the same company sent us a separate letter saying that our hazard insurance had expired:

“If we do not receive evidence of continuous hazard insurance coverage, it will be necessary for us to secure coverage to protect your interest at your expense. The cost of such insurance may be substantially higher that the amount you would normally pay for hazard insurance coverage. Affiliates of PNC Mortgage may earn commissions or income in conjunction with the placement of this coverage…”

Sigh.

Guadalupe River Pictures

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Tagged as San Jose

June 6, 2010 · 4:59 pm

Two Deacons Ordained by Bishop, All Women

Yesterday, the Right Reverend Mary Gray-Reeves, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real, ordained two women to the Sacred Order of Deacons. If this is not the first time that a woman Bishop has ordained two women Deacons at the same time, it is certainly a very rare event. Stephenie Cooper and Judith Sato were ordained at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in San Jose, California. That Bishop Mary was herself in 2007 the first woman Bishop ordained by Presiding Bishop The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is the first woman primate elected by the worldwide Anglican Communion, makes yesterday’s ordination even more notable.

Note from 29 June 2010: Bishop Mary kindly sent in a correction to this blog entry that Bishop Laura Ahrens was the first woman for whom Bishop Jefferts Schori was the chief consecrator. Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves was the first woman diocesan bishop, but Bishop Laura Ahrens the actual first in 2007.

I have known and worked with Stephenie Cooper for many years both on the diocesan web site and on Santa Maria Urban Ministry. We are both teachers for the after-school Studio program and on the SMUM Board. I have also worked with Judy Sato. I have great respect for both of these women and am delighted to see them ordained. Stephenie is a vocational deacon (meaning that she will continue in that service). Judy is a transitional deacon (meaning that she will be ordained as a priest after six months to a year). After yesterday’s service, the women deacons who joined the service from the Episcopal dioceses of Northern California, California, and El Camino Real stood with Bishop Mary in front of the altar for pictures.

What is a Deacon?
From Phoebe (a woman deacon mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Romans in the first century) to Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), deacons have been called to be servant ministers. From yesterday’s service booklet notes:

“Deacons are called to be representative of the Church to the world and the world to the Church, a prophetic voice and servant to those in need. The ministry of deacon is pastoral, charitable, and liturgical.”

During The Examination part of the service, Bishop Mary addressed Stephenie and Judy:

My sisters, every Christian is called to follow Jesus Christ, serving God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. God now calls you to a special ministry of servanthood directly under your bishop. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.

As deacons in the Church, you are to study the Holy Scriptures, to seek nourishment from them, and to model your life upon them. You are to make Christ and his redemptive love known, by your word and example, to those among whom you live, and work, and worship. You are to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world. You are to assist the bishop and priests in public worship and in the ministration of God’s Word and Sacraments, and you are to carry out other duties assigned to you from time to time. At all times, your life and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself.

As comedian Robin Williams said in his Top 10 Reasons to be an Episcopalian: “Male and female God created them; male and female we ordain them.”

I look forward to great work from both Stephenie and Judy.

Summit on Women and IT in Portland

Recently, I participated in the fascinating National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) annual Summit on Women and IT, in Portland, Oregon. A year ago, I wrote a blog entry called Women in IT: Think Globally, Act Locally about a similar NCWIT event. I learn so much and meet such interesting people through NCWIT!

This year, I lead a table discussion on “Visibility for Women as Great Technical Thinkers” and I was also part of a panel called “Evaluating What We Do: Challenges and Solutions”. For the panel, I presented data, analysis, and methods from my 2009 Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009 Technical Report. Our panel moderator was Dr. Wendy DuBow (NCWIT Research Scientist). The other panelists were Tricia Berry (Director of both the Women in Engineering Program (WEP) and the Texas Girls Collaborative Project (TxGCP) at The University of Texas at Austin), and Dr. Debra Richardson (Dean of Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science, University of California at Irvine).

Because of another eruption of Iceland’s volcano, a speaker from Scotland could not attend. The last-minute replacement speaker was Brian Nosek Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia and Project Implicit (a collaboration of the University of Virginia, Harvard University, and the University of Washington). Dr. Nosek gave an impressive and surprising presentation on “Mind Bugs – the Ordinary Origins of Bias”. Other presentations which were memorable included a panel on Women in Open Source and a presentation on the University of Michigan’s “Approach to Increasing Faculty Diversity”.

I was pleased to be able to see more of Portland. (Yes, it rained every day.) I enjoyed riding their excellent public transit system and saw Portlandia at last. I first heard about this huge copper statue during a lecture by Tom Wolfe in 1980. I also saw the umbrella man (“Allow Me” sculpture), Powell’s City of Books, and a variety of moose heads (one of which had its own flying squirrel companion).

On a street near Powell’s, there was a delightfully peculiar set of objects: a concrete chair painted bright pink next to a tiny plastic horse carefully tied with a steel cable to an iron ring set into the street curb. The unexplained arrangement somehow seemed a very-Portland.

CMU-Q in Doha, Qatar

John and Paul and I visited my daughter Jessica in Doha while she was a student at CMU-Q (Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar) last semester. She had an excellent experience studing Arabic, history, and politics at CMU-Q and Georgetown. Qatar has a very conservative Islamic culture, similar to that of its neighbor Saudi Arabia. It was fascinating to watch guys in traditional white dress adjust their head scarves the way western women fiddle with their long hair. I have heard that between the expat business people and the guest workers, less than a third of the people in Qatar are citizens. So, we did not feel too out of place being westerners.

We were delighted to hear Jessica sing several roles in the Qatar Foundation’s annual musical, which this year was Oliver!. We went for a long walk on the Cornish and took a pearl boat ride across the bay to the very impressive Museum of Islamic Art in its I. M. Pei building. We toured the markets: Souq Wakif (including its depressing pets for sale), the falcon souq, and the gold souq. And we visited the huge Vegas-like Villagio mall, complete with its Venetian canal and gondolas. We played board games one night with some of Jessica’s faculty friends. She even made us dinner – we brought it from the kitchen in the women’s dorm to where John and Paul were in the park near by. We admired the many new and under-construction modern office buildings downtown but after a few days we ran out of things to do and were happy to move on to Egypt for some world-class sightseeing.

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Tagged as Egypt, Jessica, John, Middle East, Paul, Qatar

May 4, 2010 · 11:46 pm

Egyptian Desserts

While we were in Egypt last month, we particularly enjoyed the desserts. One memorable meal was at the Naguib Mahfouz Restaurant in the Cairo souk (5 al-Badestan Lane, Khan al-Khalili, 1, Cairo, Egypt). Named in honor of the only Arabic-language writer to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the restaurant features brass tabletops, an impressive molded ceiling, and good food. Dessert was custard with raisins, nuts, and coconut on top, served with mint tea.

The signature Cairo dessert is called Um Ali or Om Ali (“Mother of Ali”), a kind of bread pudding. Two other excellent local treats are Golash (like Baklava) and Konafa (like a firm custard with filo on the bottom and shaved onto the top). We brought home some boxes of pastries as presents after being recommended to El Abd, a downtown Cairo patisserie with an impressive selection. Despite the tempting selection of pastries, one of my favorite sweets in Egypt remains fresh dates.