KatysBlog

January 27, 2014 · 12:15 am

Model Train Layout Tours

Yesterday, John and I went to see some of the model train layouts in the San Francisco East Bay as part of the Bay Area Layout Design & Operations Weekend of the Pacific Coast Region-National Model Railroad Association. As always, there were some hobbyists whose fascination is for precise modeling, others focused on prototypical operations, and a third group who are just having a good time playing with trains. Some day, we hope that John’s N scale layout in our former garage will be developed enough to be on a operations weekend tour.

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains

Tagged as John, San Francisco, WP668

January 19, 2014 · 6:51 pm

Rwanda Delegation Pre-Trip Briefing

Last week, several dozen US-based mentors and program staff gathered at the Institute of International Education offices in San Francisco for a pre-trip briefing for TechWomen Rwanda delegation members. Others phoned into the crowded room. The delegation’s enthusiasm and energy level are high! TechWomen 2013 Emerging Leader delegates from Rwanda, Cameroon, and Kenya will join us in Kigali.

TechWomen’s 2014 Emerging Leader application is now open! The deadline to apply is 23:59 Cairo time, Monday, February 10, 2014. The delegation will be in Rwanda during the application period. So, while we are making presentations at girls’ schools and technical events, we will encourage women working in STEM to apply to TechWomen.

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Filed under Mentoring & Other Business

Tagged as Africa, Mentoring, Rwanda, San Francisco, technical women, TechWomen

January 16, 2014 · 2:33 pm

Katy’s 2013 Book List

I am in the process of switching from an iPad to an iPad Mini for my upcoming TechWomen mentoring program delegation trip to Rwanda, so I have been sorting what Kindle ebooks and iBooks I will take along… I am a big reader, finishing one to two books most weeks. When I was ten years old, the librarian in our local public library mentioned that I averaged a book a day (shorter books, back then!). In 2013, I started reading books online, so now I can track my titles. Below are some of the books I read in 2013 that I liked best, meaning I will probably read them again.

* means a re-read (because it was too good to read just once!)

Bryan, Christopher, And God Spoke / The Authority of the Bible for the Church Today (2002)
* Bull, Emma, Bone Dance (1991)
* Bull, Emma, War for the Oaks (1987)
De Quincey, Thomas, Miscellaneous Essays (1859)
* Dickens, Charles, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens (2011) – 2013 focus was on The Christmas Carol
* Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sherlock Holmes, Volumes I and II (1986)
* Dumas, Alexandre, The Three Musketeers (2010)
Flint, Eric 1632 (2000)
* Gaiman, Neil, Anansi Boys (2005)
* Gaiman, Neil, and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens / The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990)
Holy Bible – New Revised Standard Version (1989)
Hunt, Linda Lawrence, Bold Spirit / Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America (2003)
Ilibagiza, Immaculee, Left to Tell / Discovering God Admist the Rwandan Holocaust (2006)
MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Christianity / The First Three Thousand Years (2009)
* Melville, Herman, Moby Dick / Or, The Whale (1891)
* Modesitt, L.E., The Magic of Recluce (1991)
* Nix, Garth, The Abhorsen Trilogy (2003)
* Pierce, Tamora Beka Cooper: The Hunt Records (2006)
* Pratchett, Terry, Small Gods (1992)
* Pratchett, Terry, The Wee Free Men (2003)
Sandberg, Sheryl, Lean In / Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013)
Sansom, C.J., Dissolution (2003)
* Sayers, Dorothy, Lord Peter Views the Body (1928)
* Sayers, Dorothy, The Nine Tailors (1934)
* Shakespeare, William, The Compete Plays of Shakespeare (2011) – in 2013, focus was on Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Twelfth Night
* Stephenson, Neal, Snow Crash (1992)
Verghese, Abraham, Cutting for Stone (2009)
Webb, Maynard, Rebooting Work / Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship (2013)

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Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Africa, Mentoring, Rwanda, teaching, technical women, TechWomen

January 13, 2014 · 1:57 pm

“Old Lovers” by Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson

Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson has a new art exhibit called “Old Lovers” at the Peninsula Museum of Art (1777 California Drive, Burlingame, California), 5 January – 16 March 2014. The opening reception was yesterday – with many colleagues, friends, and family attending. Love between older people has been a favorite subject of my mother’s large-format drawings on paper over many decades, and this is her second exhibit dedicated to that theme.

This show was curated by Robert Flynn Johnson (Curator Emeritus, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) and created by Ruth Waters (Founder, Chair and Executive Director, Peninsula Museum of Art). My brother Pete and I worked with Ruth and Robert for many months to support their development of this interesting exhibit. In the photos below, you can see how the drawings to be included were picked last year. I was on a business trip, so John and Paul went to the reception yesterday and took many pictures.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Eleanor, John, Paul, Pete, San Francisco

January 9, 2014 · 4:53 pm

People To People Global Radio Starts Tonight!

Please join P2P’s inaugural radio show tonight – 9 Jan 2014, at 9:00 pm EST.

Access the weekly show online http://www.blogtalkradio.com/p2pglobalradioshow/ or phone 646-595-4742 each Thursday evening.

The guests for the 9 January show will be: Ambassador David Shinn, the 19th US Ambassador to Ethiopia and currently Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University; Dr. Joseph Berger, Professor of Neurology at the University of Kentucky; and Dr. David Clifford, Professor of Neuropharmacology at Washington University, St. Louis.

Our host will be P2P Board Chair, Dr. Anteneh Habte.

Your questions and comments will be welcome. If you are unable to tune in live, you can access the whole show at your convenience using the link provided on the People To People Global Radio Show Blogtalkradio web page.

People To People Global Radio Background
People to People (P2P) is launching this weekly radio program as part of its core mission of engaging the Diaspora in health care issues of importance in Ethiopia and beyond. The show will air on Thursdays from 9:00pm to 10:00 pm EST and its target audience will be primarily non-health care professionals. It will be moderated by P2P members who will interview subject matter experts with work experience in Ethiopia. Audience participation will be solicited through phone calls and social media for exchange of ideas. The broadcast will be available through the link http://www.blogtalkradio.com/p2pglobalradioshow/ an hour after airtime and will be achieved indefinitely.

Katy Dickinson is the P2P Chief Operating Officer and is looking forward to becoming a radio show moderator! More about P2P

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Filed under News & Reviews

Tagged as Africa, Ethiopia, teaching

January 8, 2014 · 4:01 pm

Getting Ready for Rwanda

Last week, my son Paul asked why I was looking so sad. I explained that I was reading a series of books about Rwanda, and in particular about the genocide of 1994. I will be traveling with the TechWomen (US State Department mentoring program) delegation to Rwanda next month and am learning about the history of that area of Africa.

As disturbing as my reading is, I know the importance of advance preparation when traveling. In 1979, after I graduated from U.C. Berkeley, I backpacked for six months through Europe, ending up with a long stay at the Kibbutz called Ashdot Ya’akov near the Sea of Galilee in Israel. After the Teheran hostage crisis developed in November 1979, I headed home, ending up in an almost-empty youth hostel one night on Mount Carmel. One of the other hostel guests was a young woman from Germany who had come to Israel for a vacation during her college break. At the time, German schools did not teach about the Holocaust. When I met her, this girl was deeply shocked after someone told her about the history of her homeland and the place she had come. She spent the night sobbing with grief, saying over and over “I did not know. I did not know.”

So far, I have read:

Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda book by Rosamond Halsey Carr (2000)
“The Country That Bans Plastic Bags” 2/13/2013 blog by Tom Carver
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1999) book by Philip Gourevitch
Left to Tell: Discovering God Admist the Rwandan Holocaust book by Imaculee Ilibagiza (2007)
Led by Faith: Rising from the Ashes of the Rwandan Genocide book by Imaculee Ilibagiza (2008)
CIA “World Fact Book” Rwanda
The New Times – Rwanda’s First Daily http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/ (newspaper)
“Healing Hearts Northwest – The Life and Times of our Kigali, Rwanda Medical Mission” – an interesting blog with a good reading list at the bottom

Of course, I am also working on all of the other preparations needed for a big trip, particularly since I will take a few days after the delegation period to trek with Ecotours to visit the mountain gorillas. I visited the PAMF Travel Medicine department and have new Yellow Fever, MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella), and Typhoid immunizations. I tried out my old hiking boots and got a flat (see photo below). So, I am now getting used to a new pair of Lowa – Renegade boots. Ged Caddick of Ecotours has warned us to expect mud, so I also bought new rain gear at REI. I have binoculars but I am still thinking how to pack without zip lock bags…

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Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Africa, Mentoring, Middle East, Paul, Rwanda, technical women, TechWomen, University of California

December 28, 2013 · 11:08 am

After Christmas

Only a few Christmas presents are left to be distributed. We sadly bid farewell to Jessica and Matthew, who have traveled back to their jobs. John and Paul and I are still happily investigating our own presents here at home. For me, this means watching the Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing” and the four movie set of The Hollow Crown (Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, “Henry IV” i and ii, and “Henry V”). Yesterday, John posted his code and instructions on how to program a Christmas tree, on: http://www.spcoast.com/wiki/index.php/Christmas2013. Paul is enjoying post-final-exams, pre-quarter-start downtime. John and I went out on a movie date to see “Ender’s Game”, which was a good representation of that disturbing and superb book. It is pleasant to have some quiet days together.