KatysBlog

July 25, 2013 · 11:08 am

Local News, Distant News

For neighborhood news here in Willow Glen, California, we have email lists. I manage a list for the houses in our immediate area – where yesterday I announced finding a thrown-away kitten (and settled the cute little guy in a new home that night) – and there are other lists for our Northeast Quadrant, and for our whole section of the City of San Jose (Willow Glen takes up about 3 square miles).

For national news, I listen to National Public Radio on station KQED. I sometimes check in at the New York Times but their 10-story-a-month free-limit blocks my regular usage. I have been a KQED sustaining member for decades and don’t want to pay more than that for news.

For international updates, I read Al Jazeera (English) and the BBC – two services with similar web designs but different points of view and sources. My daughter Jessica recommended Al-Jazeera, a service started by the royal family of Qatar where she studied at CMU-Q. Maybe Qatar’s backing is why Al Jazeera has no advertisements? Current stories I found interesting on Al-Jazeera:

Is religion good or evil? – Mehdi Hasan challenges evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins at the Oxford Union
Monk by Blood – One young Japanese struggles with his destiny as the next in line to take over his family’s 800-year old temple
Church of England takes on money lenders – Archbishop of Canterbury wants to offer church loans in bid to put high interest lenders out of business.

Creative Writing Exchange

This month I am enjoying experimenting with new writing – part of an exchange my daughter Jessica set up among eight pairs of friends. We are committed to write for at least ten minutes a day in answer to her email prompt and also to giving only positive feedback to our writing partner. For example, on 6 July 2013, Jessica’s prompt was: “What are the women saying to each other? One is wearing cultural dress, another a stove-pipe hat, and the third sunglasses.”

My response was the short story below. Following Mark Twain’s advice to “Write What You Know”, I borrowed the names of some TechWomen friends but this is a work of fiction – not about particular women! Only the conferences and places are real: I have travelled recently to both Portland, Oregon and Amman, Jordan.

Afnan, Noor, and Colleen were shopping in Amman. The three geeks had met at the OpenStack conference in Portland, Oregon, the year before. Professional discussions between technical sessions, about programming and politics, had moved into complaints about guys and how pleasant it was for once not to be the only woman in the room. The usual complaints had become more personal and by the time they went to Powell’s Books and lunch together, the three were friends.

Afnan and Noor were both graduates of Princess Sumaya University, although from different years. Colleen had gone to Cal and was fascinated by the other girls’ stories about Jordan and the developing technical culture of the Middle East – so different from her experiences in the People’s Republic of Bezerkley and California. By the time OpenStack ended, the three were collaborating on an open source project together, firmly connected in Facebook, LinkedIn and all of the other web-based glue of the technical world. When Colleen’s Cal thesis advisor was invited to speak TEDxAmman the following year and offered her a ticket to the big event, she grabbed the chance.

Colleen was a true nerd, wearing what was comfortable and clean, but sometimes adding a bizarre element to keep her all-male co-workers noticing that she was still a girl. Some days it was yellow socks with pink and white nigiri sushi images, today it was a stove-pipe hat. Colleen was a firm believer in the principle that you can be as weird as you are good. She was a very good programmer. At first, that Afnan and Noor wore hijab and more stylish clothes did not concern Colleen. It was their kind of uniform, just as jeans and funny socks or hats were hers. Noor wearing her sunglasses propped on top of her headscarf was kind of like a hat.

Colleen told Noor and Afnan that her professor’s TEDx talk had gone well and that she was meeting amazing new people, men and women whose work had made a difference, who were trying to change the world. But for the first time since High School, Colleen was a little worried about her clothes. Maybe the hat wasn’t right for this high-end crowd. She asked her elegant friends to go shopping, to help her spend some money. Colleen did not want to wear hijab or that western-uniform, the skirted suit, but the long dress and coat that Afnan wore or Noor’s fitted slacks and jackets looked good. Colleen was ready for a change.

Publisher?

We are looking for a publisher for the new book Triangular Partnership: The Power of the Diaspora. Your publication ideas and suggestions are welcome. “Triangular Partnership” is a term used by People to People (P2P) to describe the relationship between three global groups:

Diaspora
Developing Countries Institutions
Western Institutions

People to People (P2P) is a MentorCloud partner, a non-governmental, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care, reducing the spread of diseases, and providing technical assistance in promoting and improving environmental health – particularly in Ethiopia and in diaspora communities. P2P Founder and President is Ethiopian-born neurologist Enawgaw Mehari, MD.

Chapters are by selected experts and are less than 15 pages each in length. About half are done and the remainder are due in a week. Each chapter is being reviewed by one of six Associate Editors for content and quality, and we have started the process of verifying the reference bibliographies. As a sample, you can see MentorCloud’s chapter “Professional Mentoring – Fostering Triangular Partnership”. Other chapter topics include:

“Leveraging Information Technology Infrastructure to Maximize Triangular Partnership Programs”
“Triangular Partnerships: Strategies for Scalability and Sustainability”
“An Introspective Look at the Failure of International Aid in Africa”
“Ethiopian Diaspora: a missed opportunity?”
“Needs Assessment is the Rationale for the Triangular Partnership”

The audience for Triangular Partnership: The Power of the Diaspora includes government, international finance, and foreign affairs world leaders, in addition to university professors, reasearchers and students (and, of course, the associates and customers of the authors and their companies and organizations).

P2P is writing this book to challenge standard-thinking with regard to Africa, Ethiopia and their diaspora communities in light of triangular partnership. In particular, to bring new consideration of the power of the diaspora to effect change in developing countries in Africa. We plan to be done with the content editing by the end of July 2013 – and to distribute a version at the 5th Annual Global Ethiopian Diaspora Conference on Health Care and Medical Education (28 September 2013 in Washington DC).

Dr. Enawgaw Mehari and Dr. Kinfe Ggebeyehu are managing the Triangular Partnership project – I am serving as the general editor.

Image Copyright People to People 2012

19 October 2019: Links Updated. The conference version of the book Triangular Partnership: The Power of the Diaspora is available for free download

2 Comments

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Africa, Ethiopia, Mentoring, teaching, writing

July 2, 2013 · 2:25 pm

Girl Style, Boy Style

On our recent vacation to Loon Lake, Wisconsin, I made some observations about girl style and boy style. My husband John was much in demand to drive the Starcraft speed boat for the nine kids at our family cottage. As his spotter, I sat backwards and watched the kids riding the tube or skis or wakeboard: to be sure they were safe and to relay their hand signals (“faster” “slower” “stop!”) to John – while of course taking pictures of all the fun! This was a small group of children, ages seven to eighteen, with six boys and three girls, who participated in dozens of speed boat runs over six days.

Most the kids wanted to do tricks while riding the fast-moving tube – such holding their hands up, kneeling or standing up. Our first day out, I got tired of the boys energetically blocking the girls from any participation. After enough of this, I set up a girls-only ride to encourage them to get started. The two teenage girls took several runs with the seven year old between them on the tube. Then the big girls took some runs by themselves. On one of these runs, I saw the girls do something I had never seen before: they held hands and balanced against each other so that both could stand (see Photo 1). The boys were out for themselves – sometimes even holding each other down in their efforts to do the best trick (see Photo 2). After their girls-only ride, the girls seemed more willing to compete for speedboat runs.

Photo 1

Photo 2

My vacation observations are not statistically-valid but the competitive behavioral patterns are interesting nonetheless. For more, check out “Are Men Really More Competitive Than Women?” by Melissa Lafsky (2008) who commented on insights into the underlying sources of the observed gender differences in an early version of the research paper “Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society” by Uri Gneezy, Kenneth L. Leonard, John A. List (2009).

Because of my professional work with the Anita Borg Institute, TechWomen, and the American Association of University Women, I am frequently asked what can be done to increase the number of girls and women in STEM, and particularly in the very-competitive technical fields. After observing some highly-successful programs (such as that of Dr. Maria Klawe at Harvey Mudd College and Dr. Jane Margolis and Dr. Allen Fisher’s Unlocking the Clubhouse work at Carnegie Mellon), I know that fast and effective change is possible. The best way to start is not to pretend that girls and boys are the same but rather to give girls a good beginning: a chance to have fun, to experiment and succeed in a supportive environment before taking on the whole world.

Ending the ride:

Images Copyright by Katy Dickinson 2013

3 Comments

Filed under Home & Family, Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, News & Reviews

Tagged as AAUW, Geeks, John, teaching, technical women, TechWomen

June 26, 2013 · 1:36 pm

State Plates

I have been playing the license plate game for some months. My game version requires a good-quality photo of each state plate – which is tricky when the car is moving. (Don’t try this while driving!) This is only one variation of the license plate game – and not the most complex. “Preamble” by Mike Wilkins phonetically spells out the preamble to the Constitution of the United States using 51 US license plates – that ambitious project is in the Smithsonian collection.

So far, I have 47 of the 50 United States (missing are Delaware, Maine, and South Dakota), plus some others. There is much variety in plate design even within one state, and some are masked by big license holders – making identification a challenge. San Jose, California, where I live gets many visitors, so driving around a big parking lot usually yields at least one addition.

If you take a photo of a license plate, sometimes a double helix security watermark appears running up the center – to identify forgeries, I would guess. The watermark is clearest on the plates below for Indiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming.

Some plates feature background images (mountains, flowers, farms, birds) or a motto (“Grand Canyon State” “Sweet Home” “The Spirit of America” “Live Free or Die”), others have just the dull URL of their Department of Motor Vehicles or government home page. Viginia is the simplest – no images or mottos. My favorite is the feisty motto of Washington DC: “Taxation Without Representation”.

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Goodbye to Valentino

Yesterday, John and I said a sad goodbye to our last cat, Valentino. Tino was the prettiest, sweetest, and dumbest cat we ever had. His long fluffy tail always curled backwards like a teapot handle. In addition to being beautiful and irrepressibly loving, Tino had some very bad habits. Eating electronics was one (see “Arduino vs. Tino“, 2011), shedding everywhere and making stinky messes in corners were others. He earned the nickname “Piddle Kitty”.

The kids and I adopted Valentino and his sister Garbo eighteen years ago, after some creep dumped the kittens near the Donner Pass road, high in the Sierras in winter. Jessica has written a tribute to Tino: “Sadness for a heaven-bound cat and a recipe for feeling better“.

When John and I got engaged, Tino was one of four cats in our family – to which John was highly allergic. We made a deal: John agreed to live with my cats and I agreed not to replace them after they passed. I have had pet cats all of my life but Tino was my last. I pray that our silly fuzzball is now happily cuddling in heaven with his sister Garbo who passed in 2007. Goodbye sweet friend. We miss you.

John and four cats in 2001:

1 Comment

Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as cats, Jessica, John

June 24, 2013 · 6:48 pm

Creekmore Family Reunion, Knoxville Tennessee

After our visit to Loon Lake, Wisconsin, with the Plocher family last week, John and I flew to Knoxville, Tennessee, for a reunion of my Creekmore relations. My mother, Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson, was born and raised at 1007 Circle Park in Knoxville, spending summers at our Elkmont family cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains. My brothers and I and our cousins and friends also spent many happy childhood weeks at the cabin and nearby swimming hole. My brother Mark is the oldest of our generation and I am next – we have a first cousin who is twenty years younger. More Elkmont history and photos are in my Elkmont, Tennesee 2011 blog entry.

It was delightful to get together with my mother and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nieces and nephews. My mother, Mark, Jessica and Matthew met us in Knoxville. Unfortunately, Paul could not come because of final exams at Foothill College. My brother Pete was able to bring his whole family.

We went as a group to see “Dear Lodge” – the Creekmore’s Elkmont Cabin #6, now part of the “Elkmont Emergency Stabilization Project” of the US National Park Service’s “Elkmont Historic District: Appalachian Club”. Despite the many “US Property – No Trespassing” signs, the cabin’s back door was flat on the kitchen floor, plus a window and the front door of the cabin were open. However, we were happy that the holes in the floor my daughter saw during her visit in 2008 have been repaired.

We had a big family dinner at Latitude 35 in Knoxville after visiting the mountains. Part of the fun of a reunion is telling funny stories on each other. Here is one I shared:

When my brothers and cousins and I were little, our mothers, aunts, and uncles would sometimes take us to a drive-in at night, usually to see a Godzilla monster movie. There would be two cars: the adults would put us kids in one and lock themselves in the other so that they could watch the movie and eat their popcorn in peace. They rolled the windows down just enough to let in the movie speaker and some air. Of course, we kids would quietly get out of our car to sit on the hood or catch frogs in the grass. One evening, we had an idea. We snuck up on the grown-ups’ car and pushed some of our frogs into the window opening. Unfortunately, one of the frogs dropped into my Aunt Mary’s soda and then immediately jumped down the front of her blouse. The resulting commotion in the adult car was spectacularly noisy. We got in big trouble (but it was worth it!).

Yesterday, John and my mother and I went to service at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral where my parents were married in 1952. Then, we visited the family graves at Highland Memorial Cemetery on the way to the airport.