The Willow Glen Lions Club voted to submit my January 2013 backyard photograph of a California native Arboreal Salamander mother with eggs to the Lions Environmental Photo Contest. WGL Club member Carol Worthington-Levy generously made a professional-quality print of the image. This is the first time I have submitted a picture to a national contest. Wish me luck!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Lions, News & Reviews
Ever since I read “Why It’s Time To Break The Code Of Silence At The Airport” by Christopher Elliott (15 February 2013, TheHuffingtonPost) and my daughter’s TSA posts (including “TSA Touching Crosses The Line: Update”), I have been considering how much more invasive and offensive the TSA has become over time and how we enable this behavior by not objecting to it.
This weekend, I flew from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles for training (to renew my mentor certification with Education for Ministry, a program of the University of the South – School of Theology), and to visit my brother and family in La Crescenta. I used two small-ish airports, San Jose (SJC) and Burbank (BUR) for convenience.
This morning, I walked quickly to the head of the extremely short security check point line at Burbank, hoping to have time for a quiet coffee before boarding my flight home. However, I was pulled out of line in the nearly-empty security area not once but twice.
I made my flight home, but no quiet coffee for me. I object.
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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Church, Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews, Politics
Between professional duties, I have been creating a garden around my new porch. This has required days of digging – both to remove concrete, boulders, brick fragments, wood, nails, wire and trash from the dirt and to add compost to improve the soil. Most of the bushels of concrete bits I dug out were hand-sized or smaller, with a few the size of my head. The big surprise was an exceptionally heavy boulder, more than twice the size of my head, which for some reason was sunk deep in the planting bed. It took an hour to dig around it enough to pry up an edge, then roll it out without cracking the PVC water pipe it was nestled against. I dug through old patches of sand, concrete rubble, sawdust, and clay from the various uses to which this ground has been put since 1930. Other than ornamental rocks, the only item I discovered worth keeping was half a fork with a drilled end, probably part of an old wind chime.
The major plants I put in are drought-resistant and should do well in our hot San Jose California summers:
Ground covers include Dymondia and Blue Fescue. The only plant to survive the construction (and heavy-booted construction workers) is the Meyer Lemon which seems much happier since we took away the fence and vine that were next to it. I hope we get more rain to help settle the new plants before the weather gets much warmer.
January 2013:
December 2012:
July 2012:
Images Copyright 2012-2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family
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LORD POLONIUS
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.PRINCE HAMLET
God’s bodykins, man, much better: use every man
after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Take them in.– William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act II, Scene ii, 1600
I recently returned home from my fifth trip to the Middle East, visiting Jordan and Lebanon. I was in Jordan as a member of the TechWomen delegation – TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). I visited Lebanon to see my friends, the TechWomen program alumnae and to talk with Al-Makassed (the Makassed Philanthropic Islamic Association of Beirut).
As the Vice President for MentorCloud, I talked a great deal about mentoring during my trip. I traveled with my daughter Jessica. She and I were welcomed with world-class generosity and open hearts and minds. In discussing the motivations for mentors, I often use the phrase paying it forward. That is, mentors often say that they are giving back the wise and generous advice and support that they themselves were given during their development. I was surprised and concerned when discussing these motivations for mentors not once but twice to be told that in Arabic, the saying is not “Give and Take” but “Take and Give”. This seemed to reflect doubt among some audience members that mentoring would work in their culture. I have been thinking about these discussions for the two weeks that I have been home.
During one of our long bus trips in Jordan, our tour guide played a video for us in which His Majesty King Abdulla of Jordan gives a Royal Tour of his country. “Jordan – The Royal Tour” is a 2002 tourism promotion piece but a good overview nonetheless. During the tour, King Abdulla tells a story from his youth. His uncle (then heir-apparent to King Hussein) and he were traveling in the desert and met an old man on a white horse. The man wanted to give them lunch, so he sold the stallion, his only possession, to buy fifteen sheep for a feast. Of course, when this became known, the white stallion was repurchased with fifteen more sheep as a present in return. King Abdullah calls this tradition of generous welcome the “code of the desert”. My experiences in the Middle East have been consistent with the King’s story – I have been honored by extraordinary generosity.
So, why would my Middle Eastern audiences doubt their community’s welcoming of mentoring – a relationship based on long-term generosity? As a life-long fan of William Shakespeare, I thought of the interchange above between Hamlet and Polonius – about the merit in treating others according to our own honor and dignity. Coming to terms with our own generosity and motivations is part of the journey that leads many of us to become mentors.
Recommended additional reading: “Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?” by Susan Dominus, 13 March 2014, _New York Times_
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
The breakfast bar tile was installed this morning on our new porch in Willow Glen, California. This was the last major work to be done. I am very proud of our creation. My husband and I designed a completely new space (with much-appreciated advice from friends, relations, and professionals) and it came out beautifully. Best of all, the addition looks like it was always part of our 1930 house. Our son Paul is already using it to work on his art. As the weather gets warmer, I am sure the porch will become our preferred location for informal meals. I am half done installing the new planting bed in the garden around the new foundation. So glad to be done with contractors!
Here is what the same space looked like in July 2012:
Images Copyright 2012-2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family
When the TechWomen delegation visited the northern Jordan mountains near village of Koura, I was surprised to see a wild Cyclamen flowering in a limestone field. The surprise was that a pretty flower I have always considered as a delicate indoor table decoration would be someone else’s wildflower.
As a lifelong gardener and long-time reader of Pacific Horticulture, I am familiar with much of the native and ornamental flora of California and the American West. Many of the plants and trees I saw in Jordan and Lebanon were also familiar – since the climate is not too different from my home. Except for the overwhelming amount of limestone, the parts of Jordan I saw look like California’s Gold Country or the mountains and desserts of the State of Nevada where my family has often gone exploring. I understand that Jordan’s Wadi Rum has more of the granite that is so common here in the western USA.
My unexpected encounter with a wild cyclamen gave me a better understanding of how the biologist felt who identified the thought-to-be-long-extinct Coelacanth in a fisherman’s net in 1938.
Added 4 December 2014 – November photo of TechWomen’s Seham Al Jaafreh of Jordan with cyclamen in Washington DC:
Images Copyright 2013-2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
During recent weeks while I was traveling with the TechWomen delegation in Jordan, and then when I was talking about MentorCloud and mentoring with Al-Makassed (the Makassed Philanthropic Islamic Association of Beirut) and TechWomen participants in Lebanon, my frequent explanations about professional mentoring got shorter. In particular, my differentiations between mentoring, coaching, and sponsorship got more crisp through repetition. I understand clearly these three words are often used interchangeably and that each of the three kinds of relationships often contain elements of the other two. However, I have found it helps to distinguish the three. Key differentiating elements are:
Sponsorship or Patronage
In this relationship, the patron or sponsor is in a position of authority and intentionally using their power to advance the interests or career of their favorite, client, or sponsee. Sponsorship can be positive (as in the development of a successor or talented junior associate) or negative (as seen in destructive favoritism or political corruption). The favorite may be a long-term political or organizational dependent. A sponsor or patron may protect and support the favorite over time while they grow their abilities or advance within an organizational structure. The patron may directly control the work of the favorite, takes responsibility for the favorite, and may benefit directly by their work – or indirectly by accepting credit for their success. The favorite’s own capabilities may be questioned because the patron is seen to be responsible for their achievements. This is a limited relationship – that is, a patron will have only one or a very small number of favorites. See Wikipedia’s article on
Patronage for legal and illegal examples.
Coaching
Coaching is a relationship or kind of communication with the primary goal of conveying specific knowledge, training, or skills. A coach is more knowledgeable and experienced than their client or student, at least in the target topic or task area. The coach may be paid to be in the relationship as the student’s work supervisor, master craftsman, or teacher. A coach may have many students but the relationship is often limited to the time it takes to transfer the specific information or deliver expected results. The coach may or may not have longer-term hierarchical authority over the student.
Mentoring
Mentoring is a longer-term relationship focused on larger professional or life issues. The mentor is usually much more experienced than the mentee but may or may not be an expert in the same professional area. The mentor and mentee should not be in a supervisory relationship; that is, the important power difference between them is one of wisdom rather than positional authority. Mentor and mentee often work together long-term and become friends. The mentor may advocate for the mentee but does not control the mentee and does not take responsibility for the mentee’s success. Mentors may have many mentees, sometimes in one-to-one or one-to-many structures. Mentors are usually unpaid professional volunteers who get satisfaction from “paying it forward” – that is, giving back some of the guidance that benefited them during their own development. Mentoring is a personal relationship in a professional setting.
Key deliverables from the mentor are:
Additional Reading:
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
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