Tag Archives: Paul

December 26, 2012 · 11:56 am

New Home for Van Gilder Glass Panel

Last week, the Van Gilder stained glass panel was finally installed in the wall between our dining room and new porch. The large and elegant stained glass panel was created by Walter Somers Van Gilder for his home (1007 Circle Park Drive, Knoxville, Tennessee) about a hundred years ago. In July, it came home: re-leaded and refreshed by Vincent Taylor Architectural Art Glass. The picture below shows my son Paul D. Goodman, the great-great-grandson of Walter Van Gilder, helping to install the panel in our home in Willow Glen, California. We designed a window enclosure so that the panel could be removed for cleaning. Last night, I enjoyed sitting next to the panel as we celebrated Christmas dinner with family and friends. I think my great-grandfather would be happy to know that his creation continues to bring pleasure to his family.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as House Work, Paul, San Jose, Willow Glen

December 22, 2012 · 11:58 pm

Merry Christmas

Best wishes to you and your family for a happy holiday season, from all of us here in the Silicon Valley!

Between trying to get the construction workers finished enough to be out of our house by Christmas, and all of the usual holiday preparations and activities, December 2012 has been particularly busy. There has finally been sufficient progress on the new porch to allow us to have family and guests in the house. The roof and final plastering were finished just before dinner yesterday – barely in time for us to go Christmas caroling on the cable car in San Francisco. Jessica and Matthew were able to get off from work to join us for Christmas – for which we are very joyful!

I went shopping in Chinatown with Sally and Lorene (our tradition for over twenty years). We were sad to see the closed up Sam Wo restaurant where we used to eat raw fish salad for lunch during our annual walking tour of Grant Street stores.
John and I were delighted to hear our young friends Max and Beth perform as part of the Cantabile Youth Singers at the ornate St. Joseph Basilica in San Jose.
My son Paul and I picked out and walked home a Christmas tree – which sat in a bucket of water on the driveway for two weeks until the contractors left and we could move all of the furniture back. Jessica and Matthew and Paul brought the tree inside and decorated it tonight. The decorations are eclectic but cheerful. I still need to put out the nativity figures John bought in Bethlehem.
My EfM class went to see the Bethlehem Christmas story re-enactment, and then went out to dinner together and exchanged gifts.
Last Sunday was the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church children’s pageant.
We have very much enjoyed Willow Glen’s enthusiastic Christmas light displays – which give every street its own twinkly charm as we go about our holiday business.
Today we went to the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco to enjoy a Victorian Christmas, high tea, and last-minute shopping.
Tomorrow, John starts cooking for our Christmas feast on Tuesday!

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Filed under Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Charles Dickens, Education for Ministry, Episcopal church, Jessica, John, Matthew, Paul, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Willow Glen

November 23, 2012 · 11:38 am

Reusing old, adding new

John and I last changed our garden paths in 2009. While I work in my office in WP668 (our backyard caboose) today, I can see a work crew noisily building forms to pour the new concrete paths and steps for the porch we are constructing.

Our 1930 house is a combination of Spanish Mission, and Arts and Crafts style. We want to make additions and changes look like part of the original house, so we are combining original and new elements. We are lucky that both styles are still popular. Our new porch will feature new tiles from Fireclay and lighting fixtures from Hinkley that go well with what is already in the house.

Our original downstairs light fixtures are black wrought iron Spanish style, while those upstairs are Art Nouveau (both styles being popular in 1930). Our next door neighbor’s house in Willow Glen originally matched ours. Some years ago, he took out all of his original fixtures during a remodel and generously gave them to us. In addition to replacing my son Paul’s garden-side window with two round windows as part of our porch addition, his room is getting a second wall sconce – since he wanted more light and we had a fixture that matched. Even though there are just a few brick paths as they were when we bought the house in 1998, we carefully saved extra old brick for reuse. I will be happy to see the stacks of old brick along our back fence, and the old roofing tiles stored on our driveway back in use.

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Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as garden, House Work, Paul, Willow Glen

November 23, 2012 · 9:16 am

Family Feast

Since our dining room is still full of stuff pushed out of the way by our porch construction, my friend Laura Biche generously welcomed both of our families for Thanksgiving dinner this year. No matter how organized the hostess, potluck dinners are always a little surprising: we ended up with three dishes of baked sweet potatoes and a vast selection of desserts but only enough biscuits for about half of us. Laura’s dog Cassie (who, from the size of her ears, seems to be part bat) was overjoyed with all the friends who came to visit her. She did her best to entertain all of her guests.

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Filed under Home & Family

Tagged as Dogs, Eleanor, House Work, John, Paul

November 13, 2012 · 6:48 pm

Big Southern California Wedding

My brother Pete Dickinson married Julie Gutman last weekend at a big wedding in Southern California. The guests included dignitaries and creative folks and vast numbers of lawyers (since both Pete and Julie are in that line of work) in addition to family. Most of the joyous event was held at the Terranea Resort in a lovely coastal setting.

Except for the bride in white, the wedding party wore red and black – in honor of my father Wade Dickinson who passed away a year ago (his favorite color was red). The mothers of the bride and groom had a lovely time together, surrounded by all of their children and grandchildren. The Mayor of Los Angeles and the whole City Council signed a beautiful certificate of congratulations and best wishes. California Speaker of the Assembly John Perez participated in the ceremony, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was a guest. My daughter Jessica sang a song to the couple.

The less extroverted guests retreated into corners to commune with their smart phones and avoid all of the excitement. A good time was had by all.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Eleanor, Jessica, John, marriage, Matthew, Paul, Pete, Wade

October 24, 2012 · 6:52 pm

Pizza and Art

Last Sunday after church, we went out to a pizza lunch with my mother (retired Professor of Life Drawing at California College of the Arts) in San Jose. Between conversational interludes, John read a book, Paul played a game on his smart phone, and my mother drew Paul. As usual, people walking by the table stopped to admire her drawing. Paul is studying Art at Foothill College, having grown up seeing art as a constant and necessary expression of creativity.

Porch Progress

We have continued to make slow progress on adding our new porch, although yesterday we had a setback. John discovered that the special-order outer window (despite being carefully measured by two experts) turned out to be the wrong size for the heirloom Van Gilder stained glass panel it was made to protect. So we are now waiting to see how long a replacement will take to make. We are also waiting for the test tiles from the special-order mural from Fireclay so that we can check the color. We are about to place the order for the wrought iron railing from Brian’s Welding. The good news is that the two new round windows above the porch in Paul’s room look good. Construction is a slow business. Even though the rainy season just started, we hope to be done by Christmas (this year!).

July 2012: