My son Paul has recently attended both “Admitted Spartan’s Day” and admitted students’ orientation day at San Jose State University (in San Jose, California where we live). He is in his final quarter at Foothill College and is excited about graduating in June with an Associates degree in Studio Art. After transferring SJSU in September 2014, Paul will continue to study fine art and also plans to earn a teaching credential.
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
This morning was our annual backyard Easter Egg Hunt – a very popular event among our friends, family, and neighbors. About 15 children (ages 18 months to 21 years) joined the search for hundreds of plastic eggs filled with chocolate candies. For the adults, there were two specially hidden eggs: gold and silver. Only the following poems gave clues to their locations:
I know a bed where the wild thyme blows,
Where iris and nodding rosemary grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious lemondrops,
With sweet musk-roses and with nasturtium:
There sleep sweet bees sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there snake throws her cold enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.I have 3 guards for my home-place
The same number of eyes and legs between them
They keep for me in a safer space.
One would walk if he were fitted for a mind-Chem
but instead keeps me in the cool.
One is anxious but smiles except when asleep
One at ball’s drop can only drool
One was born only to be buried down deep
Can you find my comfy ark?
Or will you get lost in the barks?
Thanks to the Associate Easter Bunny, my daughter Jessica for her contributions to the poems (from Washington DC), and thanks to Paul and John for helping create today’s festivities! Clara and Paul and Dan teamed up to find the gold and silver eggs – and were rewarded with Peeps Chocolate Eggs for their hunting prowess.
Each Spring, I work for weeks to make our garden a demi-paradise for this event – full of flowers and rock borders suitable for hiding eggs. Easter coincided this year with the seed storms of the cottonwoods on the Guadalupe River in San Jose. Fluffy white seeds blow over everything like dry snow – so much spiderweb removal was needed, especially on WP668, our backyard caboose.
It is such a joy to watch the children filling their baskets, then re-hiding eggs for each other once the hundreds of eggs hidden in the morning by the Easter Bunny have been collected. A delightful celebration of new life and renewal!
21 April 2014 – On the day after the Easter Egg Hunt, I am still finding eggs in the garden (some after the dogs have chewed them)…
Images Copyright John Plocher and Katy Dickinson
Filed under Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews
Because I travel a great deal, in December 2013 I applied to GOES (Global Online Enrollment System) for a card that will allow me to get through US airports faster.
What is Global Entry?
Global Entry is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program that allows expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival in the United States.
GOES is popular, so I had to wait until this week for my in-person interview at SFO (San Francisco International Airport). I decided to accompany my husband John on his morning commute to SFO for my interview. Driving from San Jose to SFO would have taken about two hours round trip and cost $22 in gas (40 miles x $0.55/mile) plus about $4 to park. By public transit, it cost $30 and took six hours round trip (not counting the time in SFO). My route was complex because there is no single public transit system and no direct route San Jose – SFO – San Jose:
I still can use the balance on my BART ticket and it does not expire – but I only ride BART about once every five years so I will have to carry it until then.
CalTrain does not seem to have a Mission statement but is developing a strategic plan this year that may include one.
Here is the BART Mission statement:
Provide safe, clean, reliable and customer-friendly regional public transit service that increases mobility and accessibility, strengthens community and economic prosperity and helps preserve the Bay Area’s environment.
Here it the VTA Mission Statement:
The mission of VTA is to provide the public with a safe and efficient countywide transportation system. The system should increase access and mobility, reduce congestion, improve the environment and support economic development, thereby enhancing quality of life.
I note that neither of these say anything about Convenience, Value, or Speedy Travel. So, my triple time traveling experience may be what they expect for their customers. I like riding trains and I enjoyed the lovely exhibit “Lace: A Sumptuous History 1600s-1900s” while at SFO so the day was not a total waste (but next time I will drive). I hope that using GOES will save me the time I just spent…
3/24/2014: My GOES card just arrived in the mail – impressive turnaround time!
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family, News & Reviews
My son Paul was just admitted to San Jose State University (California’s first public institution of higher learning – founded in 1857). He will be studying Art and Studio Practice for a SJSU Bachelor of Arts degree. Paul will graduate with his Associate of Arts degree in Studio Art from Foothill College in June 2014 and start at SJSU in September. We are so proud of him! You can see Paul’s art portfolio on his website: Paul’s Element.
I am particularly happy that Paul got his acceptance package after reading yesterday’s sad article “Students With Disabilities Aim For A College Degree, But Often Get Stuck” (by Joy Resmovits in The Huffington Post). In my last blog entry about Paul’s progress, I presented some of our challenges with the educational system. Paul’s hard work and dedication have now paid off. Hooray!
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
My mother Eleanor Dickinson celebrated her 83rd birthday while I was with the TechWomen delegation to Rwanda earlier this month. While I was gone, she attended the College Art Association annual conference in Chicago. Now that we are both back home in San Jose, California, I delivered her birthday presents today and enjoyed seeing the “Sketch Book Drawings” exhibit of 64 small pictures that the Atria Willow Glen senior community put up. The images are of residents, staff, and visitors – most are in pencil but a few are in ink or watercolor. I am proud of my mother having two current shows at the age of 83! Her “Old Lovers” exhibit at the Peninsula Museum of Art is open through 16 March 2014.
Art Copyright 2012-2014 by Eleanor Dickinson, Photo Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Eleanor Dickinson Art, Home & Family, News & Reviews
Last week in Kigali, Rwanda, I was one of the TechWomen delegates who bought a painting at the Inema Art Center gallery. Since my mother, Eleanor Dickinson, and son, Paul D. Goodman, are both artists, I have very little free wallspace. However, I very much liked “Positive Women” by Sam Kambali. The painting is a collage of carefully-selected strips of African cloth forming the bodies of women, many of whom are raising their arms in salute. “Positive Women” seemed appropriate to the subject of our delegation (encouraging women and girls to pursue careers in STEM fields) and to the energy, enthusiasm, and remarkable professional success of the delegation members themselves. Part of its charm is that this painting incorporates the delightful variety and color of cloth we saw everywhere we went in Rwanda.
I had the gallery take the painting off its stretcher bars so I could transport it rolled up. Today, I brought “Positive Women” home from being re-mounted: my new painting is now hanging in WP668 (my office in our backyard caboose in San Jose, California). Here I am in Kigali with Sam Kambali, the artist:
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Machete caked with garden dirt, in Kigali, Rwanda
Swords into ploughshares is from the Book of Isaiah:
And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. — Isaiah 2:3–4
I thought about Bible verse many times while in Rwanda last week, particularly when watching machetes being used for gardening. I have many garden tools and, despite living on the Guadalupe River and regularly clearing brush as part of my work on the bank, I have never needed a machete. In Rwanda, I several times watched a machete being used as a hoe or to clear an overgrown path, and reflected that it is a good general-purpose implement if other tools are lacking. However, I also remembered Immaculée Ilibagiza writing of her 1994 experience during the Rwanda genocide:
There were many voices, many killers. I could see them in my mind: my former friends and neighbors, who had always greeted me with love and kindness, moving through the house carrying spears and machetes and calling my name. “I have killed 399 cockroaches,” said one of the killers. “Immaculée will make 400. It’s a good number to kill.” (from Left to Tell, 2006)
Rwanda is essentially twenty years old – its remarkable success since 1994 being all the more impressive because of the depths from which the country has risen. Last week, the TechWomen delegation visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre (in which a machete is prominently displayed as the signature weapon) and saw graveyard/memorials along the road into the mountains. There must be few parts of Rwanda entirely free of the memories and events of 1994’s savagery. Yet, Rwanda has indeed turned swords into ploughshares (or, machetes into hoes in their case) and gotten on with the necessary business of making things better.
Some of my garden tools, in San Jose, California, USA
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Church, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
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