Christmas 2019

May this blessed Christmas season bring you and your family joy! It has been a busy Christmas, starting even before I turned in my last (16 and 18 page) term papers at the Graduate Theological Union. So far, our adventures have included:

• Reading Charles Dickens‘ “A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas” aloud with my Shakespeare Reading Group
• Hosting the Silicon Valley Lines and John‘s train club lunch group’s annual holiday party
• Dinner with my Education for Ministry class, after the Bethlehem pageant at Santa Clara First Baptist Church
• Lunch with the Interfaith Speakers of the Islamic Networks Group
• Shopping in Chinatown, San Francisco, with Sally Hambridge and Paul
• Receiving my certificate of appreciation from the US State Department for being a TechWomen 2019 mentor for Team Algeria (my 10th year as a citizen diplomat with TechWomen!)
• Dickens Christmas Fair day of music, high tea, and shopping with Jessica and Paul (including buying an amazing Christmas candle)
• Seeing the new Star Wars movie with John, Matthew, Jessica, and Paul
• Cheering on Paul for finishing the many Christmas orders for his reclaimed hardwood cutting boards
• Sitting with John and his teen video crew recording the Christmas Eve service at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
• Bringing services to two Elmwood jail dorms with John on Christmas Day (on behalf of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and the Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy)
• Enjoying family, food, and gifts with John, Jessica, Matthew, and Paul at home on Christmas Day!

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Images Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson.

Dickens Christmas Fair, 25th Birthday

Twelve of us gathered at the Dickens Christmas Fair at the San Francisco Cow Palace yesterday to celebrate the holiday with music, high tea, and shopping. John spent the day quietly at home, happily programming our Christmas tree lights with an Arduino.* After the fair, we met Jessica’s lifelong buddies (“The Uns”) in Mountain View to celebrate her 25th birthday.

* 12/27/2013: John posted how to program a Christmas tree on his website: http://www.spcoast.com/wiki/index.php/Christmas2013.

Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

Reading Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” Aloud

The St.Andrew’s Shakespeare Reading Group decided to read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in honor of the season. Above you can see our hostess, Melita Thorpe, with John Watson-Williams dressed for his lead role as Ebenezer Scrooge. It took about 4-1/2 hours to read the entire short novel aloud (with breaks between staves for refreshments and a potluck dinner). We considered using one of the plays but decided that reading Dickens original 1843 text was better – since the plays both add and remove some of Dickens’ excellent prose. We distributed the text among our dozen readers:

• Taking turns reading narration (about half a page before going to the next reader).
• Dialogue was spoken as assigned parts.  Some famous parts (including the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) have no spoken lines. We doubled up on small roles.

It was a delightful evening! Several of us plan to follow up by going to the Dickens Christmas Fair (at the Cow Palace) and to the ACT “Christmas Carol” stage play in San Francisco.

Image Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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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Images Copyright 2012 by Katy Dickinson

Christmas in Silicon Valley

We are working our way through our annual Christmas activities and traditions:

• Jessica and Sally and Lorene and I went shopping for Christmas presents in San Francisco’s Chinatown
• John and I hosted the Silicon Valley Lines model train club holiday party at our home – and let the littlest geeks build a train line around our living room
• We visited the Living Nativity in Santa Clara
• We admired the holiday decorations going up all over the Bay Area

This weekend, we join family and friends at the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace.  Next week we sing Christmas carols on the cable car in San Francisco.  It sometimes feels strange following our usual paths through the holiday season so soon after my father’s death.

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Images Copyright 2011 by Katy Dickinson

Getting Ready for Christmas

My daughter Jessica arrived home a few days ago but soon left on a ski trip with her fiance Matt and his family. She comes back this afternoon. While she was briefly home, we went to the Great Dickens Christmas Fair at the Cow Palace. My mother and I also went to the Dickens Fair after Thanksgiving with my brother Pete and his family, so we have had quite the Victorian Christmas so far. (I have seen Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado twice this year!) I have also visited family, participated in the annual Sun Labs Christmas Cookie Exchange, and enjoyed the SunCaroler’s Menlo Park campus walking concert, the 1st annual Willow Glen Lions Holiday Party, and other delights of the season.

Dickens Fair

Marley confronts Scrooge

Pirate’s Cove

Dark Garden Tableau

Images Copyright 2009 Katy Dickinson and John Plocher

Pete and family at the Dickens Fair	Ko-Ko and Katisha, The Mikado	Ballena Bay Pewter, Dickens Fair
SunCarolers annual walking concert	Willow Glen Lions Party	Sun Labs Cookie Party
Family visit	Uncle Wayne’s Workshop	Paul, Lynda, Daniel (cousins)
Paul and Jessica	Paul and Jessica	Jessica and Matt

Dickens Christmas Fair & Cable Car Carolling in San Francisco

Last weekend, we enjoyed many of our family’s traditional Christmas events, including: going to The Great Dickens Christmas Fair and singing carols on a cable car in San Francisco. We picked up my daughter Jessica and her boyfriend Matt at SFO airport on Wednesday. (They were due home from college Tuesday night but their second flight was cancelled and they had to stay over in Dallas, Texas, courtesy of American Airlines.)

On Saturday, Jessi and her friends dressed up to go to the Dickens Fair at the San Francisco Cow Palace. My mother and friend Laura went too. Sunday, we went to the Lessons and Carols service at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Saratoga, then picked up Matt and drove to the city to sing carols with my parents. (Jessica revised our carols book this year.) We rode from Van Ness and California up and over Nob Hill to the Embarcadero. We walked around there to see the decorations before taking the cable car back. Today, my mother is coming to San Jose to assemble and bake fruitcakes. Tonight, we go to Christmas Eve service at St. Andrew’s. Christmas is at our house tomorrow; we are expecting 12 for dinner.

SFO: Jessica and Matt home from college

Dickens Fair – Mad Sal’s Ladies’ Oratorical and Recreational Society

Dickens Fair – Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance

Dickens Fair – Pirates of Penzance

Dickens Fair – Jessica and Friends

Dickens Fair – Dark Garden tableau

Dickens Fair – Dark Garden tableau

San Francisco cable car sign

Family Christmas carol song book

Eleanor and Paul with cable car

San Francisco cable car view

John and Paul singing

John and Eleanor singing

John and Jessica singing

Family with cable cars

Paul and Eleanor on cable car

Cable car on California

Giant red ornament plaza decorations

Paul inside red balls

Jessica inside red balls

Matt inside red balls

Family with red ornaments

Hyatt Regency sculpture and lights

Jessica and Matt pool reflections

Hyatt lights and tree

Hyatt tree and hanging lights

Paul and Jessica and Matt at Hyatt

Wade at Hyatt

Images Copyright 2007 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher