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.

Best Mentoring Practices

Yesterday, I moderated a mentoring panel for the TechWomen Mentor Kickoff event (hosted by SurveyMonkey in San Francisco). The experienced and inspiring panelists were:

• Mentorship Advice: Katy Dickinson, Mentoring Standard
• Professional Mentor: Roojuta Lalani, Salesforce
• Impact Coach: Kiko Smith, Twitter
• Cultural Mentor: Jennifer Gieber, Glassdoor

Some of our advice:

• Katy: Look for long term success, this is a personal relationship in a professional setting
• Roojuta: Be flexible, make introductions, find people to help
• Jennifer: Create handouts for events, give good directions with pictures, be flexible, reach out to other mentors
• Kiko: Provide resources, help the group find value in each other, encourage teamwork, stay focused, show up and listen

I also offered my five best questions:

1. What problem are you solving? (define the challenge)
2. How do you know when you are done? (success/completion metrics)
3. Who is your customer? (target audience)
4. What is your data? (quantification)
5. What difference will it make? (impact)

These are on my Mentoring Standard website

I was proud to attend this event with my Co-Mentor and daughter, Jessica Dickinson Goodman. She is a Country Coach for Palestine and I am a Country Coach for Algeria this year.

Just for fun – some of my collection of magnets from the 22 TechWomen countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia:

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Images Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson – with thanks to Jessica Dickinson Goodman.

Nuclear Power Plant, Craters of the Moon, Burney Falls

On Thursday and Friday last week on the final leg of our great road trip, Jessica and I toured the Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I) near Arco, Idaho, Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, and Burney Falls. My father, Wade Dickinson, was a nuclear physicist who researched large power reactors at the time EBR-I was active so he may have visited the site. While at Craters of the Moon, we walked the Devil’s Orchard Trail, climbed the Inferno cinder cone, and explored the Boy Scout and Beauty ice caves. (We did not see any bats.) Jessica had not seen McArthur–Burney Falls Memorial State Park before. With 100 million gallons of water daily falling 129 feet, the falls are impressive! On the last day, we kept getting stuck behind big trucks carrying stacked bales of alfalfa so we drove through a shower of grass much of the way home.

Photographs Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson- with thanks to Jessica Dickinson Goodman.

Promontory Point, Lava Hot Springs, Hell’s Half Acre

Published on 3 July – still having troubles with the WordPress app…

Jessica and I are still meandering our way toward Yellowstone National Park. Today, we drove from Salt Lake City to Promontory Point, Utah, which recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Golden Spike joining America’s eastern and western railways. The National Historic Site has a short track and a reproduction of the Jupiter steam locomotive. There is also a natural stone Chinese Arch dedicated to honoring the workers who built the railroad. We also walked around the Lava Hot Springs sunken garden, and Hell’s Half Acre Lava Field in the Snake River Plain in Idaho.

Photographs Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson- with thanks to Jessica Dickinson Goodman.

Grand Tetons and Yellowstone

Jessica and I today had lunch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and visited the Grand Teton National Park and next door Yellowstone National Park. We crossed the Continental Divide twice today (four times so far this trip). This is where America’s east-flowing and west-flowing waters are separated. Despite the crowd of tourists, the snowy Grand Tetons are majestic and elegant. We saw the Old Faithful geyser erupt and toured some of Yellowstone’s other geothermal features. We even saw some huge buffalo browsing near the road. Red, orange, pink, white, yellow, blue, and purple wildflowers are everywhere.

Images Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson

Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Zion, Bryce, Kodachrome

My daughter Jessica and I visited five parks in northern Arizona and southern Utah today. We were on the earliest tour of the Antelope Canyon and were entranced by the light filtering into the slot canyon to make the sandstone glow. We then walked the trail down to Horseshoe Bend where the Colorado River loops around a big rock. We drove through Zion National Park (zero parking meant we could not stop), followed by a hike in Bryce Canyon National Park where the cicadas sang in the trees And chipmunks ran around. We drove to nearby Kodachrome Basin State Park just before dinner. Tonight, we drive to Salt Lake City on our way to Yellowstone National Park. Still no roadrunner sightings!

Photographs Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson

Exploring Santa Fe

Jessica and I started our Sunday in Santa Fe by going to St. Bede’s Episcopal Church which has a lovely stone labyrinth outside. We then went to the New Mexico Gay Rodeo (where the starter flag was a rainbow, of course), did some shopping with the craft vendors on the walkway of the Palace of the Governors, and visited the Georgia O’Keefe Museum. With excellent Venezuelan takeout from the Santarepa Cafe to sustain us, we spent the afternoon and evening driving to Page, Arizona, so that we can tour Antelope Canyon tomorrow.

Photographs Copyright 2019 by Katy Dickinson