Last Day of Beatles Year

The lyrics of “When I’m Sixty-Four” by Paul McCartney of The Beatles start, “When I get older losing my hair, Many years from now, Will you still be sending me a Valentine, Birthday greetings bottle of wine. If I’d been out till quarter to three, Would you lock the door? Will you still need me, will you still feed me When I’m sixty-four?” Tonight, I end my Beatles Year!

I start my new half-decade tomorrow. Such a delightful adventure!

Katy Dickinson 1957

Katy Dickinson 1961

Katy Dickinson 1967

Wade, Eleanor, Mark, Peter, Katy Dickinson, Bachelor of Arts Commencement, University of California at Berkeley, 1979

Katy Dickinson 1980

Wade, Eleanor, Katy Dickinson with baby Jessica 1989

Jessica and Paul, Nut Tree Railroad, 1995

Katy Dickinson, John Plocher, Wedding 2000

Jessica and Matthew wedding 2011

Jessica and Katy, Beirut, Lebanon, 2013

Katy Dickinson, John Plocher, Lalibela, Ethiopia 2014

Katy and Jessica, Sierra Leone 2019

Katy and Jessica, Horseshoe Bend, Arizona 2019

Paul D Goodman and Katy Dickinson, Cielo Lodge, Golfito, Costa Rica, August 2021

Graduate Theological Union, Master of Theology Commencement, 7 May 2022

John Plocher, Katy Dickinson, Loon Lake, Wisconsin June 2022

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home). Images Copyright 1957-2022 by Katy Dickinson.

Short Family Visit with Headhunter’s Bowl

Transferring 2021 Christmas presents, 1 May 2022

My brother Peter Dickinson visited briefly this afternoon. We enjoyed lunch with friends and family and transferred 2021 Christmas presents that have been waiting for the opportunity. Pete and I also made our every-ten-year swap of the Headhunter‘s Bowl our mother gave us. I think every family has its odd traditions and this is one of ours.

When Pete and I were little kids, our mother (Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson) bought special Christmas present for our father (Wade Dickinson). We were so curious that she said if we could guess what it was without unwrapping the package, we could have it. Because it was such an odd thing, she was sure we could not guess and gave us unlimited questions. Eventually, we did guess that it was a very old wooden headhunter‘s serving bowl from the Solomon Islands. (I remember we had to get out a global atlas and narrow down the location by global quadrants and then ask many questions about what the Solomon Islands were historically famous for.) Ever since we were old enough to have our own homes, Pete and I have been trading our strange bowl back and forth. It is now Pete’s turn to play host.

Note: The San Francisco store where my mother bought the bowl said it was from the Solomon Islands. Its design looks similar to the Kava bowl of Samoa or Fiji.

Friends and family lunch, 1 May 2022

Dickinson family 1 May 2022

Transferring Solomon Islands Headhunter’s bowl, 1 May 2022

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home). Images Copyright 2022 by Katy Dickinson.

Moving Day for Mom

Yesterday was tough. About 12 of us (5 family members plus a great team of professional movers) spent 12 hours shifting my mother from her Independent Living apartment to a new Assisted Living apartment across the parking lot on the same campus. My kids took their Grandmother out for the day (to breakfast and church and to visit the Cantor Arts Center) while my brother, husband, and I moved her stuff. She did not want to move but her family and doctors all see that with progressive memory loss, my mother needs more help than we can provide with less-than-fulltime caregivers. We hired movers who took photos of everything and did their best to set up the new apartment in exactly the same arrangement as the old. Her cats were unhappy to be kept safe in carriers all day – and are probably still hiding under the bed.  We moved everything: furniture, kitchen, art, more art, art supplies, her big easel, electronics, and an entire deck-full of heavy plants and planters.  The point in reproducing the old place in the new was that she would not notice – and she didn’t.  Success meant that our day of sorting, heavy lifting and tricky decision-making went largely unrecognized.  Hooray?

A few years ago, I was touched when my younger brother sent me this poem about difficulties in taking care of our mother. My two brothers live much farther away, so I manage her day-to-day business, caretakers, and medical decisions. My brothers and I confer on resolving larger issues.  Sometimes it feels like having another child myself – but one who gets less mature as time passes.  No matter what, we love her as she is.

The Guardian
by Joseph Mills

I don’t think my brother realized all
the responsibilities involved in being
her guardian, not just the paperwork
but the trips to the dentist and Wal-Mart,
the making sure she has underwear,
money to buy Pepsis, the crying calls
because she has no shampoo even though
he has bought her several bottles recently.
We talk about how he might bring this up
with the staff, how best to delicately ask
if they’re using her shampoo on others
or maybe just allowing her too much.
“You only need a little, Mom,” he said,
“Not a handful.” “I don’t have any!”
she shouted before hanging up. Later
he finds a bottle stashed in her closet
and two more hidden in the bathroom
along with crackers, spoons, and socks.
Afraid someone might steal her things,
she hides them, but then not only forgets
where, but that she ever had them at all.

I tease my brother, “You always wanted
another kid.” He doesn’t laugh. She hated
her father, and, in this second childhood,
she resents the one who takes care of her.
When I call, she complains about how
my brother treats her and how she hasn’t
seen him in years. If I explain everything
he’s doing, she admires the way I stick up
for him. Doing nothing means I do nothing
wrong. This is love’s blindness and love’s
injustice. It’s why I expect to hear anger
or bitterness in my brother’s voice, and why
each time we talk, no matter how closely
I listen, I’m astonished to hear only love.

“The Guardian” by Joseph Mills, from Love and Other Collisions. © Press 53, 2010.

Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson

San Juan Islands, Washington State

We are just driving home from a week with family in the San Juan Islands at the north end of the State of Washington, just below Canada. This is about a thousand miles driving each way from our home in San Jose, California! All along the way, we saw the looming background presence of some of the largest California-Oregon-Washington mountains: Shasta, Baker, Rainier – part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean.

As this was our first visit to the islands, we also saw many of the tourist sights: Krystal Acres Alpaca Farm, Pelindaba Lavender, whale watching with San Juan Excursions, Orcas Island Pottery, the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, Lime Kiln Point State Park, etc. There were a great variety of wild and tame animals along the way: foxes, orcas, a great horned owl, deer, a camel, a black snake, salmon, seagulls, harbor seals and dolphins, sea anemones and barnacles, bald eagles, turkey vultures, quail, honey bees and bumble bees, raccoons and alpacas – and of course, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, cats and dogs. We enjoyed two Shakespeare performances: Much Ado About Nothing (at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, OR), and Cymbeline (at Island Stage Left, Roche Harbor, WA). A delightful trip!

Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson

Art Trust

My mother, Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson, has been an artist all of her life, including teaching for decades as the Professor of Life Drawing (and Gallery Management Program Director) at the renowned California College of the Arts (in Oakland and San Francisco). She has been creating in one medium or another pretty much daily since she knowingly composed her first photograph in 1941 at the age of ten. Even though she sells pieces regularly, this still makes for a huge collection of artwork – many thousands of framed and unframed works (mostly on paper or fabric). After my father Wade Dickinson passed away in 2011, we moved Eleanor and her art from San Francisco to San Jose.

For the last year, I have been working with my mother and brothers Pete and Mark, advised by an Estate CPA and an Estate Planning Attorney as well as experts in art, to set up a charitable Art Trust to maintain and manage my mother’s collection. Art is very complex in terms of taxes and valuation, and we want to get this business sorted out while our mother can be actively involved. I was very happy to finally get most of the Eleanor Dickinson Art Trust paperwork signed last week.

In addition to managing the business side of Eleanor Dickinson’s work, we also want her art to be exhibited – to be seen and enjoyed and not just kept in storage. However, even setting up a small local art show takes weeks of work for both the artist (or her family) and the gallery, museum, or exhibit space. Many shows require special framing, shipping, documentation, and insurance, all of which take time and money. We know from experience it can take many years of negotiations to donate an art collection to a museum or university. Within my mother’s larger collection, there are many sub-collections, including: Old Testament drawings, dream pictures, crucifixion velvets, animal portraits, plus drawings and photos and artifacts associated with Revival! and her other big traveling exhibits. We have set up the new Art Trust so that sales of art can pay the insurance and exhibit costs for the collection long-term.  We hope that our mother will be creating new art for many years to come.  We are doing our best to care for it!

Images Copyright Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson 1975, and Katy Dickinson 2013-2014

21 Years at the Lair of the Bear – Camp Blue

Last night, we celebrated Paul’s 22nd birthday at the University of California’s Lair of the Golden Bear Camp Blue. We have been Lair campers since before Paul could walk! We started in 12th Week and have slowly moved to earlier weeks as school start dates crept back into August. This is our second year as 9th Week campers. My niece and nephew start classes on Monday. Paul starts at San Jose State University in a few weeks.

My brother Pete, sister-in-law Julie and kids, with friends Steve and Olivia and their son are also with us. This week, other members of the family have been going on hikes, running, and swimming in Pinecrest Lake. We also went rafting on the Stanislaus River out of Knights Ferry. Our immediate family has mostly been playing board games and enjoying Advanced Lounging with Electronics. Jessica and Matthew celebrated their 3rd wedding anniversary with pinatas full of candy and little plastic dinosaurs.

Jessica and I have been in email communication from Camp Blue Lodge with Susan Rodger (Professor, Computer Science at Duke University), collaborating on the design and content of our Notable Women in Computer Science and Wikipedia poster for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, to be held in October 2014. GHC14 is almost sold out – as it has been every year since at least 2009.

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Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

Tolkein in Ethiopia

I did not expect to find Tolkein in Ethiopia but he was there, in sound anyway. I grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkein classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. My brother Pete Dickinson once won a bet that he could identify any single line in any of these four books by chapter and scene. I could probably still win that bet.

In the year that I have worked with the Ethiopian diaspora group People to People, I have tried hard not to think of Tolkien’s city Gondor when I hear the of the Ethiopian city of Gondar, or of Sauron’s evil fortress Barad Dur when visiting Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar. Flying home to San Francisco yesterday, I was delighted to meet a Swedish professional who lives in Bahir Dar who confessed to having the same problem. When he said he and friends had gone to Ethiopia’s lava lake to throw in rings, I felt comforted. I was not the only one to think of Mount Doom when hearing about Erta Ale.

I will not even start on how being called “Forengi” (foreigner) by kids on the street in Ethiopia made me wonder if I had somehow developed the big ears of a Star Trek Ferengi…

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson