Art by Grandmother and Grandson

I just passed my theological Spanish translation class at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley where I am a Master of Arts student. Our Spanish class was held in a room next to the Doug Adams Gallery at the GTU. As a result of a serendipitous conversation, the gallery will include two of my mother‘s art works in the exhibit that opens next month, “Beyond Words: Art Inspired by Sacred Texts.”

My mother, Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson (1931-2017), was interested in art and religion all of her life. An early exhibit was the 1967 Old Testament figures show at the Temple Gallery, Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco. The figures were life size, free standing, line drawings on paper inspired by Bible stories. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden are two of the figures from the Temple show. Another famous series she created was called “Revival!” presenting fundamentalist Christian worship in the American South. “Revival!” was exhibited in a variety of locations from 1970 to 1981, has two books about it, and can be seen in part in the collections of the Oakland Museum, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, and Tennessee State Museum. Eleanor Dickinson was a powerful artist, beloved Professor Emerita at California College of the Arts, feminist and art activist. She was involved in drawing the emotional expressions of people in all aspects of life, often in a religious context. My brothers Mark and Peter and I are Trustees for the Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson Charitable Art Trust, created in 2014 to provide donations of art works to charitable organizations or institutions.

I am also the Manager for my son Paul Dickinson Goodman‘s art business. Paul is a ceramicist, wood worker, and metal worker who was graduated from the San Jose State University – Spatial Art program in 2018. He is actively exhibiting his work at galleries and art sales in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am proud to have two accomplished artists in our family!

Images Copyright 2018-2019 Katy Dickinson, Paul Dickinson Goodman, Adams Gallery GTU

Communities of Liberation, Cuernavaca Mexico (3)

This is the third in a short series about my two week Spanish language and social justice immersion program in Cuernavaca, Mexico, with Pacific School of Religion‘s Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion (CLGS) and CILAC Freire.

Costumbres y Tradiciones (customs and traditions) – One of our talks included the charming concept of Mexico’s own “Vitamin T” – tacos, tostadas, tamales, tortas, tlacoyos and, of course, tequila. In Dora’s kitchen, we happily ate a great deal of Vitamin T. One Dora’s oldest kitchen tools was her mother’s molcajete (mortar) and temolote (pestle) for grinding spices. We saw more modern molcajetes in the market, painted with dog and pig faces. Even when our group got up early for day trips to visit Tepotzotlán and Mexico City, Dora was always there to be sure we were well fed and cared for. On our last day, she took us on a special trip to the municipal market to buy flameware pots after we admired those she used so well.

 

   

Another part of the Costumbres y Tradiciones talk was about the Virgin of Guadalupe whose 1531 image was ubiquitous during our travels in Mexico. We learned that Guadalupe has a connection to Tonantzin, the Aztec mother goddess, and that many believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe who do not believe in Jesus Christ, or even God. I did not know until hearing this talk that there is an Arabic connection to Guadalupe: the name (probably) derives from that of a Spanish river, the name for which has Arabic roots. Since my house in San Jose, California, is on the Guadalupe River, I was very interested!

 

 

One of the lovely old churches we walked by every time we went to downtown Cuernavaca was Parroquia San José El Calvario which not only has a variety of images of the Virgin of Guadalupe inside but a special building for her statue on the street outside. In addition to the prominent outside image of Mary, inside San José El Calvario I found a saint I never heard of before, San Charbel Makhlouf – a Maronite monk of Lebanon. I found another statue of San Charbel in the Parroquia de la Asuncion, Sagrario Metropolitano, in Mexico City. In both churches, his image stood above collections of many colored satin ribbons. A Catholic friend from Michoacán told me that San Charbel is very popular and powerful and that each ribbon represents thanks for a healing. In 2013, during our visit to Lebanon, TechWomen Fellow Adla Chatila took my daughter Jessica and me to see the Cedars of Lebanon, Khalil Gibran‘s home, and the Mar Bishay Hermitage, Qozhaya. The Monastery of Qozhaya is close to where San Charbel is from. I was not expecting to see so many connections to the Middle East while in Mexico.

 
Parroquia San José El Calvario, Cuernavaca 2019

 
San Charbel Makhlouf in Parroquia San José El Calvario, Cuernavaca, and in Mexico City, 2019

  

 
Monastery of Qozhaya, 2013

Iglesia del Río de la Plata y La Colectiva Diversa – In addition to the Spanish lessons and talks, our class went on a variety of field trips, including spending an evening with an inspiring community church in Cuernavaca called Iglesia del Río de la Plata y La Colectiva Diversa, lead for over thirty years by Rev. Alfonso Leija. Rev. Alfonso generously shared his remarkable story of developing the church and small hospice to support the LGBTQ community during the early AIDs epidemic. We heard from some of the church members and briefly shared something about ourselves. I only wish the air pollution had been less intense that night so that we could have learned more.

Photos Copyright 2013-2019 by Katy Dickinson

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Making a Rock Garden

My daughter Jessica and I took a break from our professional and academic responsibilities to make her a new rock garden yesterday. When we travel, she and I interview rocks large and small which might want to come home with us. This summer, Jessica and I each brought home a selection of boulders. I used mine to extend my informal rock wall which is both decorative – and keeps the dogs from racing through my flower beds.

Jessica dedicated her new boulders to a rock garden next to the driveway and then used the decorative river rocks that we took out of where the rock garden was installed to trim her street side planting bed.  For the plantings in her rock garden, Jessica selected:

• Lithops – also called living stones
• Aloe – descended from a single plant I gave her in college
• Portulacaria – also called elephant bush (both green and variegated with red stems)
• Sedum – or stonecrop
• Echeveria – also called hens and chicks, with pink edges

After tilling the soil below, taking out larger rocks, and digging in soil amendment,  we used pieces of slate and flat stones behind the boulders to create basins of top soil for the news plantings – and to direct moisture away from the side fence.  The stones form the bones of the garden, the aloes provide form and structure, and the smaller plants and seashells add color and contrasting shapes.  We added two potted succulents in green pots for height and variety.  Jessica will extend the garden further when she adopts new boulders during future travels.

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Photos Copyright 2018 by Katy Dickinson and Jessica Dickinson Goodman.

Easter Egg Hunt 2018

Easter was on Sunday 1 April in 2017 (also John’s Birthday!) and as usual we had friends, family, and neighbors over for a potluck brunch and Easter Egg Hunt in our back garden and on WP668. The Associate Easter Bunny wrote a very difficult set of riddles for the adults to find the Gold and Silver Eggs.

Gold Egg
The clue has 3 words; each quatrain is a clue for one of them.

Birds circle in their dances, bright pinions
a-spinning as they whirl; making circles
and ovals and untracable-shapes to
describe with their sleek bodies this first clue.
The second clue is the colonial name
of an Alaskan burb, whose name now means
either a place for gathering potatoes
or snowy-owl in old Iñupiat.
Third clue: what do snakes and shells and people
and varicella-pox and cats and dogs
and lizards and chameleons and rats
and nematodes and bats do in common?
Hold up one finger, tap three on your arm:
that’s quatrain one and two. A charades charm!

Solution: The Gold Egg was in a brown paper bag behind a storage shed next to a yellow wheelbarrow.

Silver Egg
Literary references may require a search engine for non-English majors

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote |
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a
song. | queer / old balloonman whistles / far and
wee and bettyandisbel come dancing |
Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable. As
presently. As exactitude. As | [Here]
keys in hand, I’ll reach the landing and / you’re
there—the one lesson I never get right. |
It has taken / seventeen years. This trip,
these characters patterned / in black ink, curves |
having been previously hardened, tempered
or sprung. Precision Steel’s inventory |

Solution: The Silver Egg was in a brown paper bag tucked into the end of a leaf spring under the WP668 caboose.

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Images Copyright 2018 by Katy Dickinson (with one from Jessica Dickinson Goodman).

Coolest Office in San Jose

Thanks to San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (and Ahmad Chapman, his Communications Specialist) who created the Great 408  community celebration program for San Jose which says about “77. Backyard Railroad Caboose” –

You can have your glass-walled high rises and ergonomic standing desks; Katy Dickinson has the coolest office in San Jose. That’s because it’s a 1916 Western Pacific steel framed wooden caboose in the backyard of the Willow Glen home she shares with her husband, John Plocher. The couple purchased the caboose in 2006 from the Golden Gate Railroad Museum in San Francisco after it lost its lease. It was in storage in San Jose for more than a year until it was moved to their backyard in May 2007. The couple has been restoring the caboose bit by bit for more than a decade. Be sure to check out Katy and John’s website for more photos and the history of the caboose.

The web page features the 2007 video by Sam Fineberg of WP668 moving into our backyard. WP668 is the office for my company, Mentoring Standard.

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Photos Copyright 2008-2017 by Katy Dickinson.

Visiting Central California Missions

My daughter Jessica, friends Laura Biche, her sister Cathie Ferris, and I are continuing our quest to visit all of the California Missions. In 2015-2016, we visited seven Missions (listed north to south, with the order of establishment in parenthesis):

1. Mission San Francisco Solano, (#21) in Sonoma 
2. Mission San Rafael Arcángel, (#20) in San Rafael
3. Mission San Francisco de Asís (“Mission Dolores”, #6), in San Francisco
4. Mission Santa Clara de Asís, (#8) in Santa Clara
5. San Juan Bautista, (#15) in San Juan Bautista
6. Nuestra Senora de Soledad, (#13) in Soledad
7. San Antonio de Padua, (#3) in Jolon

Last weekend starting from San Jose, we visited six more Missions, plus another visit to San Juan Bautista since we had dinner in town:

1. Mission San Miguel Arcángel, (#16) in San Miguel
2. Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, (#5) in San Luis Obispo
3. Mission La Purísima Concepción, (#11) near Lompoc
4. Mission Santa Inés, (#19) in Solvang
5. Mission Santa Barbara, (#10) in Santa Barbara
6. Mission San Buenaventura, (#9) in Ventura

Since we were traveling on a Sunday, we attended services at Mission San Buenaventura.  Many of the missions are still in active use by the Catholic Church. A few are public museums. We have eight more Missions to visit, in two trips: one to Southern California and the other near where we live in Northern California:

Southern California

1. Mission San Fernando Rey de España, (#17) in Mission Hills (Los Angeles)
2. Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, (#4) in San Gabriel
3. Mission San Juan Capistrano, (#7) in San Juan Capistrano
4. Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, (#18) in Oceanside
5. Mission San Diego de Alcalá, (#1) in San Diego

Northern California

1. Mission Santa Cruz, (#12) in Santa Cruz
2. Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, (#2) in Carmel
3. Mission San José, (#14) in Fremont

Pictures of Mission San Miguel Arcángel:

Pictures of Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa:

Pictures of Mission La Purísima Concepción:

Pictures of Mission Santa Inés:

Pictures of Mission Santa Barbara:

Pictures of Mission San Buenaventura:

Mission San Juan Bautista:

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Images Copyright 2017 by Katy Dickinson

Extra Gear? Gifts for Sierra Leone

My daughter Jessica and I will be visiting Families Without Borders in Sierra Leone next week with Terri Khonsari. If you have any extra laptops or smart phones we can bring – no matter how old or dead – the students will be delighted with your donation. Please contact me soon!

I have visited the inspiring and fascinating continent of Africa at least once a year since 2010. With TechWomen Delegations, I have been to Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa, plus participating in Delegations to Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa below the Sahara. With People to People, John and I visited Ethiopia. My only actual vacation in Africa was to Egypt in 2010 – a much longer trip than planned since our family was stranded there by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano.  This will be my first trip to West Africa.

I bring gifts on each trip for our generous hosts and for new friends and colleagues. For my first TechWomen Delegations, I had custom pencils made but more recently, I have brought San Francisco keychains and geeky pens and toys given away at events like the Grace Hopper Conference.  For this trip, I bought keychains, the Willow Glen Wells Fargo Bank branch gave me a big bag of red pens, and I am also bringing packages of stickers for the children.

However, the best present for the students in Sierra Leone would be empowerment and greater connection to the wider world.  Your outdated computer gear can help them.  I hope to hear from you!

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Image Copyright 2017 by Katy Dickinson