Learning with TechWomen Team Tunisia

TechWomen Team Tunisia in San Jose, CA 2022-10-1

I am honored to help mentor five TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Tunisia during their visit to the USA. The U.S. State Department – Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs – TechWomen program connects and supports the next generation of women leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by providing them the access and opportunities to advance their careers and pursue their dreams.

So far, our team has spoken online, been to a kickoff event hosted by Twitter at their San Francisco headquarters (I got to wear the embroidered cape I bought in Tunisia in 2015), and enjoyed dinner together at my house in San Jose. We are learning about each other, and working on the project again online, Tuesday night! This term, I am happy to be a TechWomen Co-Mentor with Darpana Pendyala (Hardware Design Engineer, Marvell), and Priyanka Sahay (Director, Product Marketing, LinkedIn).

TechWomen Team Tunisia 2022-09-23

TechWomen Team Tunisia at Twitter 2022-09-29

TechWomen Team Tunisia at Twitter 2022-09-29

TechWomen Team Tunisia with WP668, in San Jose, CA 2022-10-1

TechWomen Team Tunisia in San Jose, CA 2022-10-1

TechWomen Team Tunisia in San Jose, CA 2022-10-1

TechWomen Team Tunisia in San Jose, CA 2022-10-1

TechWomen Team Tunisia in San Jose, CA 2022-10-1

TechWomen Team Tunisia in San Jose, CA 2022-10-1

TechWomen Team Tunisia in San Jose, CA 2022-10-1

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.

Welcome TechWomen Team Kenya

TechWomen Team Kenya, 10 March 2022

I am honored to work with TechWomen Team Kenya this term. My Co-Mentors are Ella Morgulis and Samantha Raniere. Everyone was at my house in San Jose, California, last night for a team meeting and dinner. We are getting to know each other and enjoying learning together. They had fun touring my caboose office, WP668.

TechWomen brings emerging women leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) from Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East together with their professional counterparts in the United States for a mentorship and exchange program. I have been working with TechWomen since I helped to design it in 2010. Launched in 2011, TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE).

TechWomen Team Kenya, 10 March 2022

TechWomen Team Kenya, 10 March 2022

TechWomen Team Kenya on Zoom, 12 March 2022

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

Good Year for Cactus

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  Opuntia Santa Rita in bloom, June 2020

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  Opuntia Santa Rita in bloom, June 2020

Regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires, and terrible air quality, my cactus garden has been happy this year. Several species which usually only flower once a year have bloomed again. The local honeybees are delighted to roll around in the pollen of huge flowers. There was enough prickly pear cactus fruit that my daughter Jessica made syrup from it, and John made pancakes to celebrate!

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  Prickly pear cactus, June bloom

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  Prickly pear cactus, Oct fruit

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  Prickly pear cactus, Oct fruit

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  Euphorbia mammillaris, Corn Cob Cactus, Oct 2020

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  Making cactus fruit syrup 1

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  Making cactus fruit syrup 2

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  Making cactus fruit syrup 3

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  Cactus fruit syrup

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  Pancake breakfast with cactus fruit syrup

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  Peruvian cactus, Sep 2020 fruit

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  Peruvian cactus night bloom, Oct 2020

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  Peruvian cactus bloom with bees, Oct 2020

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  Peruvian cactus bloom with bees, Oct 2020

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  Balloon barrel cactus in bloom, Aug 2020

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  WP668 caboose with cactus, Oct 2020

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  Night blooming cereus cactus, Oct 2020

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  Crassula perforata succulent, Oct 2020

More on the WP668 railroad caboose.
Updated 21 Oct 2020.

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home). Image Copyright 2020 by Katy Dickinson and Jessica Dickinson Goodman.

20th Wedding Anniversary on 4 July

John and I are looking forward to our 20th wedding anniversary this weekend. Thinking back on some of our adventures and looking forward to many more. It is fun to be married to your best friend!

2020 virtual family dinner
2020 Mother’s Day
2018 family vacation
2018 Paul SJSU graduation
2018 St Andrew’s
2017 Reno
2016 Ashland
2016 Ashland
2016 Dunsmuir
2016 Klamath River
2015 Amtrak trip
2015 St Andrew’s
2014 Lalibela Ethiopia
2012 St Andrew’s
2012 Natural Bridges
2012 Jessica CMU graduation
2011 Jessica + Matthew
2011 Jessica + Matthew
2010 Lair of the Golden Bear camp
Lair of the Golden Bear camp 2010
2010 Teatro Zinzanni
2010 Teatro Zinzanni
2010 Teatro Zinzanni
2010 Egypt
2010 Cairo, Egypt
2008 Flying to Baja Mexico
2008 Baja
2007 India
2007 India
2007 WP668 Caboose move
2007 WP668 move
2006 Dead Sea, Israel
2006 Dead Sea, Israel
2006 St. Peterburg, Russia
2006 Russia
2005 Beijing, China
2005 China
2000
2000 wedding
2000 wedding

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Images Copyright 2000-2020 by Katy Dickinson.

Redesigned WP668 Web Site

I just redesigned the WP668 caboose website. I am still reviewing and posting old photos but the basic structure is done. It is restful during the coronavirus lockdown to make progress on a project I have been wanting to work on forever. After reviewing hundreds in our online family archive, I keep discovering wonderful photos I had forgotten.  I have finished 2006 and am about half done with 2007 now. More about WP668 :

WP668 is a historic Western Pacific Railroad caboose being restored by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher, a private family in San Jose, California, USA. More information and pictures are added as WP668’s story evolves.

For a summary of the WP668 story, see Katy’s May 2017 Western Pacific Historical Convention slides: “The Story of Western Pacific Caboose 668”. WP668 is the office for Mentoring Standard. Please join the WP668 Western Pacific Caboose Facebook group. WP668 was originally built as a boxcar in 1916. In 2018, the Mayor said that WP668 was the coolest office in San Jose!

As always: Please tell me if you have pre-1960 photos of our WP668 caboose. Thanks to all who have already contributed historic caboose images – especially Don Marenzi.

Thanks to John Plocher and Jessica Dickinson Goodman for technical web support!

2006: SN1642 and WP668 cabooses, at the Golden Gate Railroad Museum in San Francisco
2006: WP668 caboose on truck
2006: WP668 on Highway 101
2006: WP668 in storage in San Jose
2007: WP668 in the air over the trees
2007: family on WP668 in their San Jose backyard
2007: WP668 on the front page!
WP668 in 2020

Images Copyright 2006-2020 by Katy Dickinson, John Plocher, and Danek Duvall

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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.

Page updated 27 March 2020 – added images and links.

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Photos Copyright 2008-2017 by Katy Dickinson.