Yesterday, I started a retail experiment. I just rented a cabinet at The Willow Glen Collective in San Jose, California, to sell vintage and antique hats, jewelry, toys and games, silver and china, glassware, travel souvenirs, and decorative items. Come by Monday-Saturday, 12-4 pm at 1349 Lincoln Avenue, San Jose, and check out Vendor #8!
This comes from recently spending a weekend with my brother Pete, son Paul, and husband John clearing out yet another storage area for my mother (Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson), and realizing that no one in the family wanted the remaining collectibles. Time for them to bring joy to someone else!
This does not mean that all of our family treasures are going on sale. I kept my grandfather’s black bowler hat and added it as an adornment to my mother’s bronze bust of Lilian. I think she looks fine!
Images Copyright 2026 by Katy Dickinson, If you want to receive Katysblog posted by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! field (upper right on Katysbloghome page).
2024, Katy Debbie Debra Odd Fellows Parade, 11 Nov 2024
This year, I am serving as the Noble Grand of the Mountain ViewOdd FellowsLodge #244 in our 150th year as a lodge. It’s like being the Chair or President of a community group but one that makes a lifetime commitment to support each other and the principles of Friendship, Truth, and Love. My daughter Jessica was Noble Grand of our lodge in 2019 and my son Paul has been a member almost as long. I only joined in 2024.
This week will be our big 150th anniversary celebration and I am super-busy coordinating a multitude of minutia. As a lodge fellowship, we have so-far produced an event logo, banner, 3 window panels honoring Friendship, Truth, and Love, and a selection of merchandise featuring anniversary images. (Special thanks to Sinead Toolis and Tatiana Kuvaldina for their inspired designs, and to Michael Greenzeiger for the merch!) John and I put together a 12-minute video of lodge history from 1876 to 2026 to be shown at the celebration. The video features portraits and candid photos, and pictures of architecture and artifacts from disparate sources – many of which were discovered or suggested by other lodge members.
“I am very new to Odd Fellowship, having only applied in 2023, and am honored to have been elected to be incoming Noble Grand of Mountain View, Lodge #244. Both of my adult children have been Odd Fellows for many years and I supported them at their lodge events long before joining. What inspired me to join was the great heartedness of this group and their generous, selfless, long-term dedication not only to each other but to the larger community. Since serving as Vice Grand, Trustee, and head of the Fellowship Committee last year, I have many times needed to ask people to support me with tasks that are not only time consuming but potentially tedious. Many lodge members have made time and given me good advice on how to make things work better in Odd Fellows.”
“In this, Mountain View’s 150th year as a lodge, I think our incoming leaders represent Odd Fellows very well. My Vice Grand, Conductor, and Outside Guardian are even younger to Odd Fellowship than I am. We range in age from late teens to late eighties and cherish a range that includes new members through those who have been Odd Fellows for over 50 years. We welcome folks who are LGBTPIA+ and straight, physically-challenged and currently-wellbodied, neurodiverse and cognitive normals. We are artists, teachers, students, technical professionals, historians, retired folks, and even a jail chaplain (me!). I think our lodge’s superpowers are our diversity and big hearts. This year will be fun, inspiring, and an opportunity to learn about and do more for my community.”
Images Copyright 2026 by Katy Dickinson, If you want to receive Katysblog posted by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! field (upper right on Katysbloghome page).
Jessica Dickinson Goodman MSFS Georgetown graduation with family, May 2026
I have not been keeping up on events on KatysBlog so this post will cover some ground. John and Paul and I recently returned from a week in Virginia for Jessica‘s first graduation from Georgetown University, with a Master of Science – Foreign Service (MSFS graduate degree). She finishes her second Master’s in December. Jessica is also newly a Mom our granddaughter Joanne who is thriving with her big brother 3-year-old Alex and Dad, Matthew. We are all very proud of Jessica (and having fun with our beloved grandbabies)!
Jessica, John, Katy, & Paul at Georgetown MSFS graduation
My father, Wade Dickinson, and his brother Wayne were business and innovation partners for fifty years, during which time they were granted more than fifty U.S. patents and taught entrepreneurship for 16 years at U.C. Berkeley Engineering. My father passed in 2011 and my Uncle Wayne passed late last year. Wayne’s memorial service was last weekend in San Rafael, California. It was a touching opportunity to tell stories and reconnect with my brother Mark and cousins Eric and Leslie Dickinson.
Mark, Katy, Leslie, Eric Dickinson, Wayne Dickinson Memorial Service, 23 May 2026Wayne Dickinson Memorial Service, 1935-2025
Clinton Global Initiative, Faith Leaders certificate, 5 May 2026Clinton Global Initiative, Faith Leaders cohort, 5 May 2026Islamic Studies Books, May 2026
Images Copyright 2026 by Katy Dickinson, If you want to receive Katysblog posted by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! field (upper right on Katysbloghome page).
“There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black skin Africans. But we were all participating in the same rituals, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white…I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.” – Malcolm X, “Malcolm X’s Letter from Mecca (April 20, 1964),” ICIT Digital Library, accessed 10 May 2026.
His powerful experience of the unity and brotherhood of Ummah at the Hajj inspired Malcolm X to change his life, his work, and his philosophy. As a jail chaplain, I am called to support incarcerated people of all religions and spiritual paths, including those who don’t think they have any. In my observation, the two primary religions to which Santa Clara County jail prisoners convert are Christianity and Islam, probably because those are the religions most US prisoners follow (Pew Research Center, Religion in Prisons – A 50-State Survey of Prison Chaplains, 22 March 2012). I see having a compassionate and informed understanding of faiths other than my own as part of my job.
If you want to receive Katysblog posted by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! field (upper right on Katysbloghome page).
I loved our recent trip to Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary (mostly traveling along the Danube River in Eastern Europe). I have worked and traveled in the area before but this was my most in-depth experience. Some of my observations included some sights that were funny or quirky but others were sad. Following up on my long-term interest in civic ironwork, I include photos of street iron that present a city’s symbolic view, starting with the vanishing hole pattern from Prague. The Dancing House and Franz Kafka head (by David Cerny 2014) also seem representative of Prague’s charming sense of humor. Here is a video of the Kafka head in motion.
We started our journey in Prague but found other cities that shared their sense of fun, including Passau which has a medieval stone head they call “the Fool of Passau” as its civic mascot. John and I enjoyed a class in which we tried to sculpt the fool’s head in marzipan.
Vienna (“Wien”) was full of very serious palaces and monuments but I did spot the local Bitzinger Würstelstand, a popular street sausage and champaign stand with a green rabbit and wine bottle on the roof hinting that the city had a funny side. The green rabbit refers to the “Young Hare” painting by Albrecht Dürer in a nearby museum and is apparently only one of several colorful giant rabbits in Vienna. Unfortunately, Vienna’s street iron in was too serious to display civic symbols and all I found were company names.
The city that seemed most enthusiastic in embracing public silliness was Bratislava with its collection of funny statues effectively designed for tourist engagement. Bratislava’s prominent bridge includes a UFO Restaurant on its tower – an unidentified flying object that seems to have settled in place.
Our final destination for this trip was the delightful city of Budapest in which I saw two funny instances of public art: a giant inflated moon and a bronze statue of a man holding chicken and an egg in the Great Market Hall. Budapest is also where I began to consider the sadder aspects of the cities through which we had traveled.
The saddest sights in several cities were beggars. America has nothing to be proud of in its abundance of poor and homeless people, often found begging on the street. However, I had never before seen anyone in full prostration, almost obeisance, posture while begging. I saw this abject begging posture in most cities during our European trip: men stretched at full length on the sidewalk with their hands cupped, or holding a hat, begging for a donation. I started to watch and unfortunately found it common. When I asked a local, they said the beggers were just looking for attention. Having worked for ten years with incarcerated persons who are frequently poor, homeless, and/or begging before or after their jail time, I found the self-abasing posture disturbing. I found articles about begging in the cities I visited which included pictures and more information.
The second saddest sight for me was beautiful but deteriorating buildings. When out of the well-cared-for central city areas, we sometimes saw notable examples of elegant architectural design and execution in advanced disrepair. Many of these old buildings would be cherished gems if they were in America but seem to have fallen to the combined attacks of war, neglect, poverty, and lack of maintenance funds. Below are four magnificent Art Nouveau images of women representing the seasons, on the crumbling facade of an apartment building. I was glad to find a Hungarian article indicating that this trend of architectural deterioration in not locally acceptable.
Street iron is not limited by geography as a form of civic expression of pride and identity. I saw this manhole cover here in the San Francisco Bay Area yesterday.
Images (c) Copyright 2025 by Katy Dickinson. If you want to receive Katysblog posted by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! field (upper right on Katysblog home page).
John and I just returned from a Danube River cruise on the AmaMagna ship of AmaWaterways. We were with a group of about sixty put together by Max Miller of Tasting History (working with Travel Advisor Ruth Walker) celebrating both our 25th wedding anniversary and my finishing my doctorate. We flew into Prague and spent a few days there before joining the ship in Vilshofen in Germany.
We celebrated Halloween with a costume party on the ship and watched a new Tasting History episode with Max Miller himself in the ship’s theater. We very much enjoyed sailing through the Wachau Valley full of castles, including the Dürnstein Castle, where King Richard I of England was held captive (1192-1193 CE). We even spent an afternoon at the Széchenyi thermal baths in Budapest. It was a trip full of delights!
Images (c) Copyright 2025 by Katy Dickinson. If you want to receive Katysblog posted by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! field (upper right on Katysblog home page).
I am proud to be an Innovation Mentor for the US State Department’s TechWomen’s Team Rwanda! Three mentors (Keana Lucas, Rachana Mitkar, and me) had our first meeting online with the five Emerging Leaders on 2 October, followed by four intensive days developing project and presentation that will benefit Rwanda. On Sunday, we met at my house in San Jose, California, for dinner and further discussion. They enjoyed a tour of WP668, my railway caboose office. Yesterday, we gave our first project presentation. Here is more about what we are working on. Pretty good for such a short development period! We will refine and further develop this as we get feedback from colleagues and potential partners, and our understanding evolves.
Problem Statement: “In Rwanda, professional and academic women face underrepresentation in STEM fields because of the lasting impact of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. This matters because generational trauma causes many women to carry the weight of depression, impostor syndrome, and self-doubt that quietly limit their potential. Greater representation of women in STEM will enhance productivity, expand opportunities, and inspire the next generation of young women.”
Project Description: “The KIRATECH (healing through technology) project creatively addresses the underrepresentation of Rwandan women in STEM by focusing on one of its most overlooked barriers: mental health challenges rooted in the lasting effects of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Many women continue to struggle with depression, impostor syndrome, and self-doubt that quietly limit their confidence and participation in science and technology. KIRATECH brings together technology, mental health advocacy, and community building to create a supportive digital ecosystem where women can heal, connect, and grow. At its core is an AI-powered chatbot that allows women in STEM to discuss mental health concerns confidentially or anonymously, offering a trusted space for emotional support and early intervention.
Key components of KIRATECH include a resource hub that connects users to professional counseling and mentorship programs through existing organizations, along with a community engagement section that promotes monthly meetups and annual conferences for peer support, networking, and shared learning. The “Share Your Story” section provides a platform for women to share experiences, highlight achievements, and inspire others through authentic storytelling that builds collective resilience.
The project team is currently refining the technical design of the chatbot to ensure it is culturally sensitive, multilingual, and responsive to diverse user needs. KIRATECH is also strengthening partnerships with mental health professionals and women-led STEM organizations to enhance credibility and sustainability. Together, these components aim to build a resilient community of women in STEM who are mentally supported, professionally empowered, and motivated to lead Rwanda’s future in science and innovation. Success will be measured through user engagement, mentorship participation, feedback from community events, and visible growth in women’s participation and leadership across STEM fields.”
I was honored to be part of the TechWomen 2014 delegation to Rwanda, which provided helpful background in my support of this year’s team.
Images (c) Copyright 2025 by Katy Dickinson. If you want to receive Katysblog posted by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! field (upper right on Katysblog home page).
KatysBlog 