Meet 'n Greet
Kate MacDowell has had a rich and varied professional life and educational background.
She holds an undergraduate degree from Rutgers University in English Literature. She continued her graduate work at Rutgers achieving a Masters in Counseling Psychology. At the masters level, she had two specializations: infant and child development and multicultural counseling; her subsequent doctoral work in psychology focused on social justice, ecology, and health. Kate also holds two masters in religion (Christian History and Comparative Religion). Following completion of her masters, she went on to complete two doctorates in theology (Comparative/New Religious Movements and Christian). Her own primary theological focus is in shamanistic worldviews and the philosophical system of Religious Naturalism, which centrally emphasizes the natural world and scientific processes as spiritually revealing and meaningful. Her primary research interest is in exploring how all faiths can be spiritually meaningful while being ecologically mindful--thus promoting a love of and care for the Earth. Her textbooks Sacred Groves: Creating and Sustaining Neopagan Covens and Ethics & Professional Practice for Neopagan Clergy are currently available for purchase at major retailers. At this time, she is completing post-graduate work in Buddhism and Religious Philosophy. She is the founder of Ocean Seminary College (a tuition-free interfaith and ecologically-centered seminary) and is in the process of formalizing an interdisciplinary association to generate research and interventions to promote a healthier cultural orientation toward the non-human, non-encultured world, as well as developing an MFA degree-program exploring ecology and shamanism within the arts.
She is a member of the Golden Key National Honor Society, the Psi Chi Honor Society for Psychology, Association of Conservation Psychology, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the American Psychological Association (Divisions in Counseling Psychology, Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, Peace Psychology, and Health), the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, and is certified in human research by UCLA. She is the host of EcoChat a new online radio program dedicated to facilitating the reconnection of the personal to the wider diversity of Earth. Her critical review of the text Conservation Psychology with Dr. Mark Schroll has been published in Association for Humanistic Pschology's Perspective January 2010 issue. Up until 2005, she had been a psychotherapist for eight years working with underserved men and women diagnosed with severe psychological disorders, addiction issues, and trauma.
In addition to her academic/counselor life, Kate has spent more than twenty years active in the arts. She began playing the piano at age two (and was appropriately horrible) with formal training beginning by the age of 8. She was promptly kicked out for general lack of discipline and overall boredom with "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." She happily spent the next twenty years in disciplined self-study, practicing on average 6 hours per day. She began to study voice professionally at 13 and remained in training until she was twenty-one, studying both classical and contemporary stylings, concluding her study with composer and lyricist Robert Lindsey Nassif, author of two acclaimed off-Broadway musicals Opal and Honky-Tonk Highway.
She attended a performing arts high school where she studied acting under Stephen Kazakoff and continued to study through her undgergraduate years at Rutgers. She has directed or co-directed numerous classical, modern, and contemporary plays and has performed various roles including Little Red Ridinghood (Into the Woods), Joan de Pucelle (Henry VI), Karen (Children's Hour), and Rosalind (As You Like It). Her dream directing job is Henry V. She is the author of the award-winning one act, Breathe, which was originally directed by Wendy Liscow, former associate artistic director of the George Street Playhouse. Her artistic work has been featured in The Asbury Park Press, The New York Times, and The Star Ledger. In 1993, she became the youngest invitee to the ASCAP musical theater writer's workshops as a guest of composer Lucy Simon and the coordinator Michael Kirker. She went on to work at the professional regional theater the George Street Playhouse in dramaturgy, evaluating new works for production, including being the first to read and recommend Jane Martin's controversial play Keely and Du for full production. During her time at GSP, she actively worked to improve accessibility to performances for the visually and hearing impaired and additionally became an audio-describer (visually impaired audience members are provided with a headset during the live production, while the describer watches the production on monitor and provides a visually detailed description of all action on stage). She remained at GSP until 1997. By 1996, she began to redirect her attention to her own music and performance, and released her first EP. She continued on this path until her last vocal/songwriting release in 1998, Hitchhiker.
Kate released her first orchestral composition and in 2008 and is currently at work on a symphony entitled "Threnody for Earth". In addition to playwriting and composing, she is a poet and her collection of poetry Witness was published in 2009.
In 2005, Kate was hospitalized for nearly 3 weeks for severe lung problems, by 2006 Kate suffered the first of what would ultimately lead to 12 strokes over the past 5 years, multiple organ-infarctions, and progressive muscular failures. She was tentatively diagnosed with MELAS in 2008, a rare and terminal neurological disease. Unperturbed, Kate continues to live juicily and can often be found typing away on her computer or composing in the hospital. She lives on the Atlantic Coast of New Jersey with her husband and their cocker spaniel Charlotte, as well as several other wonderful nonhuman companions (including two seahorses). To learn more about her struggle with her failing health follow her on her blog "Chasing Zebras".
Curious Talents
Enough of the third-person writing, here are some of my curious talents--welcome to the wonderful and wacky world of ME-dom!!
- I can say all 50 states in 30 seconds, well not quite so well anymore. I seem to forget states located around the letter N--including my own.
- I can learn most instruments by ear, save for the drums, but that goes without saying! I don't think you'd want to give me a drumstick, that would be bad and likely lead to an injury of an innocent passerby as the drumstick goes flying out of my hand.
- I can read tarot cards--I'm spooky good and have been reading since I was about nine or ten.
- I make a mean chicken stir-fry--yes, it talks back and says all kinds of nasty things while you eat.
- I am very good at ruining movie plots for those who haven't seen the movie--I really try not too, seriously; I am also very good at talking over the news and standing on my very tall soap box. I am a living news ticker.
- I can type about 90 to 100 words per minute; but will not type anything for you since I have other things I have to do--hahahah!
- I can lift a ream of paper! I am super woman!!! Let's see you top that!!!
- I am an elegant clutz and have been known to turn my clutziness into a brilliant modern dance move--ta-da!!
- I excell at argument. But then I am always right, so there really is no need to argue!!
- I can cut hair, having practiced for years on my Barbies'.
- I can parallel park, somewhat, but I wouldn't want to own the other cars around me.
- I am generally good at taking photographs, even of dead people--whoooooo.
- I'm stylish! Not. It's a good thing I am not famous or I'd win "Worst Dressed", but hey it does show I've achieved something on a grand scale!
- I'm very good at writing the first 10 pages of an epic fiction story--I like to keep readers hanging (or so I tell myself).
- I tell fantastic stories about vegetables and fruits being summarily slaughtered in the garden...scary, the stuff of nightmares, I tell you!
- I can play all the parts in an array of musicals debuting in a fiesta of singing late at night in my house--strangely this spontaneous singing does not follow alcohol consumption; I actually don't drink.
- I can sing an octave below middle C and two octaves above (although that last note is a bit squeaky and sounds like some Banshee crying of an impending death).
- I can read and speak Old English (not your Chaucer's English, but Beowulf) and I can translate Old Icelandic fairely well. I am super cool!!
- I can see dead people...mmwhahahahahaha