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). She is a religious naturalist (atheist), which centrally emphasizes the natural world and scientific processes as spiritually revealing and meaningful, with shamanic and womancentric thealogical tendencies. 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, Ethics & Professional Practice for Neopagan Clergy, and Goddess Wheel of the Year are currently available for purchase at major retailers. At this time, she has completed post-graduate work in Buddhism and Religious Philosophy and is working on completing the final text in her Neopagan theology series. She is additionally busy at work on her critical text on the New Testament, a comprehensive introduction to theology/thealogy textbook, and a text on rape in religion and myth. She is the founder of Ocean Seminary College, a tuition-free interfaith and ecologically-centered graduate seminary. She is also the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Restoration Earth. She is a co-founder of the Ecopsychology Work Group an interdisciplinary association of scholars researching the dynamics of the human relationship to the non-human world and the ensuing environmental crisis. She currently serves on the board of the Institute for Thealogy and Deasophy and is co-editing a text on thealogical theory and praxis with Angela Hope of St. Mary's University.
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's 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. She recently completed a critical review of the text Integral Ecology for the journal The Trumpeter published June 2010, as well as a piece on shamanism for the Rhine Institute's newsletter. She is additionally contributing to the journal Anthropology of Consciousness and working as a peer reviwer. 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 and her second volume of poetry, Vestiges & Bones was recently released.
In 2000, Kate began to develop diverse medical issues and in 2005 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, seizures, and progressive muscular failures. At present, doctors do not know what is causing the issue. Unperturbed, Kate continues to live juicily and can 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 and two wacky percula clownfish and two voracious predators: red-eared slider turtles named Cece and Rojo). To learn more about her struggle with her failing health follow her on her blog "Chasing Zebras".
Curious Talents & Factoids
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 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--are you spooked?.
- 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'm would rather buy a book (and now something fishy), than food or clothing (the latter of course has contributed to my achievement in "worse dressed"
- and speaking of fishy things, I have a tendency to play in the water--even when sufficiently pruned. I think I must have been some kind of oceanic aquatic creature in another life or my fish genes are not quite as dormant as they should be (which must also be why I like salt)
- 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 wanted to be a marine biologist, but mathematics was out to get me as a child. Seriously, I could see it plotting in its code of if x=156, find y.... But the good news, after epic battle, I defeated it through the logic of statistics--but of course it was too late to take out yet another student loan for yet another degree. Damn you Math God!
- Amazon.com is my best friend
- I love dreaming. I can't wait to go to sleep so I can go off into the wild worlds of me-dom or sometimes I just swim in an ocean with whales and sharks (cue Jaws music here).
- I'm torn as to what I want to be in my next life: three-toed sloth or two-toed? You can see my dilemma.
- Yes, I admit it, I like Twilight. Although I am not sure I'd want a James-Deanesque vampire tied to me forever--I think I'd get utterly claustrophobic.
- I often go to the ocean and think about Pangea--and if you know what that is, then you should be my friend :0)
- I often spend hours staring into the bay around my house. So many things to see. I know, you may be thinking I need a life.
- I can see dead people...mmwhahahahahaha