Kermit is that you? (31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 1 Year 3)

Rain, frogs, snails and a kitten.

Welcome to day one of the third annual 31 Days of Halloween Kitties. This feature is running alongside something that I am doing for the Ultimate Blog Challenge (31 Days of Halloween Poems).

For those who do not know, the Ultimate Blog Challenge is an attempt by bloggers to improve their blogs, traffic and all, by writing 31 blog posts in a single month. Personally, having done partial attempts of the UBC in the past, I have discovered that the traffic boost is just temporary...at least, for me that is.

(Sometimes, I think that the only people who really benefit at all are the organizers of the UBC--but I could be wrong considering that I have only done partial attempts. There is a long story that goes along with my last try--and it is really boring unless you are a business person.)

As for the 31 Days of Halloween Kitties, it is something that I started doing three years ago during my last year at university while I was finishing off my bachelor degrees. The fall semester was the finish of my bachelors in literary studies (I finished off my bachelors in history during the spring semester). It was a quick and fun way to post blog entries without having to think deeply about anything beyond my final paper. Besides, everyone loves cute cats dressed in costumes, right?

Ok, maybe the cats don't like the costumes. I am not sure about the feelings of the kitten in today's picture--it seems undecided whether or not, it is wrong to dress a cat up as a frog. Well, at least it is not out in the rain.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

As many of my regular readers know, I am working on getting my Bachelors in History (as well as a Bachelors in Literature). This semester, I am doing my Senior Seminar (capstone) for history. Yes, I am one of those evil people who is trained as a historian (and have enourgh experience with journalism and oral story telling to be leery of the oral tradition), and therefore have no place studying the history of Golden Dawn and the other esoteric Orders. It is a good thing that I am more interested in studying other branches of history, isn't it?

For my Senior Seminar paper, I am working with the papers of Denver Mayor William McNichols that are part of the Denver Public Library's Western History collection. I am focused on Civil Defense. Therefore I am reading a lot of government memos and letters.

One of the things that I have learned going though the McNichols papers is that a lot of letters supposely written by the Denver Mayor were not created by him; they merely bear his signature. Last night, I was reading a reply to a letter sent from one of the many cities who were interested in getting a copy of the "Denver Plan." (Denver's Civil Defense over time became more focued on dealing with all types of emergencies, not just nuclear strikes---riots, extreme weather, airplane crashes, etc.) And in the course of the request, the person requesting the information (to be used as a "model example" of an emergency plan) told the Mayor how proud the city and county of Denver should be to have Colonel Allen as Director of the local Civil Defense. The person preparing the Mayor's reply (writing as if he was Mayor McNichols) said that he would be sure to pass the compliment onto Colonel Allen.

The punchline is that the person preparing the draft copy was Colonel Allen himself.

And what does this have to do with Golden Dawn? Absolutely nothing...unless you are like me and wonder how often a reply from a Secret Chief is actually written by someone else. As I said, being actually trained as a historian makes me unsuitable to study the history of Golden Dawn and other esoteric Orders.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 8

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

This picture of Colleen Wells' cats dressed as Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West comes from a Wizard of Oz costume page. I just had to include it in the 31 Days of Halloween Kitties; after all, we are celebrating cats in halloween costumes...and the fact that this semester (a pure literature semester) is kicking my a**. One of the books I had to read in the senior seminar class (Children/Adolescent Literature for Adults) *drumroll* was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz---a book that I might be writing a fifteen to twenty-five page research paper on.

Bad Student I am

Yesterday, while sitting on the Light Rail, coming back from a final, I found myself thinking about how I am just a bad student compared to other people I know. Talking to my classmates, I realized that I spent much less time studying for the final exam than many of my classmates did. I also did not finish the final as quickly as some of them did either.

Not that I am worried about passing the class---if I get a decent grade on the final, then I will pass the class. The final exam I am most worried about is not until Thursday night. And I am not too terribly worried about that one either.

I guess part of the reason for my bad study habits is the simple fact that I believe that being able to get some sleep is more important than cramming more facts into my head.

Awhile back, I ran across someone blogging about how they were cramming for a Grade exam in one of the branches of the Golden Dawn. And honestly, I could not imagine being allowed to cram for an advancement exam.

Ok, for the record, I have never belonged to a branch that places a whole lot of emphasis on the material of the Knowledge Lectures. Why? Did I mention that I am a bad student? And yes, if you are a bad student with a distinct lack of willpower to memorize every comma in the Knowledge Lectures, there is a Order for you. If I can find them, so can you.

After all, not all of us are Harvard material...or Yale...or whatever is the punchline. See, I can't even learn a joke properly. Which is why I am community college material.

Don't ask me how I got into the University of Colorado at Denver. I still haven't figured that one out. Nor can I explain how I convinced my current advanced Adept advisor to help me. Maybe, my personality is a lot more pleasant than I think it is.

I am wary of cramming for any exam. But especially Golden Dawn exams. Hasn't research proven that information crammed leaks out of your brain as soon as the exam book is closed? I think I might want to know a few facts in case I wander off into the astral and met something that I don't like.

And my sponsor never gave me a chance to cram. Exams were spur of the moment affairs. It was felt that you either could pass the test on a two-second notice or you didn't pass. Not that they ever tested for the full set...but then again, you had to be able to do the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram from memory without people rolling in the aisles. (And other rituals in later exams.)

I would like to think that ritual skill is more important than being able to score 90% or more on the Knowledge Lectures. But what do I know---I gone to a community college, both academically and symbolically. I am a bad student and correspondence schools have always bored me. At least, I am aware of this---I know many people who do not have a clue that they are bad students. Yay for me and my slim supply of self-knowledge.

OMG! I know some Biblical history

Well, today is the second day of school which is a lot more fun than justifying my book reviewing methods for the umpteeth time.

(By the way, I am not sure I feel like justifying my book reviews to someone who can not spell my name right. It is NOT Morgan Drake Epstein; it is Morgan Drake Eckstein. It is a subtle difference. My last name means "cornerstone"; I have no idea what Epstein means. All I know is that none of my work shows up on a goggle of Morgan Drake Epstein.

(As for my posting book reviews on Associated Content and having Adsense on my blog, I happen to be a freelance writer. I realize that the world view of occultists says that writers should give all their copyrights away, and never make a dime, for the good of humanity. But I believe that the divine wants me to have a roof over my head...and considering writing and annoying people are the only two skills I have...well, you get the picture.

(Furthermore, going back and changing a book review when my opinion of the book has not changed...I am sorry...are you trying to control the free press? By the way, research by book publishers has always indicated that bad book reviews do not hurt book sales. The key to book sales is "buzz"; even a bad book review is helpful.

(And there is a long list of writers who think I reviewed their work wrongly...get in line. Nobody is getting a rewrite; your personal opinion of my motives are no more important than my friendship with the other writers that I have trashed.

(I am not sure if any of that was helpful, but I wanted to get it off my chest. Now back to the regular scheduled blog post.)

So this semester, my third at the University of Colorado at Denver, I am taking:

Chemistry for the Consumer
Colorado History
Gothic Literature
and The Bible as Literature.

It was during The Bible as Literature class that I realized that I am not a normal student. And not just in the nontraditional sense (remember I became a freelance writer and a college student because of unemployment).

Now, I am taking the Bible class because I am not terribly familar with the Bible. Occasionally, I can spot a Biblical reference when I run across it; but most of the time, I will have no clue where it is from. Not good if you are a Literature major, or a ceremonial magician for that matter.

As a kid, my background in the Bible was the Big Little Book of Bible Stories. My parents did not agree on religion, so I was raised with none with the exceptation of the forementioned book. The little bit of religous training I got was from my aunt: a Garderian witch. I did some exploring and browsing of various religions in my twenties before coming back to Wicca, though I adopted a different flavor to call my own.

In the nineties, I found myself in Golden Dawn, which for some reason does not seem to be the same branch or culture as some other people experienced (could it be that they told the hierarchy where to go for a reason?); this is where I picked up my initial Kabbalah training.

(I was also influenced by Modern Magick, which despite being published by a certain book company, was actually a working textbook, as in it was attempting to teach practical magic.)

And as everyone who studies Kabbalah eventually learns, it is rooted in the Bible. Which is how the son of a Catholic went back studying the lore of his ancestors who decided to become Catholic to avoid being burned at the stake for being Jewish.

(I am not sure how they would feel about me being pelted for writing terrible book reviews...but I am not changing my opinion, thank you very much.)

Though the course of studying Kabbalah, I picked up some history of how the Bible came to be (I love history, hence my minor). That and I have tied some of the history classes I have taken to waht I already knew.

So I knew I had some knowledge about the history connected with the Bible.

What I did not realize was that my peers, my fellow class mates, had no knowledge of how the Bible came into being. We were doing the scaffold exercise (the professor borrowed the idea from Carl, who I had for Greek history two semesters ago). Basically you are given ten events in a random order that occur in the period of history you are about to study. You try to put them in order. (I did better with Bible history than I did with Greek history.)

These ten events became the scaffold (or in my case, a ladder) that you plug the rest of the dates into. It is the big picture, much like plugging things into the Tree of Life.

But I can not help worrying about my fellow college students. I presume that they are representive of their generation. No sense of history, no sense of literature. And most of them, informal poll, seem to be communication majors.

It is obivous that my bad book reviews are not the only thing that the world needs to worry about.

Fall schedule

Well, after putting it off for a couple of weeks (or is it months at this point?), I finally registered for Fall 2009 classes (University of Colorado at Denver). I am taking:

Chemistry for the Consumer
Bible as Literature
Gothic Literature
Colorado History

I thought about taking basic biology instead. But I never did take high school chemistry, and I already own a biology textbook. And the Chemistry for the Consumer class is a in-home lab using household chemicals; ok, maybe that is not a good idea.

Both the chemistry and Bible class are lower division classes (I have to take another science if I want to graduate). The other two are upper division classes. I registered too late to take the Critical Essay class, but I just do not feel like doing it this semester. Especially considering I am going to have to read the Bible, or at least parts of it.

My exposure to the Bible was the Big Little Book of Bible Stories as a kid (my wiccan aunt gave me more religious training than my parents did), and the occasional bit that I have read as a Golden Dawn based kabbalist. I do not recognize Bible quotes when I run across them in literature. Hopefully, the class will help me as a writer, literature student, history student, and kabbalist.

I am taking the Gothic Literature because I want to; same with the Colorado History class (though that one may be research for a work of fiction that I have kicked around occasionally).

But part of all, I have no morning classes. This is really going to help me get some writing done this coming semester. Now all I have to do is decide who I want to annoy with my writing this fall; you know that I am going to annoy someone; after all, I am ME!