My Earliest Memory

One of my earliest memories was when my family went to my aunt's house, for my cousin's high school graduation.  I was around five years old at the time.  While we were visiting, my aunt decided to take my mom and me to visit her friend who owned an ostrich farm. Yes you read that right an OSTRICH FARM.  So the lady showed us all of the ostriches which were kept in this huge enclosure in the yard.  Compared to a five year old, ostriches are huge scary birds, but luckily there was baby ostriches which were a little bit closer to my height.  There was one baby ostrich which stayed near the fence where we were standing, and the lady was telling us how he was sick and would probably die.  I decided right there that I was going to adopt the ostrich and nurse it back to health.  Then together my ostrich and I would reenact the scene in The Lion King, where baby Simba rides the ostrich while all the animals are singing.  However, then the larger ostriches got spooked by something and decided to stampede and terrify me to death.  Imagine about 20 ostriches running past you with only a fence separating you.  On the plus side after I freaked out, my aunt gave me a small bag of Cheetos to calm me down, because I was scaring her. That was the end of my dreams of having my own pet ostrich, and I credit it to being the source of my completely ration fear of birds, because we all know Hitchcock was right.

This is an ostrich in case you missed 'Birds of Death Day' in second grade.

Dream

This is a dream that I experienced a few nights ago.  I was in Missoula and I was walking along this long winding sidewalk with large fields of grass on both sides.  It is an unspoken rule between me and the other people on the sidewalk, not to walk on the grass.   In the distance I could see my father sitting on a park bench in front of tennis courts waiting for me. But the sidewalk is crowded who are all walking at different speeds, making it difficult to move at a brisk pace.  I know that I have to hurry or my father will leave, so I start running weaving in between the people and stopping occasionally when the crowd is too thick.  However, no matter how much progress I make the sidewalk just grows longer and longer, and with it my father moves further and further away.

Class Notes Jan. 9th - Jan. 14th

January 9th - Introduction to Class
Terms

• mythos - Greek - story
• myth - the precedent behind all actions
• what comes before a story
• stories before the story
• original - go back to the origins
• logos - the word
• mythology  
• mytho/logy - combination of mythos and logos
• truth and story, truth of stories, truth about stories
• in ilo tempore - in great time 

January 11th 

• sparagmos - tear, pull to pieces, the act of tearing or mangling

Introduction to From Primitives to Zen by Mircea Eliade 

http://www.mircea-eliade.com/from-primitives-to-zen/ 

January 14th

• Call to adventure - first stage in the hero's journey 
• Bacchus - God of wine and merriment 
• monomyth - the hero's journey 

All fairy tales are generative or diluted myths.

The importance of women in myths. A woman is behind every hero. They are the primary forces in stories.

Name Origins

Several other people are writing about the origins of their names, and I thought that I would do the same so here I go.
My first name is Patricia, which is derived from the Latin word patricius.  This term was used in ancient Rome to refer elite noble families, over time the meaning grew to include high council officials, and then it became an honorary title.  During the medieval ages, the English translation, patrician, was a term used to describe members of the bourgeois and aristocratic classes. The given name Patricia didn't become popular until it was used for one of Queen Victoria's granddaughters.  However today it seems to have lost some of its popularity, as I have only met one other girl born after the seventies with the first name Patricia.
My last name is Morse, which according to my father originated on the Scottish-English border around late 1500s.  Now the details have been lost to history but one of the more popular stories is that a wealthy man of German decent moved to the area. The man's last name is unknown but it is believed to have been pronounced similar to Moo (yes like a cow). He then changed his last name to Morse.  The Morse family came to the New World around the time of Jamestown, because they were kicked out of England for poaching on the King's land.