WORKS TO READ ON THE BLOG SECTION OF THIS SITE

AUTHOR PAGE:  https://tinyurl.com/ntw5hfcd 

YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/@richardandkathleenrose9325 

Conversation platform: https://unsettling-things.com/

 A Recent Reading:   (This uses Google Drive.)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q9VBCQbmsQpVyxLVZwg3LZZB0wTjdekC?usp=sharing

STORY COLLECTIONS: Stories are often accompanied by poems.

FRAMESHIFTS, VOL. 1-2 (CreateSpace, 2011) Stories and poems that keep shifting scenes.

SHURA (children’s book in collaboration with Sushmita Mazumbar, Director Pause Art Studio Arlington, VA)

THE QUEEN AND THE CROCODILE (children’s book in collaboration with Sushmita Mazumbar. Please contact Sushmita directly at https://www.sushmitamazumdar.com/studio-pause to buy copies of these two handmade books.)

FORMS OF RESISTANCE (2022) Stories about brothers in love with the same woman, and other vexing conflicts

DEATH ON HIS HEELS IN RICHMOND (2022) More Frameshifts Stories, & Fellowship of the Attentive fables

ABERNATHY’S ADVENTURES IN BIRDWOOD (2024) Residents in a senior residence unsuccessfully try to downsize, rightsize and size up their new situations.

POETRY COLLECTIONS: Poems are often stories.

HOUSE OF A THOUSAND ROOMS: Anthology of Collected poems, 1965-2022 , including some librettos.

THE PROFIT OF DOOM (in FRAMESHIFTS) The Viroid Messenger & the Fellowship of the Attentive.

FINDING A PURCHASE (in FRAMESHIFTS) A librarian under house arrest & Lewis and Clark

COMING AROUND (Brandylane, 2018) Stories about travels between Louisiana and Richmond, 1815-present

PUSHBACK(Atmosphere, 2021) Stories in response to various afflictions, microbial and political

NARRATIVE MUSIC: Recordings of some opera productions are on the YouTube channels. Contact the composer for copies of performance scores. Dates are for productions by Marginal Notes Ensemble, Scissortail Productions, Capitol Opera Richmond, and other performance ensembles. A compilation of this music, underway in 2025, will possibly be published on Amazon, to include music from Abernathy’s Adventures in Birdwood.

ANNUNCIATIONS (1969, 1980, 2009) Cantatas and Mass in meditation on the parable of the Samaritan

BOOKS OF DANIEL (1997, 2009) Opera about mergers & acquisitions, Babylon, farming, education, & love

AMBER (1999, 2018) Chamber Opera about a survivor of Bataan, and a military family’s macabre way of coping 

THE PEOPLE’S VOICE (2001) Opera about the ethnic cleansing of Tories during the Revolution

LA RINUNCIA (2009, 2016) Opera about becoming a monk, even though your loved one knows you’re mistaken

THE FISHER OF THE JAMES (2013) Song Cycle about Mashkinonge, a magical fish who grants foolish wishes

MONTE AND PINKY (2018) Chamber Opera about octogenarian roommates, once Employer and Washwoman

ESCAPE PLANS (written 2022, not yet produced) Jazz opera about a social worker trying to reform her hometown

NIGHTCAPS (2023), libretto by Brooke Vandervelde of Amherst, VA. Undergraduates discover the shameful past of their university.

OTHER WRITINGS AND WORKS:

BRANCHING UP AND DOWN (2023), A history of work and collaborations

RELIGIOUS HYGIENE FOR WILD MEN (2023), Sermons, essays, reviews, and blogs from frameshifts.com

BULLETINS FROM MASHKINONGE (2025), Warnings from a magical fish about the Human Project

   Retired Website:  https://frameshifts.com/ This website was active on WordPress from 2012 to 2024. Selected blogs were reprinted in Religious Hygiene for Wild Men (2023).

Research and Educational writings: includes Newsletters (QED to Science Teachers in Fauquier Countyand  Transforms to Science Teachers in Loudoun County), curriculum studies, educational research and articles, and research on oysters (Population genetics of Crassostrea virginica Gmelin, published in Estuaries). Many workshops have also been presented over the years, such as Healing Breaths, Upstaging Yourself, What good is poetry? and The Poetry of Wonder, on YouTube. 

Richard L. Rose is an author, poet and composer who works as a folk-writer on behalf of the human project of caring for and about each other and keeping our long human conversation going. Contact him at r.and.k.rose@gmail.com for readings, workshops, and performances. 

Forms of Resistance—a rationale for folk-writing

My life in short: Like the Pillsbury Doughboy—half-baked and easily pressured, but puffing up and hardening when heated. I had the required dosage of military life, took a long detour through religion, tried science but found I was suited for nineteenth century natural history, an obsolete profession; hung around schools for forty years—all the while tramping in the marshy world of folk-writing, a musicoliterary pursuit neither defined by an audience nor deductible on taxes. To carry on with this self-dedication to useless and impossible matters for 80 years, I have followed the practice of frameshifts, a set of maneuvers designed to shift frames of reference continually, thereby leaving things as unsettled as possible. The first work along these lines was Frameshifts, two volumes of stories and poems, published in 2011, and the foundation for subsequent works. The last is a kind of study-guide for the Human Project titled Bulletins from Mashkinonge and a Conversational platform: https://unsettling-things.com/

Forms of Resistance, a story collection, was published in 2022, but most of my writings and compositions have been forms of resistance, like PushBack, a poetry collection written during the pandemic. I had no agenda: the resistance came to me as a surprise as I worked on the questions I was trying to answer by embodying my admittedly limited understanding in words and music. Like whittling, this folk-writingover the last sixty years has simply taken a shape of its own. As a young person, always accepting what was given and taught, I did not know that resistance was silently forming around unanswered questions. Resistance formed as a youth leader handed out religious beliefs, as teachers presented their assessments of my ability, as parents recommended vocations, and as peers and others told me who was worthwhile, who were enemies, and how to align myself to the proper bottom-line. Apparently, a silent resistance was forming and coming into being even as I accepted everything given. I had very little to do with it. But when my turns came to choose a career, decide what to believe, and to make commitments, my hidden body (or antibody) of resistance appeared from nowhere and took control. 

Forms of resistance vary: some march, some write, some live courageously. I wrote about some of them in Coming Around (2018). For me, resistance was never a program or profession to follow; it was a dense, painful, and unavoidable obstacle. No telegenic moment; no inspiration: resistance began unpleasantly and ended as embarrassment. To resist meant saying words no one wanted to hear, or deciding against “seizing” certain opportunities, or even changing jobs. No background music ever surged to make these acts seem heroic. 

Minor forms of resistance were writing, composition, and performance. I worked for thirty years as a teacher and supervisor of science but also wrote poetry and fiction and composed and produced narrative music. My writing began with a set of poems and stories, Problems with Authority, which grew into Frameshifts. The musical narratives were composed in resistance to required beliefs (Annunciations,1969 and 2009, and La Rinuncia, 2016), to opportunism in education and business (The Books of Daniel, 1997), to willfully ignoring the industrial impact on our habitat (The Fisher of the James, 2012), to ethnic cleansing (The People’s Voice, 2001), to warfare and militarism (Amber, 1999 and 2018) and to racism (Monte & Pinky, 2018, Escape Plans, 2023, and Nightcaps, 2023, with libretto by Brooke Vandervelde). 

Resistance invariably appeared when I realized that I couldn’t accept or go along with something. Action was required. The form of the resistance was the action. Perhaps it’s strange to speak even of poems, stories, and songs as actions, but I have often noticed that the arts can accomplish more than a committee with an action plan. By the way, I call my work folk-writingbecause I do it to please myself and to give to anyone who is interested—not to become rich or an influencer: Goals Achieved, Check! Peace to you, Richard L. Rose, Henrico, VA

NOTE: AT DISTRIBUTION EVENTS, YOU MAY RECEIVE A BOOK DONATION FROM RICHARD ROSE ON BEHALF OF THE HUMAN PROJECT OF CARING FOR AND ABOUT EACH OTHER AND KEEPING THE LONG CONVERSATION GOING. IF YOU WISH TO RECIPROCATE, PLEASE DONATE TO A CHARITY THAT SUPPORTS THIS PROJECT.