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<title>LUMINATIONS</title><link>http://www.rachellerogers.com/index.html</link><description>a blog celebrating life from an enlightened perspective</description><dc:language>en</dc:language><dc:creator>writer@rachellerogers.com</dc:creator><dc:rights>Copyright 2011 Rachelle Rogers</dc:rights><dc:date>2013-02-17T13:47:07-05:00</dc:date><admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.realmacsoftware.com/" />
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<lastBuildDate>Sun, 01 May 2011 16:23:30 -0400</lastBuildDate><item><title>MY BLOG HAS MOVED&#x21;&#x21;</title><dc:creator>writer@rachellerogers.com</dc:creator><dc:subject>blog</dc:subject><dc:date>2013-02-17T13:47:07-05:00</dc:date><link>http://www.rachellerogers.com/blog/blog_files/6590beab16ce7fb40af5f851f8511b28-10.html#unique-entry-id-10</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.rachellerogers.com/blog/blog_files/6590beab16ce7fb40af5f851f8511b28-10.html#unique-entry-id-10</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[PLEASE GO HERE FOR MY NEW WORDPRESS BLOG.   SO SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.


Below are a few old posts from 2011.   Enjoy, then please visit the new LUMINATIONS blog for the latest entries.]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Learning To Like My Kindle</title><dc:creator>writer@rachellerogers.com</dc:creator><dc:subject>blog</dc:subject><dc:date>2011-07-25T17:22:18-04:00</dc:date><link>http://www.rachellerogers.com/blog/blog_files/0cac7a0165687ca2382599ff236bf5e4-9.html#unique-entry-id-9</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.rachellerogers.com/blog/blog_files/0cac7a0165687ca2382599ff236bf5e4-9.html#unique-entry-id-9</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I just bought a Kindle ebook reader, and I'm trying to reconcile my fascination with technology and my love and reverence for real books.    The right and left sides of my brain have been going at it since I opened the Amazon package last Friday.   I'm a person who aims for internal hemispherical balance.   I can both troubleshoot an ornery Mac or PC and daydream for hours.   Even though I'm pretty good at left brain thinking, in the things that matter, I live mostly by intuition and feeling.   Given a choice between the head and heart, I will always choose the heart.  


Yet, computer and other technology fascinates me.   How can little tiny circuit boards contain so much information?   How does someone design and create a software program as intricate, for example, as Photoshop CS5 with 3-D capability?   Or, an ebook reader such as the Kindle that weighs ounces and can hold 3500 books?   My right and left brain have been arguing all weekend. 

...Left Brain: "You're a writer.   You formatted both your novel, A Love Apart, and your short story collection POSSOONS for Kindle, and you want people to buy your ebooks, don't you?   How can you offer your work for sale in a venue of which you disapprove?" 


Right Brain: "Look at this thing.   It's hard and cold and gray. ...  So where's the binding and the book jacket and the feel of printed pages?   Where are the beautiful cover designs (The Children's Book by A.S. 

...interesting text fonts, and the interior layouts to admire?   Where is the heft of pages lying on my beside table, hand made leather bookmark inside, waiting to be carefully opened and turned each evening?"


Left Brain: "Like it or not, ebooks are already selling more than print books on places like Amazon. ...  As much as you may not want to face it, the world of literary publishing is not in good shape."  


Right Brain: "Will Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave. ...  And can you imagine reading Rumi or Hafiz on a Kindle? 

...It could have gone on indefinitely, but since the Kindle wasn't going away, I attempted to befriend it.   I cranked it up, read the basic guide, and went online to search the Kindle store.   I thought I'd look for a collection of stories, since that's what's been on my mind.   I came across Elizabeth Gilbert's collection, Pilgrims, which interested me, but found that I could actually buy the paperback for less than the ebook.   In order to get free shipping, however, I would have to add enough to make my order at least $25.   Even though it would have been so simple to just click the Buy button for the ebook and have it in front of me in 30 seconds, I couldn't do it.    Instead, I went to my public library account and put a hold on the printed copy.


Next, I thought I would download some of the classics, which Amazon offers for free. ...  I downloaded Austen's Pride and Prejudice, F.   Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned, Omar Khayam's Rubaiyat, short story collections by Chekov, de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Balzac...   You can see where this was heading.


By the time I took a break, I started to feel a little guilty. ...  I can't remember what I searched, but somehow I came across a book entitled, French Lessons: A Novel by Ellen Sussman.   Being interested in all things French, I clicked on it.   There was an endorsement by Ann Hood, who I knew from my summers at Wildacres Writers Workshop, and whose writing I greatly admire.   French Lessons sounded like an enjoyable summer read.   Yet I still couldn't get myself to actually click Buy. 

...It's Monday, and my Kindle is still sitting empty of any real purchases.   My left brain is being a smartass.   "Is this what you want people to be doing about your ebooks, huh?   Sitting around procrastinating, not clicking the Buy button?"


...I guess you've got a point.


...I'm on my Kindle.   It's Ellen Sussman's lucky day.   I've just navigated to the end of the sample chapter from French Lessons.   I've got my pointer over Buy Now. ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Writing Retreat&#x2c; Moths and POSSOONS</title><dc:creator>writer@rachellerogers.com</dc:creator><dc:subject>blog</dc:subject><dc:date>2011-07-10T08:27:27-04:00</dc:date><link>http://www.rachellerogers.com/blog/blog_files/66d5c5243c9aef1070c02b565809648e-8.html#unique-entry-id-8</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.rachellerogers.com/blog/blog_files/66d5c5243c9aef1070c02b565809648e-8.html#unique-entry-id-8</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I'm just back from a week at Wildacres Retreat, a magical place on top of Pompey's Knob in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Little Switzerland, NC.    I worked on a memoir I hope to complete by winter.    I saw friends I hadn't seen in years, and made new friends whose poetry and prose has already inspired me.   I ate too much, laughed a lot, took naps in the afternoon soothed by the sound of rain against the overhang beneath my window, and listened to friends make music at night.  


And there were the most incredible moths.    Some hanging out at the bottom of the stairs of the north lodge camouflaged by speckled carpet, one on the porch beside a row of rockers, another along the thin wooden edge of a table in the lobby (the feisty-looking little critter to the left).    Over a decade ago, I saw my first luna moth at Wildacres, although last week 


I was only able to glimpse one, late at night, flitting about under a rhododendron.    It looked very pale, almost white, and had part of one wing missing. 


            


I returned home to the news that my new book POSSOONS, a collection of short stories, is now available.   Click here.  


From the back cover:  


"The engaging stories in POSSOONS explore, with both quirky humor and poignancy, the ever-evolving landscapes of the heart.   Characters from twenty to sixty, male and female, gay and straight, substantial and ethereal navigate relationship, love, and loss&hellip;" 


Click on my home page for more details.   Also, I plan to post a podcast reading of one of the stories very soon, so please check back.


Happy Summer!
]]></content:encoded></item><item><title>Mr. Knightley versus Mr. Darcy lost</title><dc:creator>writer@rachellerogers.com</dc:creator><dc:subject>blog</dc:subject><dc:date>2011-06-05T16:58:11-04:00</dc:date><link>http://www.rachellerogers.com/blog/blog_files/122f29bab0ae2a26986b4ba35a1bd71a-6.html#unique-entry-id-6</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.rachellerogers.com/blog/blog_files/122f29bab0ae2a26986b4ba35a1bd71a-6.html#unique-entry-id-6</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[I was in the process of writing a little blog dissertation on Mr.   Knightley versus Mr.   Darcy &mdash; well, more precisely, Jeremy Northam as Mr.   Knightley versus Colin Firth as Mr.   Darcy &mdash; in the respective 1996 film and 1995 BBC "Masterpiece Theatre" versions of Jane Austen's Emma  and Pride and Prejudice, when I got sidetracked preparing a collection of short stories for publication.   Today, I looked for the file I'd been working on and found that it seems to have vanished.   I searched everywhere on my iMac, MacBook Air and flash drive.   It's nowhere to be seen.   Oh, for the old days before I got used to editing on computer and printed out all my rough drafts!


In this little essay, from what I can recall, I began with how I was an avid Austen enthusiast, and how re-watching Emma and Pride and Prejudice was just what I had needed to offset my mini-addiction to Ally McBeal on stream- ing Netflix.   I pointed out how Mr.   Knightley could be a man for our time &mdash; kind, sensitive, caring, intelligent, cheerful, truthful (especially to Emma), passionate, compassionate, financially comfortable, responsible, good with children and dotty old fathers, a clear communicator, respectful to all social classes.   It also didn't hurt to envision him inside Jeremy Northam's beautiful skin (Jane goes Hollywood). 


On the other hand, Mr.   Darcy, from the get 


go, leaves much to be desired.   He's power- 


fully wealthy, arrogant, depressive, sullen, incommunicative, prejudiced, brooding and down right rude.   (If he wasn't Colin Firth, 


there would hardly be anything to recommend him in any century.)   It turns out that, since of course this is Austen, appearances can be deceiving.   We eventually find out there's a generous and repentant heart beneath all that angst, and a true passion for Elizabeth. 


For me, however, there were subtle signs that made me suspect that Mr.   Darcy was not beyond his old patterns.    I only remember one scene in the entire film in which we see the best of him &mdash; when he unexpectedly comes home to Pemberley, his sumptuous family estate, and finds Elizabeth visiting the grounds with her aunt and uncle.   It's as if he's an altogether different man, full of passion, uncharacteristically smiling from ear to ear, making unhesitant, jovial conversation.   I don't think we ever see him this way again, not even on his wedding day.   If I were Elizabeth, I might have payed attention.    But it's the 18th century, where money matters, even to a woman determined to marry for love.


I had a lot more to say, planned to include some interesting information I found on line, and to bring everything to some kind of insightful conclusion.   But, alas&hellip; The moment is lost.   And the great cosmic disappearer-of-unfinished-writing didn't think any of this was a good idea.   Maybe s/he was right.
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