Author: laura bruno lilly (Page 31 of 40)

Happy National Coffee Day (snafu)

September 29, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

one tree equals one pound coffee

Today was National Coffee Day. Need I say more? Well, yes, maybe. Fully intending on taking advantage of such an excuse to abuse my coffee drinking rights, I brewed a luscious pot of Sumatra with crushed cardamom seeds. Savoring each sip (gulp?) between bites of leftover homemade cannoli from a dinner made for hubby’s cubie and wife last Friday, I was in bean-heaven. The pot emptied sooner than later, so I unplugged it and pondered just when to start up a new brew.
Meanwhile, that half cup of java left in my cup got stone cold.
“Aha! I will be discreet and only micro-zap the remains of that last drop of coffee. No need to brew up a whole second pot of coffee in honor of the day.”
Placing the cup inside the microwave, I zapped it. Not the best of flavor, but a great healthful compromise to imbibing on another full pot of the stuff.
“Ah, well, not the tastiest, but here’s to the Day!”
I was quite proud of myself for sacrificing flavor in the name of restraint.
When I picked up the cup to pour out its remaining contents, I noticed an oddly shaped black bumpy thing on the bottom. Upon closer inspection, it was the waterlogged body of a pesky fly that had been dominating our kitchen environment for the past few days.
Oh, geez…I drank stewed sumatra fly-juice…

Happy National Coffee Day!

Note: If you’d like to see my favorite previously pubbed coffee posts, click here, and here. Or, just scroll down and read them as limited time sticky-noted posts.

Three Novels: Giving Them a Second Chance (with Quotes)

September 15, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

Have you ever picked up a best-selling novel or classic titled tome, started to read and then realized, “Nope, don’t like this, even though I’m supposed to because it is a best-seller/classic/got rave reviews”? Continue reading

Camden Writers Group Workshop

September 12, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

Camden Writers* at ‘Books on Broad’ book launch

Here’s something one of my Camden Compadres wrote concerning the up-coming Writers Workshop our group is presenting September 26th. If you live near here or are in the area at that time, please consider joining us in this event. Thank you Jayne, for making passing on this information easy…just copy and paste and away we all go!

First One Word, Then Another

At least twice a month, something magical happens in Camden. That’s when the Camden Writers meet to critique one another’s work, share writing advice, and offer support. To say that I’ve learned a lot from this group is an understatement. Without them, I’d still be flagrantly using adverbs and overdoing what Mindy calls “Those Be Words.”

While we all enjoyed the social aspect of meeting with like-minded people, our group began to want something that would compel us to write and submit our work. We noticed that many of our entries centered on family, tradition, and the power of memory. Soon an idea was hatched to develop a communal document, and we published our first anthology, Serving Up Memory, in October 2014.

At one of the first meetings of 2015, one of our members suggested that we publish our collective work every other year and have a workshop in the intervening one. I could have hugged Ari Dickinson for that stroke of genius. Not only did it give all of us some breathing room, but it also provided an opportunity to tackle another project, one that would offer help, encouragement, and information to writers in South Carolina.

After months of planning, we have a date, a venue, and a splendid line up for our first Camden Writers’ Workshop. First One Word, Then Another will be held from 9:00 AM until 1:00 PM Saturday, September 26, 2015, on the downtown Camden campus of Central Carolina Technical College at 1125 Little Street. Late registration and a “mix and mingle” with light refreshments will take place at 8:30. Continue reading

Labor Day Goat Quote

September 6, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

Labor Day:
a public holiday or day of festivities held in honor of working people, in the US and Canada on the first Monday in September, in many other countries on May 1.

“I get up. I get milked. Then I hang out with my girlfriends. Who wouldn’t want this job?”

Happy Blogiversary: Two Years

August 30, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

An appropriate photo, wouldn’t you agree? What with this past year filled with kitty stories and increased updates on the musical aspects of my Swimming with Swans project…
Instead of offering an in depth accounting and review of the past year’s blogging like I did for my first blogiversary, I will merely touch upon a few points. Then proceed to list a few favorite posts from this past year.
One of the goals for this second year was to plunge ahead into more techie territory …didn’t happen.
Never figured out that clone site which means I never did update my WP template and plugins. Oh well.
But I do still see the need to freshen up my static pages and will try to do so here in year three. Especially as my Swimming with Swans project begins to emerge, this prep will be beneficial on many levels. Continue reading

From the Practice Stool: Mo Giolla Mear (an excerpt)

August 9, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

My hand scored copies alongside newly entered NOTION scored parts of Mo Giolla Mear

The other day I came off of the practice stool elated. It was one of those sessions where everything went right. The tone from my perfectly honed right hand nails emitted a luscious aural tapestry of sound while working through completed scores of my own creation or arrangement. Fluidity of movement in the left hand during execution of certain passages, coupled with the flow of interpretive playing all within acceptable tempos…this is my dance, this is my place, this is my praise to the Giver of Gifts.
I was particularly pleased to master specific measures in my classical guitar arrangement of the traditional Celtic piece, Mo Giolla Mear. Written during our between homes time, it is part of my Swimming with Swans: the music project.
Yes, there is an entire story behind the discovery of this piece of music and how it relates to our life on the road. It remains scattered in the bits and nits of my mind, journals and ‘little list’ e-mail updates jotted down at the time. For some reason the words do not come easily right now. The challenge remains for me to sit down, focus and craft a vignette to include in my Swimming with Swans: vignettes of our three year journey between homes manuscript.
However, while immersed in my music, that challenge is mercifully set aside. Continue reading

That Stash of Books Lining the Back of My Desk

August 2, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

As referenced in my last post, there exists an elite stash of books which grace the backside of my desk work surface. I thought I’d list them out in their order of appearance in three sections from left to right.

The first section

3 issues of Poets & Writers Magazine
Medieval Instrumental Dances by Timothy J. McGee
life is a verb by Patti Digh
Cassell’s Italian Dictionary
The Inextinguishable Symphony – A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany by Martin Goldsmith
Transformations poetry by John Reibetanz
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
Introducing Fractal Geometry
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
101 Great American Poems
Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande
Journal of a Novel by John Steinbeck
A Year in the World – Journeys of a Passionate Traveller by Frances Mayes
The Right to Write by Julia Cameron
Cruden’s Compact Concordance
Jesus Calling – Enjoying Peace in His Presence Continue reading

Potholders, Project Progress and The Sound of Paper

July 21, 2015 / laura bruno lilly

Surrounded by Introducing Fractal Geometry and May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude, Julia Cameron’s The Sound of Paper sits amongst an elite stash of books which grace the backside of my desk work surface. Picking it up, I opened its pages to where I last placed a 2004 Barnes & Noble bookmark and began reading.
Searching for words to cup a myriad of incoherent and vague thoughts swarming about my heat-wave induced spacey-brain, I came across practical encouragement in my current state of conundrum. That state of wild productivity amidst desperate isolation, struggling to finish projects that are taking on the shape of completion.

Oh – so – slow – ly.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say my ‘Mojo stopped Mojoing’ but I have come up wanting in the energy department of late. The constant drain of daily in-ing and out-ing in this humid triple digit heat has taken its toll. The term languid suggests more than a glamourous lady lounging alongside the pool with margarita in hand to weather the weather. It conjures up a wild-eyed mad-hatter creative, scurrying from instruments to computer to manuscript paper to WORD documents to notebooks to research to pacing to exercise machines to eating tons of watermelon to striving to keep cool to…ad infinitum.