Blog – Top of JC’s Mind

Review: Into the Woods

When our daughters were children, one of their favorite videos to watch was the the Great Performance’s recording of the original Broadway cast of Into the Woods. For a while when T was very young, we only let her watch the first act, deeming the second act, which goes into the aftermath of “happily ever after,” too dark for her – until her four-year-older-and-wiser sister filled her in on the rest of the play and we let her watch the whole performance.  All of which gives you insights into the kind of family we are…

At any rate, long before the current spate of fractured fairy tale mash-ups, there was the brilliance of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical Into the Woods.  Besides uncounted viewings of the original Broadway cast, my daughters got to see the 2002 Broadway revival with Vanessa Williams, for which we also owned the CDs, for singing along on long car rides. We have also seen local productions, most recently at the CIder Mill.  So, I had high hopes and a few misgivings about the new movie version of our family favorite.

Fortunately, I enjoyed the movie very much. While there had to be some cuts to shorten the length from the original theatrical production, they were made very judiciously, with only a few song/dialogue cuts that we missed. We had to admit that, while we enjoy the reprise of the Princes’ “Agony,” it was better for the flow of the movie to have cut it, especially when the first act version of it is so charmingly (over)played as it is in the film.

There are a number of songs performed by an ensemble of characters and I thought that the filming of these, moving among the characters in their different settings was very effective, especially the opening version of “Into the Woods.”  I also thought it was a great choice to use the sung finale music over the first part of the credits.

My favorite performers were the three main female characters. Meryl Streep made a very convincing witch, aided by cinematic effects that let her appear and disappear in a swirl. Working for a camera instead of a large theater, she was able to show more subtlety than she would have been able to in a theater. Anna Kendrick made a wonderful CInderella. We especially liked that “On the Steps of the Palace” took place on the steps of the palace, rather than in the woods, giving her the chance to sing about her decision as it was happening, rather than reflecting on it later, as she does in the stage version.  Emily Blunt as the Baker’s Wife carries a lot of the heart and lesson-learning of the film. One hopes that this role, which won a Tony for Joanna Gleason in the original Broadway cast, will win some awards for Ms. Blunt.

The real star of the movie for me is Stephen Sondheim, whose clever and sophisticated lyrics and music make the whole production lively and touching, ably assisted by James Lapine, who wrote the book/screenplay. Because I know the show well, the clever lines were familiar to me. I was sitting next to someone in the theater who did not know the musical at all. It was fun listening to him react to the wordplay.

I’m hoping to be able to see the movie again while it is in the theaters and will definitely want to add it to my DVD collection when it becomes available. I hope other people will enjoy it as much as I did.

One-Liner Wednesday: Light

“There are two ways of spreading light:  to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.”
– Edith Wharton

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday:  http://lindaghill.com/2014/12/31/one-liner-wednesday-yolo/

Everything is awesome!

I have a confession to make.  I really like The Lego Movie!  I realize as a 50-something-year-old woman, I am not the demographic group that was targeted, but every time we saw a preview for it, B and I were always laughing, so we went to see it when it was in theaters and both enjoyed it.

I have been known to break into a chorus of “Everything Is Awesome” now and then.

I admit that I felt a bit sheepish being so drawn in by a (non-Pixar) children’s movie, but that was cured by reading Richard Corliss’s “Best of Culture 2014:  Movies” wrap up in the Dec.22/29 “Person of the Year” edition of Time magazine, which listed The Lego Movie third of the ten films mentioned.  That means I have some sense of taste/style, right?

In my haphazard approach to Christmas gifts this year, one thing I did manage to buy for our family was the DVD of The Lego Movie, which we watched this afternoon. And it still makes me laugh, which is great because this hasn’t been the jolliest holiday season ever.

We will probably watch some of the special features this evening. There is a sing-along version of “Everything Is Awesome!”  Singing such a bouncy, optimistic song can only help…

2015: The Year of Love | Global Sisters Report

2015: The Year of Love | Global Sisters Report.

I had to share this beautiful and insightful post from Sister Ilia Delio on the centrality of love in our lives and the universe. Although anchored in the Christian tradition, it can also be read from a philosophical viewpoint apart from any sense of divinity.

Along with Sister Ilia, I wish for 2015 to be a Year of Love.

My 2014 blog-year in review

The WordPress.com stats helper prepared a 2014 annual report for Top of JC’s Mind. Instead of a Sydney Opera House or Louvre comparison like larger blogs, I am a subway train level blog. 😉  I saw the reports for some of the larger blogs I follow first and fleetingly considered keeping my summary report private, but decided that I should share because I am proud of the progress I made as a blogger this year and proud that I managed to stay active through my first full calendar year here at WordPress, despite the topsy-turvy path life has taken.

I’m sending out a big thank you to Linda G. Hill at Life in Progress! Many of my views this year were due to participating in her One-Liner Wednesdays and Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. Everyone is invited to join in the fun! Just check her blog for links on Wednesdays and Fridays, when the prompt for SoCS is published.  I found new blogs to follow by participating and gained new followers for Top of JC’s Mind through it, too.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,600 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The most thoughtful Christmas present I have ever received.

Such a beautiful post on love, loss, friendship, and remembrance by Tric, who is a wonderful blogger from Ireland, that I felt I had to share it. I hope that all of us have at least one similarly thoughtful and compassionate friend in our lives.

tric's avatarMy thoughts on a page.

I’m sure some of you have contenders, but I think it will be difficult to beat the one I received last year. It was given to me by a friend of mine after a very difficult year.

The year had begun with young Daniel coming home from hospital just before Christmas. He had been diagnosed with leukemia aged twelve years. On St Stephens Day he asked to have his hair shaved off as it was shedding due to his leukemia. It never again grew back.

During the awful year that followed there were huge lows and a couple of small highs. I was in contact on a daily basis with Daniels mom. Looking back it would appear that we shared more bad news than good, as we spoke or texted each other. I was a person who preferred to cry alone, but so regular were my tears that my family…

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Defending Broome County

While it would seem that the impending fracking ban in NY would cut down on my incessant commenting on shale oil/gas issues, there has instead been a flurry of reports and editorials to answer, such as this one. Yes, I got carried away, but it really upsets me when people in other parts of the state misrepresent my home area. My (very long) comment to an editorial in the Syracuse Post-Standard:

I live in a Broome County town bordering PA and this editorial’s contention that we are looking forlornly across the border at prosperity in PA is dead wrong. Across the border in PA there is shale gas drilling going on, but a lot of negative impacts. Besides the health problems that have been documented in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, there are socioeconomic problems with high rents, increased crime rates, inability to insure, finance, or sell homes near wells, plummeting royalty payments, noise pollution, light pollution, increased rates of homelessness, increased truck traffic, accidents, liens placed on properties when drilling companies didn’t pay their subcontractors, and strains on medical and emergency services. People who wanted to live in a nice country setting are now in a noisy industrialized setting. I am grateful that these problems won’t be coming to my town.

Meanwhile, I think the editors should take a trip to Greater Binghamton and look around. It is not the poverty-stricken, despairing place you seem to think it is. Two of our biggest employment sectors are medical, anchored by Lourdes and two UHS hospitals, and education, anchored by BInghamton University and SUNY-Broome, with a new graduate school of pharmacy about to be built. We still have high tech jobs, though fewer than we once had, with IBM, Link flight simulation, and BAE, among others. Our most exciting new plans in high tech are in the the area of renewable energy/energy storage. Binghamton University’s Solar Lab has been conducting research for a number of years already and has developed a thin-film solar cell that uses only common elements without any rare earth elements. Two large projects are currently being built, a High-Tech incubator in downtown BInghamton and the SmartEnergy Center on the Vestal campus. The combination of these should expand our high-tech/energy sector in the future. Meanwhile, Broome County is a state leader in energy efficiency upgrades through NYSERDA Green Jobs, Green NY and in expansion of solar for homes and small businesses. The energy projects alone have created many times more jobs than shale drilling would have, without the pollution and industrialization of residential and rural areas that would have occurred with drilling.

And about the potential of shale drilling in NY. DEC had to weigh possible economic benefit versus potential costs of drilling to the state and to residents; it’s part of its job. The economic impact section of the draft SGEIS made a number of faulty assumptions, including that shale plays are uniformly productive, that large swaths of NYS would be viable to drill, and that the wells would produce for thirty years. Data from PA and other areas with shale drilling have shown that there are distinct sweet spots in shale plays that are high-producing, with the rest of the play being much less so. Most of the shale in NYS is too thin and too shallow to contain large amounts of methane and there are not natural gas liquids, which have a better economic profile than dry methane, at all. Shale wells of all kinds have very steep decline curves, with the vast majority of the gas being produced in the first 18 months and most of the rest in the following 3-6 years, much shorter than the 30-year timeframe the SGEIS assumed. The industry has done some test wells in various parts of the Marcellus and Utica in NY – and didn’t think it was worth applying for permits. The major companies in their own maps of the play never showed the potential drilling area going much over the NY border. Production numbers in PA bear this out; once you head north from the NEPA sweet spot, production goes way down. Because HVHF wells are so expensive to drill and frack, methane prices would have to more than double to break even in southern Broome County and the figures just get worse from there. It’s time to stop pretending that fracking – or casinos – are the future of the Southern Tier and get to work on building up renewable energy and conservation, while expanding on education, medical, high-tech, agriculture, next-gen transportation, recreation, and tourism jobs.

http://www.syracuse.com/…/new_yorks_hydrofracking_ban_drape…

Blogger evolution response

One of the first bloggers to follow me was Jason Cushman who blogs as Opinionated Man (OM) at HarsH ReaLiTy. He has put in tons of work to powerblog his way to over 50,000 followers and 1,000,000 views in less than two years. He is also very helpful to the blogging community and I’ve been honored to have been re-blogged by him on a few occasions. I’ve also found a number of blogs that I follow through visiting people who comment on his posts, which in turn led me to other blogs to follow. I follow OM by daily email, so I am generally at least a day late getting to his posts  This one:  http://aopinionatedman.com/2014/12/26/a-blogger-evolution/ on his evolution as a blogger made me think about my own history as a blogger. I wrote the comment below and decided I wanted to share his link and my comment here at Top of JC”s Mind.

“Thanks for the thoughtful post. I have been blogging even less time than you have, but see my own evolution, albeit with totally different scale and issues from yours. Fortunately, I am neither angry nor frustrated. I am overwhelmed, although that has to do more with the rest of my life than with my blog, which needs to stay small and intimate for the time being. Thanks to you, I know how to grow it when the time is right for me. I’m not sure when that will be, other than not anytime soon, due to my own choices of priorities. And, if that time never comes, I have already accomplished my most important blogging goal, which was to actually be able to write about varied topics on a consistent basis. That I have been able to reach some other people with my words is a bonus. I truly appreciate the small group of regular readers that I have.”
Joanne at Top of JC’s Mind

A Survey on Feminism

A survey on feminism from a blog I follow. Please join in if you are so inclined!

hessianwithteeth's avatarhessianwithteeth

I have decided to do a bit of a project. Please help me out by clicking the link below and filling out the survey. I promise it’s not that long:

http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=r4t8nurh0tyxvqt470762

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Fruitcake recipe

A college friend who reads my blog asked if I’d share our fruitcake recipe, so here it is. Enjoy!

1 16-ounce package (3 cups) pitted prunes, aka dried plums
1 8-ounce package (1 1/2 cups) dried apricots
1 15-ounce package (3 cups) raisins (we usually use golden raisins)
1 8-ounce package (1 1/3 cups) chopped pitted dates
16 ounces additional dried fruits – we usually use cherries and pineapple and additional apricots
1/2 cup apple juice or other clear juice
2 cups packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
6 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground allspice
2 large ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups pecan or walnut halves

Cut prunes and apricots into quarters. (If any of the other dried fruits are in large pieces, you may want to cut them, too.) In a large bowl, combine all the dried fruits. Pour the juice over them. Cover and let stand overnight.

In large mixer bowl, cream brown sugar and butter until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time; beat well after each. Stir together flour, salt, and spices. Add flour mixture alternately with banana to butter mixture. Stir in nuts and fruit mixture. Divide the 15 cups of batter into any of the following very well-greased loaf pans:
9x5x3-inch – 4 cups of batter – 3 hours baking time
7 1/2×3 1/2×2-inch – 3 cups of batter – 2 hours baking time
4 1/2×2 1/2×1 1/2-inch – 2 cups of batter – 2 hours baking time

Bake in 250 degree F. oven for time indicted or until golden. (You can check with a toothpick if you can find a bit that has enough cake to test.) Cool in pans 10 minutes; remove from pans. Cool on wire rack. Wrap and store in refrigerator. It will store nicely for several weeks in the refrigerator, but also freezes well for longer term storage.