![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Back from Vacation
Apr. 28th, 2003 04:22 pmThe seders long done, the taste of matzah supplanted by that of bread, the woods of suburban Atlanta repalced again by the buildings of home, the vacation has ended. I find myself relatively rested, despite half-hour walks to shul in Atlanta, and despite the general lack of privacy when staying with relatives and eating every meal with family for 11 days running.
Did a few cool things down south: saw a great show at the High Museum of Art; visited a butterfly conservatory; found "Buckaroo Banzai" for $4 in a Target in Atlanta; watched good chunks of the "Back to the Future" trilogy DVDs.
Spent the Altanta trip praying at a very large, somewhat odd shul, one which leans in its practices towards the right-wing, but which also works hard to be welcoming to Jes of all levels of observance. Given how large and diverse the congregation is, it must be working, but I have to say that I missed my own shul a good deal. Outreach shuls are very important, but their very nature forces their rabbis to steer away from the kind of intellectual exploration of Jewish law and lore than I love. I wonder if some members of this shul have "graduated" to other shuls after a while, or if the love my Atlanta family feels for the shul there is common enough to guide others to seek the intellectual rigor elsewhere but come home for Shabbos.
Did some reading. Liked but didn't love Richard Stark's "Flashfire" - good Stark/Westlake, but not particularly suspenseful. Still working on "Lae Wobegone Days" - really quite a clever book, but as slow reading as you might expect a work about Minnesota Norwegians to be.
Enjoyed the eleven vintage Spider-Man stories included in a new trade paperback reprint turning the clock back to the beginning. These are not great works of art, but it's interesting to see the difference between the perfect worlds that DC's 1962 heroes lived in, and the somewhat rougher and more skeptical world Spidey occupied. There is a sense that Stan Lee actually read the newspapers and actually paid attention to the real New York in scripting these stories. It's also interesting to see what Brian Michael Bendis borrowed from these tales, and what he chucked, in his recent "Ultimate Spider-Man" re-working of the character. for everything that Bendis altered, he still got at the spirit of what made Spidey tick way back when.
Now I'm back at work, and goofing off after catching up to a degree. So I will end this entry for now. Glad to be back, and back online. (OK, I did have net access in Atlanta, but it's not the same as the truly creative writing you can only do at the office.)
Did a few cool things down south: saw a great show at the High Museum of Art; visited a butterfly conservatory; found "Buckaroo Banzai" for $4 in a Target in Atlanta; watched good chunks of the "Back to the Future" trilogy DVDs.
Spent the Altanta trip praying at a very large, somewhat odd shul, one which leans in its practices towards the right-wing, but which also works hard to be welcoming to Jes of all levels of observance. Given how large and diverse the congregation is, it must be working, but I have to say that I missed my own shul a good deal. Outreach shuls are very important, but their very nature forces their rabbis to steer away from the kind of intellectual exploration of Jewish law and lore than I love. I wonder if some members of this shul have "graduated" to other shuls after a while, or if the love my Atlanta family feels for the shul there is common enough to guide others to seek the intellectual rigor elsewhere but come home for Shabbos.
Did some reading. Liked but didn't love Richard Stark's "Flashfire" - good Stark/Westlake, but not particularly suspenseful. Still working on "Lae Wobegone Days" - really quite a clever book, but as slow reading as you might expect a work about Minnesota Norwegians to be.
Enjoyed the eleven vintage Spider-Man stories included in a new trade paperback reprint turning the clock back to the beginning. These are not great works of art, but it's interesting to see the difference between the perfect worlds that DC's 1962 heroes lived in, and the somewhat rougher and more skeptical world Spidey occupied. There is a sense that Stan Lee actually read the newspapers and actually paid attention to the real New York in scripting these stories. It's also interesting to see what Brian Michael Bendis borrowed from these tales, and what he chucked, in his recent "Ultimate Spider-Man" re-working of the character. for everything that Bendis altered, he still got at the spirit of what made Spidey tick way back when.
Now I'm back at work, and goofing off after catching up to a degree. So I will end this entry for now. Glad to be back, and back online. (OK, I did have net access in Atlanta, but it's not the same as the truly creative writing you can only do at the office.)
