Yesterday for dinner, I sliced a tomato and some yellow squash and baked them on low for about 2 hours. Some account!

I just re-read George Orwell's book of essays about his betters. Kind of cruel to Dickens and W.B. Yeats, and R. Kipling (he thought Dickens seemed to be a Fascist, Kipling might have been, and Yeats definitely was). But Orwell wrote in the late 1930s-early '40s, when the British (and lots of American) self-styled intelligentsia were hoping that communism would triumph uber alles. (I would point out that this mentality also included Ronald Reagan, but that would involve juxtaposing that name somehow with the root word intelligent.) Of course, Orwell criticized communism, too. I wonder if he likes it where he is now.

He did point out that the instances of brutality in Kipling's stories didn't necessarily mean that K. approved of violence and anti-Semitism. But why didn't K. pause after every blow and deliver a sermon against it?

All of the above is unfair to Orwell. He was a brilliant writer, and he saw deeply into motives, attitudes and politics of different times. It just annoys me to see writers pigeonholed. Especially writers in whose works I have graciously ignored the bad and admired the good.