Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Friday, January 1. 2010

Orwell du Jour

His wonderful 1936 essay, Shooting an Elephant. One quote:



I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly.

Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:52 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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"value of his tusks"

How Africa has changed. Ivory was cheap in colonial times. Not now.
#1 tehag on 2010-01-03 07:32 (Reply)
In the past month I have been re-reading Orwell's works in chronological order and they stand up incredibly well after all these years.

They are very humorous and relate very well to the human condition today and which is the way it always has been.

For sheer fun I would recommend "Coming Up For Air" but all his works have a humanity and conciseness that is just beautiful.
#2 James Commerford on 2010-01-03 20:48 (Reply)

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