Okay, I’m so geeked out with joy that I can hardly contain myself. This is a nerd thing…but it’s my literary hero-crush, George Orwell. They are putting his diaries up online starting TODAY!!!!! The diaries began on Aug. 9, 1938.
http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com
Seventy years ago today Orwell caught a snake in his yard. Today I caught tadpoles in the Ogeechee River. There is little that connects us, but the ability to see how he lived his days is such a wonderful opportunity. I have no objectivity when it comes to this man. I just love him.

When people tell me they’ve read 1984 or Animal Farm, I can’t shut up…I end up rattling on about Homage to Catalonia (my favorite) or Down and Out in Paris and London, or his many, many essays. Sigh. What I most admire about him is his thoughtfulness, his ability to re-see his own positions, to interrogate his politics. And his sweet melancholy mixed with a dogged desire to keep seeing and creating relevant beauty in the face of the 20th Century and the horror it brought.