The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom by Shari Franke

What a brave young woman! She tells this story so beautifully and with such conviction. I could not put it down.

Her mother and the brainwasher of her mother were horrible. I hope these kids get good therapy and the rest of the family can heal after such a horrible ordeal. 

Here is the 20/20 Episode about what happened.

There is also a Hulu documentary called "Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke." Here is the trailer:

For Love of Country

I knew very little about but watched a long podcast interview that made me more curious about her life. I had never heard of this podcaster, but he was suggested to me by YouTube. So I watched the whole interview and was enlightened. She spoke of her book. So, I read it.

Here is the podcast:

The book was interesting. I don't want to make any political statements on this blog, but many people are bailing on the democrat party, and she was someone who ran for president on their ticket. So, I wanted to learn more about her switch, and I got an earful! 

The Invention of Nature (1000 Books to Read)

Wow! I loved this book. I learned about the "Father of Environmentalism"!  He was way ahead of his time - late 1700s, early 1800s!

I like to follow journeys in books. Wikipedia was helpful for this. 

I knew that there was a county and city in California named Humboldt, and they were named after him!

Quotes:

Nature, Humboldt realized, was a web of life and a global force. He was, a colleague later said, the first to understand that everything was interwoven as with ‘a thousand threads’. This new idea of nature was to change the way people understood the world.  (p. 87)

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

As Andrea Wulf makes clear in this marvelous biography, Alexander von Humboldt’s holistic view of nature “as a network of forces and interrelationships” played a significant role in advancing ecological thinking and thereby gave rise to modern conceptions of the environment. Detailing with verve and erudition Humboldt’s exploits as an explorer in far-flung corners of the world, Wulf also reveals the extraordinary extent of his reputation in his own lifetime. In his day (born in 1769, he died ninety years later), he was the most famous scientist in the world and an international celebrity. This long, rich, information-packed biography repays leisurely attention at the same time as it stimulates one’s thinking about fundamental issues. “Humboldt was not so much interested in finding new isolated facts but in connecting them,” Wulf writes. A reader can thankfully say the same of the author of this delightful book.

Back to ME (Carol Ann) - I am adding some popular highlights quite a while later (sorry about the narrow margin - I don't know how to fix it!) 

Humboldt gave us our concept of nature itself. The irony is that Humboldt’s views have become so self-evident that we have largely forgotten the man behind them. (p. 8). 

It was here, at Lake Valencia, that Humboldt developed his idea of human-induced climate change. (p. 57)

Timber was the oil of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and any shortages created similar anxieties about fuel, manufacturing and transport, as threats to oil production do today. (p. 58)

Nature, Humboldt realized, was a web of life and a global force. He was, a colleague later said, the first to understand that everything was interwoven as with ‘a thousand threads’. This new idea of nature was to change the way people understood the world.   (p. 87)

Humboldt was the first to relate colonialism to the devastation of the environment. (p. 105)

As long as there were scientists and artists, Haeckel believed, there was no need for priests and cathedrals.  (p. 314)

7 Days with Teilhard de Chardin: A Mystical Retreat Donald Goergen O.P. Ph.D.

I loved this! Such an edifying thing to listen to as I took late winter walks!

My favorite Teilhard quote from this recording is in the book Hymn of the Universe (p. 31):

[p.31]

Lord Jesus, now that beneath those world-forces you have become truly and physically everything for me, everything about me, I shall gather into a single prayer both my delight in what I have and my thirst for what I lack; and following the lead of your great servant I shall repeat those enflamed words in which, I firmly believe, the christianity of tomorrow will find its increasingly clear portrayal:

‘Lord, lock me up in the deepest depths of your heart; and then, holding me there, 

burn me, purify me, set me on fire, sublimate me, until I become utterly what 

you would have me be, through the utter annihilation of my ego.’