In the Time of the Butterflies - Julia Alvarez - Finished Reading 8/20/26
“Words repeated, distorted, words recreated by those who might bear them a grudge, words stitched to words until they are the winding sheet the family will be buried in when their bodies are found dumped in a ditch, their tongues cut off for speaking too much.“
“Once the goat was a bad memory in our past, that would be the real revolution we would have to fight: forgiving each other for what we had all let come to pass.“
I inhaled this book.
I read it during every free moment over the course of two days and it busted me out of my reading slump. I don't normally read historical fiction and I went into this totally blind. I loved every second of it.
It follows the lives of three sisters as they grow up under the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. I felt like I was a frog being boiled slowly alongside these girls, watching their country and their freedoms being taken away little by little over decades.
The sisters felt so real to me, and knowing their fate at the onset made everything feel much more tragic. It’s hard to imagine taking the same risks that they did, especially as a mother. Imagining their children growing up without them was so painful, and knowing their story was not entirely unique had me mourning for the lost lives of complete strangers.
Even after feeling a deep devastation from the realities portrayed in this novel, it leaves you feeling hopeful and inspired. It’s beautiful, and if you’re reading this, you should pick up the book.
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal - Joel Salatin - Finished Reading 6/8/26
“It’s not a conspiracy; but it is a fraternity of thought that does not recognize simple, humble, natural. It’s a fraternity that worships technology, power, and domination. In the process, the systems are inherently energy-intensive, high maintenance, and non-adaptable. The research never considered better options.“
“Even the rise of the petroleum industry was enabled by Prohibition. The religious right who created the Women’s Temperance Union and eventually outlawed alcohol for a decade destroyed the imbedded, indigenous, farm-based, decentralized fuel system. The Model T Ford had a switch on the dashboard for gasoline or alcohol because many farmers and communities had their own alcohol fuel system. But Prohibition put the government in charge of alcohol and the historic, imbedded fuel generation infrastructure quickly vanished under criminalization. A tragic loss."
I never really considered the role the USDA had in keeping small farms at a disadvantage, but Salatin really opened my eyes to the idea that not every regulation is about food safety. Sometimes it’s about ensuring the food producers of today are the same food producers of tomorrow.
Large food producers shouldn’t be pressuring the state to increase regulations on the small farms to ensure they’re not eating up any of their profit margins. Imposing requirements like number of asphalt parking spaces, lockers, handicap ramps, etc on family owned farms is nonsensical.
Food should be produced as locally as possible. Until we work to decentralize food production, and take the production back into our own communities, I don’t see the issue improving. Before that process could even start, we would have to push for legislation to ensure people can buy any food items they want from their community farms, neighbors, whoever – even if it meant signing an acknowledgement of risks before the sale as a compromise.
People should be free to produce, purchase, and consume food freely, without government oversight, and assess any inherent risk themselves.
Caesar’s Messiah - Joseph Atwill - Finished Reading 5/31/26
“For a master of slaves, Stoicism seems the ideal philosophy because it advocates acceptance of ‘what kind of man god ordered you to be and where as a man you are placed’.” (p. 347)
“Josephus describes the Jewish rebels as slaves and scum. Christianity was developed to compete with militaristic Judaism for the faith of these people, to prevent the militant brand of messianic Judaism from spreading to them. It is clear, therefore, that the religion that was the basis of western morality was invented for the pacification of slaves.” (p. 351)
I’ll be the first to admit that I am pretty ignorant about history, religious histories especially, and this book was an interesting dive into exploring some of my questions. For example, I grew up hearing that Jewish people “hated” Jesus, but nobody could explain to me *why*. After reading this I can understand why the people of Judea were waiting on a militaristic leader to lead them out of turmoil, into a land of milk and honey, and why Jesus was the antithesis to that leader.
“Give to Caesar what is Caesars” is a pretty bleak message to deliver to people in famine, especially when the deprivation was brought on by the Roman army surrounding the walls of your city. They weren’t letting anyone out (but they sure did let people come in for Passover, only to trap them inside).
The book explores The New Testament as literature, and for anyone disinclined to read about religion, I would still recommend giving Caesar’s Messiah a read. I think Atwill makes a strong case for The New Testament being a political document created by Rome to suppress and neutralize the will of the people of Judea. After reading this, it’s hard for me to see The New Testament in any other light.
I find myself, yet again, thinking about how dangerous it is to lend your mind to religious thinking. In this case, the religious beliefs of the Jewish people were satirized and fed back to those who converted, willingly or unwillingly, to Christianity. Religion as a form of control is old news, but these themes are still affecting geopolitics in the region today, some 2000 years later. If god is dead, his ghost is still haunting us.