lummi island wine tasting nov 28-29 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
We will be Open Friday and Saturday from 4-6 for wine tasting as usual for anyone so inclined. 🙂
As these shorter, darker, wetter, and gloomier November days keep reminding us, we are less than a month away from Winter Solstice, aka the annual Peak of Gloom, which we curiously celebrate as “Thanksgiving.” It’s a time for warm gatherings, good food with friends, and cozy fires.
This Week’s Wine Tasting
Chapoutier Belleruche Blanc ’23 France $14
Delicious blend of grenache blanc and roussanne; fragrant and perfumed with a light, grilled-lemon note over ripe melon, and a lingering palate of rich white peach.
Argento Malbec ’22 Argentina $13
From organically grown grapes; deep purple hue; inviting aromas of red berries and flowers, and flavors of plum and sweet blackberry; finishes with ripe, balanced tannins– way over-delivers for its modest price.
Jordanov Vranec ’20 Macedonia $18
Aromas of ripe berries with notes of clove, nutmeg and cardamom; full bodied with ripe dark fruit and hints of herbs and dark chocolate on the well-structured finish.
Economics of the Heart: Toward the New Republican Feudalism
courtesy lumenlearning.com
Supposedly Republicans know everything there is to know about wealth and money. They are famous for reducing every complex issue to its ‘bottom line,” i.e. how much profit does it make for them and their cronies in the top .01%?
Curiously, Republicans have thought this way for over a hundred years without learning anything about economics. In particular, they have managed ignore the central importance of the “circular flow” of resources, goods, and services among actual living human beings. The ONLY measure that counts is their profit. Ah, the allure of the feudal manor.
For example, among their many economic idiocies is the notion that “workers” should be paid the absolute minimum for their time and expertise, while management should be paid according to the sales somehow “generated” in their part of the organization.
As Marx observed, every worker adds value to production not only by their skills and expertise, but also by their spending, which generates income for other sellers, which allows them to acquire more resources, make more products and services, and yes, more profit. It is a false sort of “thrift” to suppose that paying workers less than the value they add is going to make the Big Pie any bigger, because everyone is part of the Circular Flow.
Over the past forty years the ownership of wealth in the United States has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of .01% of the population, who invest it in their next profiteering scheme, for which they earn for themselves even more net worth.
The net effect is that vast portions of the population are priced out of essential life-sustaining markets like food, clothing, and shelter. We see this very clearly in the recent deep cuts to school lunch subsidies, increases in homelessness, rising health care costs.
Even more idiotic are Project 2025 threats to cut social security payments to the millions of people who paid into it for decades. As Poirot might say, “No, no, no, mes amis, this reneging on a system that has delivered for Americans for nearly a hundred years is just plain stealing.
What all this constitutes is a giant step back into the Manor System of the feudal Middle Ages, wherein the feudal lords who owned everything hired serfs and villeins by allowing them to live in their manor fiefdoms in exchange for work. They weren’t slaves exactly, nor were they free to come and go as they pleased. Read more.
lummi island wine tasting nov 21-22 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
November sun!
rare glimpse of sunshine on
late November leaves… 🙂
This Week’s Wine Tasting
MAN Chenin Blanc ’22 South Africa $14
Free-run juice preserves a crisp, clean, natural character; light, bright flavors of quince, pear, and pineapple, palate of fresh stonefruit and apple, and a round, soothing mouthfeel.
MAN Vintners Pinotage ’22 South Africa $14
Aromas of dark coffee beans, red berries, nutmeg, and vanilla spice turning to dark berries and smoky plum; rustic yet silky and juicy, with smooth tannins, balanced acidity, and comforting intensity.
Wolftrap Red ’21 South Africa $14
Consistently appealing aromas and flavors of ripe plum, red currant, violets, Italian herbs and exotic spices; vibrant flavors of dark berries and spicy plum with hints of orange peel that linger on a juicy finish. (read more)
Lunetta Prosecco Italy $14
Pale straw color with greenish reflections, and fine perlage; fragrant, with enticing aromas of apple and peach; refreshing, dry, and harmonious, with crisp fruit flavors and a clean finish.
Economics of the Heart: America’s Closeout Sale
F-35 stealth fighter/bomber
When you think about it, it’s not all that surprising that the self-absorbed billionaires who have taken over the US government think of our entire country as just another profit center. From their point of view it makes no sense at all to squander resources keeping anyone alive who isn’t contributing at least as much value to the bottom line as it costs to hire them.
After all, this is the way feudalism worked for centuries. The powerful made the rules and the serfs did their bidding just to stay alive. Even so, every regional warlord had to maintain an army to protect his lands from neighboring kings and their armies, and the middle ages were filled with savagery and brutality. As the old story goes:
Get off this land. Whose land is it..?
It’s MY land. Where did you get it?
From my father. Where did he get it?
From his father. And where did HE get it…?
He fought for it. Well, then…I’ll fight YOU for it.
Over the last two thousand years human beings have tried out countless socioeconomic government structures before the United States became the first nation founded on the quaint principle that “all men are created equal,” designing an interdependent governmental structure specifically to keep government power under the will of the people.
For the last ten months our current “federal government” has been following the detailed blueprint of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 by systematically dismantling the Constitutional checks and balances that that have made this nation a global leader for 250 years. They are systematically replacing it with an authoritarian state that they seem to imagine: 1) will somehow survive as a fundamentalist White Christian oligarchy-against-women while systematically abandoning our traditional principles and the global leadership and respect they have engendered.
Seriously, make no mistake! This precise moment in history could well be our last chance to circle the wagons and fight back with everything we have left as a society. In particular, the recent meeting between the disintegating-before-our-very-eyes Tweetster and the gruelingly smarmy Saudi monarch represents the crossing of a roaring Rubicon that must be stopped immediately!!
The photo above is of the Lockheed-Martin F-35 stealth fighter/bomber, specifically designed to be electronically invisible. Btw, our military has not been using “airplanes” for a long time. On the contrary, every military aircraft represents a complex bundle of weapons, capabilities, and electronics generally referred to as a weapons system, with an extensive spec sheet of strategically important top secret capabilities.
Do not doubt for a moment that selling such cutting edge weapons systems to any other nation than long- trusted allies would instantly compromise all of those capabilities, negate their strategic advantages, and expose our country and its global interests to enemies across the world. For more on this topic, take a look at former VP Pence security advisor Olivia Troye’s assessment.
The recent unity shown by Congress in releasing the Epstein files suggests that Republicans might be crawling out of their 10-month hibernation and thinking, hmm, maybe things are not going quite the way they imagined. Meanwhile growing pushback about rising prices, together with increasing ICE domestic terrorism against Latino immigrants, has propelled a massive shift of Hispanic voters back to Democrats.
CALL FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION:
PLEASE call/write your members of Congress immediately and urge them to kibosh the sale of sophisticated weaponry like the F-35 to Saudi Arabia or any other countries with whom we do not hold long-standing, proven alliances.
lummi island wine tasting nov 14-15 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
click link for larger image!!
the view a gentleman sees from Mike & Diane’s privy…
This Week’s Wine Tasting
McManis Chardonnay ’23 CA $14
Lush and inviting with pure fruit flavors, voluptuous palate of peach, apricot, vibrant citrus, and melon and an easy, creamy texture with hints of vanilla and a smooth, lingering finish.
Phantom Red Blend ’20 WA $17
Petite Sirah/Zin blend delivers rich velvety palate of dark blackberry and boysenberry with peppery notes, balanced structure w/ tantalizing layers of baking spice and plush tannins…a consistent local favorite!
Marchetti Villa Bonomi Conero Riserva ’19 Italy $27
100% Sangiovese from Montepulciano, aged 16 mos. in barriques and 12 mos. in bottle; big, age-worthy wine with intense floral bouquet, nuanced flavors; ripe, pleasing tannins, and satisfying finish.
Lovo Fior d’Arancio Sparkling Moscato ’18 Italy $15
A rare clone of Moscato with an unmistakable citrus scent from nearby orange groves; a great holiday dessert wine with refined bubbles, beautiful, pearlescent color, and maybe a dessert all by itself!
Economics of the Heart: Fighting Back
This week we celebrate some shifts in the balance of power in the ongoing battle to save American Democracy. Today’s article in Salon by Heather Parton is particularly hopeful, documenting a number of encouraging political shifts over the last several weeks. In particular she traces a direct line of cause and effect between the most-recent-of-many Texas gerrymanders of its legislature to gain 5 more House seats in ’26 and a significant string of recent Maga setbacks around the country.
Interestingly, these pushbacks around the country began with the group exodus of Texas House Democrats’ out of the state (many to Illinois) to prevent a legislative quorum on yet another illegal Republican gerrymander. They received a warm welcome from Illinois Gov. Pritzger and “brought national attention to the Machiavellian tactics the GOP was employing to maintain its congressional majority in 2026. “That effort ignited a state-by-state battle that just may end up backfiring on the Republicans.”
The patently illegal actions of Texas Gov. Abbott and the subsequent publicity around the Texas House members’ unavailability set wheels of outrage in motion around the country and have already led to redistricting decisions in several swing states. Dave Wasserman, an electoral expert at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, noted on X that “between OH, KS, CA, VA and now this huge win in UT, Democrats have quietly strung together an impressive streak of victories over the past few weeks that have, surprisingly, pushed the mid-decade redistricting war closer to a draw.” See also: New Texas maps:
Party affiliations are in flux around the country. Many Hispanics who turned to Maga early on and now see immigrants like themselves being stripped of their rights, brutalized, deported, and worse by ICE, are turning back to Blue, and not likely to be switching back any time soon. That’s a substantial demographic block snubbed by Maga.
At the same time the millions of protesters who turned out for the No Kings March demonstrated national solidarity and commitment, and federal courts have been drawing firmer lines around the civil rights of both citizens and immigrants. Pressures are mounting to rein in the ongoing brutality and lack of accountability of ICE, and resistance is growing among veterans against the growing use of US military force against civilians, and the brutal bombings and murders of scores of unknown occupants of unidentified small vessels in international waters is in gross violation of international law and a dishonor to our country.
The rapidly emerging picture is that every day more people are waking up to the economic, environmental, and social disruption being caused by Project 2025’s brutal war on individual rights.
All this chaos is unfolding, of course, just as the mysterious Epstein files are being released. If they yield any actual facts we might find a few Republicans quietly start tiptoeing away from the Tweetster.
lummi island wine tasting nov 7-8 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
Ferry view of Mt Baker
This Week’s Wine Tasting
L’Amauve Le Rose d’Yvonne ’24 France $14
Pale salmon-pink; nose of red berry fruits and balsamic menthol notes and fresh, thirst-quenching, fruity attack flowing into zippy aromatics.
Pandemonium Cab ’21 California $24
From French Camp Vineyard high above Paso Robles; hot days and cold nights produce layers of jammy black fruit, spicy aromas of leather and licorice, chalky tannins, and a well-rounded finish.
Pollard Cab Franc ’20 Washington $40
Big wine with expressive nose of hibiscus and gooseberry; palate of dried strawberry and garrigue, well balanced tannic structure, and and long smooth finish.
Economics of the Heart: Alien Nation*
Alien Nation movie poster 1988*
The Big News this week is that finally the Maggit Movement is getting some serious – and growing- pushback from American voters. This week’s election has provided several concrete signs that lots of voters are fed up with the cruelty against immigrants, the looting by billionaires, the silent capitulation of Congressional Republicans, and the deployment of armed soldiers to the streets of Blue cities.
Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s bright, outspoken, and charismatic 34-yr old Mayor-elect, mobilized a huge (50 yr high) turnout of voters under the age of 45 and swept in with a landslide. Similarly, Democratic women handily won governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, three State Supreme Court seats remained with Democrats in Pennsylvania.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s referendum for California to turn five Republican districts Blue passed with a large majority after Texas Governor Greg Abbott illegally gerrymandered Texas voting districts yet again to give Republicans five more House seats in that state in the 2026 election.
Newsom’s plan was largely motivated by the White House deployment of National Guard troops to DC, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and has ignited a growing resistance to the over-reach of this Administration as other states are also taking creative approaches to defending their sovereignty.
The timing of the election also coincided perfectly with the growing economic downturn across our country. There seems to be no one in the Administration with even the most basic economic concepts as Maga has alienated us from our allies across the world, shamed us all with tens of thousands of armed, masked ICE agents breaking into homes, dragging people away and disappearing them with neither due process nor accountability of any kind.
Also, as recently pointed out by Paul Krugman, Hispanic voters who had shifted toward Maga during the Covid economic slowdown– and blaming Biden for it– are increasingly unhappy about the brutality of ICE agents against Hispanics seeking asylum in our country. That, he argues, together with the silence of Congressional Republicans and the horrific cruelty and complete lack of accountability of anything ICE does, has turned them forever against MAGA, and they won’t be coming back any time soon.
So, we begin to see signs of hope. The nationwide No Kings Rally drew millions of Americans to the streets in cities large and small. At the same time the increasingly unhinged Maggot cruelty against immigrants continues, apparently at the ongoing sadistic pleasure of Chief Blue Meanie Steven Miller, who Wikipedia describes as “far-right, anti-immigration, and white nationalist. Btw, Miller is on the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s list of extremists.
* not a great movie, and a long time ago, but an interesting perspective on the politics of ethnic prejudice…
2072 Granger Way