lummi island wine tasting july 30 ’26
This week open Friday only, closed Saturday
reefnetters ready to start fishing this year’s runs!
Friday Bread This Week
Dried Cherry and Pecan – a levain is made the night before final mixing of the dough, starting fermenation and gluten development. The final dough includes bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat, dried cherries and toasted pecans. A nice rustic loaf that goes well with meats and cheese – $5/loaf
Pan de Cioccolate – A delicious chocolate artisan bread made with a levain, bread flour and fresh milled rye flour, honey for sweetness, vanilla and plenty of dark chocolate. Makes fabulous toast, even better french toast – $5/loaf.
Remember pastry sells out fast. I can only make so much – and all pastry is a popular! if you wait to order I’ll probably be sold out and you’ll be sad.
Rum Raisin Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with golden raisins and chunks of almond paste and topped with a chocolate glaze before baking. Ooh la la, what’s not to like?! – 2/$5.
This week’s wine tasting flight
Kremstal Sophie Singing Gruner Veltliner $15 Austria
Sustainably produced; youthful nose of orange blossoms, straw, and apples; spritzy on the medium-bodied palate, with notes of yellow grapefruit and a refreshing crisp acidity for a sunny afternoon.
Matchbook Red Gravel Cab ’22 California $17
Medium-bodied white wine with dense texture, rich, elegant aromas, and succulent flavors of pineapple, lemon zest, chamomile, sea salt, stone fruits, and a bright, tangy acidity, pleasing creamy texture, and deep flavors!
Edi Simcic Duet ’21 Slovenia $27
Balanced blend of merlot, cab sauv, cab franc; bold and compelling, with notes of chocolate, cherries, cheesecake, and coffee on silky tannins, a lush, ripe, fruit-full body, and a finish that goes on and on.
A Brief Lament (wah!) on Personal Identity
Last Saturday morning we went to the weekly Saturday Market next to the Islander, shopping and schmoozing with vendors and neighbors, then took the dog for a quiet walk at Curry Preserve, then home, and learned that somewhere in those activities I had lost my wallet! That began a fruitless search of tracing steps at home, cars, market vendors, but all coming up short.
I know that many of you have gone through this, and while I felt some sympathy hearing about each one, one doesn’t really “Get It” about the intensity of the intrusion it imposes until you experience it. When it happens to you it is like being hit by some kind of locomotive. Every aspect of our social identities is tied up in those credit cards, driver’s license, ID’s, cash, ferry punch cards, health insurance, library, and more. Without them we are suddenly ghost-like, not quite fully materialized, with, literally, no purchase on Reality!
All of these bits of identity have to be replaced with new ones, and each one involves its own strange trip over its own particular hurdles, rules, idiosyncrasies, websites, robotic phone menus, and occasional helpful, knowledgeable agents that walk you down from that particular ID ledge toward solid social ground of actual existence!
We also know, of course, that anyone who finds the cards will have the opportunity to try to use them to buy things, sell them, or use them in various scams. It’s a really creepy experience, one that qualifies for the comment of an old sailor in his book on Heavy Weather Sailing: “experiencing a hurricane at sea in a small sailboat is “something most devoutly to be eschewed.” Well, maybe it will turn up.
Fingers crossed…!
Economics of the Heart: The Brutality of Republikan Avarice
The goals for the New Republikan America are now becoming fully visible in all their sadistic cruelty, selfish entitlements, environmental disdain, misogyny, and self-importance, making them a pretty good manifestation of the Seven Deadly Sins defined not in the Bible, but in the teachings of the early Catholic Church. Over the centuries the teachings of the Church let everyone know that, yes, these are the things you must reveal in confession and do penance for if you sincerely desire not to spend Eternity in Hell (for a mortal sin) or a big chunk of Eternity in Purgatory (for too many of those pesky venial sins) before an eventual (how long is half an eternity…?!) transfer to Heaven. This is what I learned from the nuns in their complicated black robes.
It was certainly enough to generate some seriously terrifying nightmares when I was just 6 or 7 years old. Nowadays our government uses fear and coercion to control our behavior by “disappearing” people off the street, never to be seen alive again, like American Ice does every day. It is to get us to shut up and toe the line or expect trouble ahead.
So on the one hand spreading the concepts of Deadly Sins- confession- penance on a social level– made for a peaceful, kind society where the Church played a dominant role. But at the same time it opened the door to all kinds of abuse as well. So it promises to be if the Republikan billionaires-turned-Christian Nationalist succeed in doing away with all vestiges of democracy, Constitutional rights, or civic action.
On the current Republikan trajectory we see the mobilization of a very different kind of so-called Christianity where mercy, kindness, moderation, responsibility, and service to others have been replaced by a sociopathic structure more akin to a Russian Gulag, a sadist’s tools of torture, and a disdain for individual rights. Postponed indefinitely are attending to essential survival needs to reverse global warming, to value and nurture each human being, and to pool global knowledge and intention toward building a sustainable, interdependent world where every family has the resources for comfort and safety.
In various ways Republicans are trying to Own the emerging subservient Christianity, control media where people get information, and get the masses to keep settling for less and less. Every day it becomes more and more clear that they are to a person a cruel, heartless lot who seem hell-bent on the destruction of all life on Earth.
What are we talking about here…. ” a better World for fewer trillionaires…?”
lummi island wine tasting july 24-25 ’26
This week open Friday only, closed Saturday
crescent moon sunset
crescent moon sunset
Friday Bread This Week
Spelt Levain – Spelt is an ancient wheat grain with a nutty, slightly sweet flavor and a milder gluten than modern wheat, from a levain of traditional bread flour, spelt flour, fresh milled whole spelt and fresh milled whole rye, and just a touch of honey. It is a great all around bread – $5/loaf
Italian Breakfast Bread – Made with bread flour eggs, yogurt, a little sugar and vanilla as well as dried cranberries, golden raisins, and candied lemon peel. Perfect for breakfast as toast or even better for french toast – $5/loaf
and pastry this week:
Brioche Almond Buns – Made with a delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Rolled out and spread with an almond cream filling. The almond cream is a delicious creamy filling made with lots more butter, sugar and eggs as well as almond flour. Yum, yum! – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting flight
Bread & Butter Chardonnay ’22 California $16
Essentially this is a mass-produced California chardonnay blend from many sources and engineered to mimic the pleasantly rich texture and smooth, vanilla-y, oakiness of CA chards of the past…surprisingly tasty and balanced.
Duck Pond Red Oregon $14
Curiously the thirty-year old family winery with a great reputation has no notes on this wine…puzzling, see what you think.
Angels & Cowboys Proprietary Red ’22 California $22
Attractive nose of red berries, orange peel, spices, and crushed stone; medium to full-bodied and succulent, with silky, mellow tannins and flavorful finish.
Economics of the Heart: Calling Out the Rascals
The topic of the day as we write was Heather Cox Richardson’s post containing the text of a lengthy presentation to the U.S. House of Representatives by Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern. She quotes it at length because it lays out in great detail the vast and somehow-still-growing Gulf between the planet the Republicans think they live on and the one their voters actually inhabit.
In a great speech, McGovern goes chapter and verse through the 24/7 litany of Republican lies, misrepresentations, fantasies, excuses, and crimes as they dissemble, assert, talk too loud, and keep their heads down as they dismantle democracy and kill the Planet. Their primary goal (pun intended) is to cover their own butts by giving the Tweetster complete freedom to tear apart our 250-year-old democracy and sell it to our enemies for bitcoin and favor with a handful of billionaires. Is a mere seat in Congress worth that depth of humiliation? Really?
All in all, McGovern’s tongue-lashing is a great example of the turning tide of public outrage at the trashing of everything that is noble and good about our 250-year national experiment with Constitutional Democracy. The underlying Republican principle that every person matters, deserves respect, an equal voice, opportunity, freedom, and agency is an anathema that aspiring oligarchs despise and fear.
Above all, McGovern is naming what a substantial majority of Americans are now feeling. Everything that has happened since this so-called Administration slimed itself into office has wrought a cheapening, a shallowing, a lowest-denominator dismantling of the entire social, legal, and governmental structure defined by our Constitution. Below are a few excerpts from his speech.
“Let’s talk about the Republican Party. A party that worships one man above the Constitution in a cult of personality. A party that demonizes immigrants and says they poison the blood of our country. A party that calls the free press the enemy of the people and sics the Justice Department on journalists who they don’t like. A party that says their political opponents are internal enemies and calls them, quote, the enemy within. A party that is okay with invading our allies, including other democracies…”
“The Republican Party has become the party of…far right fascists who are hell-bent on destroying our country and our way of life. And every single time they call us communists, it is nothing more than a projection of their own radicalization…they definitely don’t want to talk about the Tweetster’s increasing prices of groceries, gas, health care, housing, and taxes for their new, endless, illegal war which has now cost over $100 billion.”
One especially powerful section of Rep. McGovern’s caustic commentary noted that “in 1945, the United States War Department explained to U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II that Fascism “is government by the few and for the few to seize complete control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state…The People run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.” Hmm, I guess that does sound like a typical Republican platform.
Every day more and more Americans are seeing, feeling, lamenting, and beginning to rebel against this ongoing Republican effort to privatize public assets, restrict individual freedoms, and reorganize the economy into the hands of a small group of vaguely autistic multi-billionaires who seem to live, as James Joyce described his main character in A Painful Case as “living at a little distance from his body.”
It remains a mystery to understand what in the world a handful of multi-billionaires are pressing Republican politicians to get from a national economy in which they already own some 20% of everything.
And it’s even more of a mystery why so many Republican politicians seem so willing to surrender their dignity in such a pursuit. It would seem that all honor has been completely sold out in favor of some Scrooge-like need to have the biggest money bin. Or, maybe worse…getting primaried by failing the Tweetster’s daily loyalty tests.
lummi island wine tasting jul 17 ’26
This week open Friday only, closed Saturday
another glorious morning…!
another glorious morning…!
Friday Bread This Week
Kamut Levain – Kamut, also known as khorasan wheat, is an ancient grain with more protein than conventional wheat and more digestible for some. Starts with a levain, fermented overnight before being mixed with with bread flour and whole kamut flour for a nutty, rich flavor. – $5/loaf
Rye w/ Currants, Pumpkin Seeds & Cracked Coriander – Made with a rye starter and mixed w/ bread flour and freshly milled rye flour, some molasses, malt syrup, pumpkin seeds, currants and cracked coriander seed. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week:
Morning Buns – Made popular by Tartine Bakery in San Francisco using the same laminated dough as croissants. Dough is rolled out, spread with a filling of brown sugar, orange zest, butter and cinnamon, rolled up, and sliced before baking. – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting flight
Cannonball Chardonnay ’22 Calif $16
Nose of pear, pineapple, citrus, and stone fruit; medium bodied, smooth palate; polished style with hints of oak; partial malolactic fermentation and lees-stirring adds a pleasing rounded texture.
Angeline Cab Sauv ’24 California $16
Fruit-forward with aromas of lush cherry, cassis, rich cherry, and plum flavors with hints of vanilla and soft oak that over-deliver for the modest price.
Chakana Estate Selection Malbec ’20 Argentina $25
Opaque, bright purple in color; pleasing nose of plums and ‘spicy attic dust’ (?) ; full-bodied palate of plums and spice with good length, balanced acidity, soft tannins, and lingering finish.
Economics of the Heart: Big Carbon Still Claims Climate Change Isn’t Real
Lummi Island reefnet fishery
Everybody knows that the accelerating Global Warming over the last 50 years is being caused primarily by the burning of “fossil fuels” formed in the Earth’s crust over millions of years from the bodies of carbon based life forms.
Beginning in Britain around 1760, human beings figured out that that the potential energy available from burning coal offered enormous potential for generating energy to drive production, transportation, heating, cooling…the foundation of the global Industrial Revolution. Very quickly human society evolved from an agrarian and craft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing, mass production factories, assembly lines, and capital-based economies which concentrated wealth into the hands of a burgeoning population of “Capitalists.”
In a certain sense the Industrial Revolution was not that big a change from the long-standing feudalism in Britain and Europe, in which wealth was already concentrated among titled landowners and hereditary royalty. Workers learned trade skills, apprenticed, and found employment where possible. The long-term effect would be to concentrate wealth even further, not just with Royalty, but also with the emerging capitalist class, which developed their own sense of entitlement getting their indoctrinating MBA’s.
Fast forward to today’s United States, and we see the emergence of a far more virulent attachment to wealth formation by a relatively tiny handful of already very, very, very, very rich men. Most, if not all, are multi-billionaires who engage in some forms of political philanthropy. In 1982 the combined wealth of the 400 richest Americans was $92 billion; in 2025 it was $6.6 trillion, an enormous increase concentrated in a very small group of individuals who as nearly as we can tell, spend a large % of it buying politicians to help them make it even bigger.
At the present moment the Tweetster is selling our country bit by bit to our enemies, moving full speed ahead to accelerate global warming, selling the White House piece by piece, creating conditions for millions of deaths and vast suffering across the world, and of course littering the World with tasteless testaments to his bottomless vanity.
Global warming is the greatest threat to life on Earth in millions of years. It has been deliberately ignored by Energy CEO’s for 40 years, making climate change, habitat loss, storms, tornadoes, floods, sea level rise, droughts, and wildfires more frequent and deadly across the world. The living world is struggling to survive, and yet the carbon-mining oil execs keep lying and making it worse.
There are direct lines connecting Republicans to favors for oil execs and selling out the long-term survivability of our planet not just for human beings but for entire networks of interdependent life forms that keep it all functioning.
One is moved to ask, WTF are these silent Republicans in Congress thinking as they look down at their fingernails as the stupidest President and Cabinet the nation has ever seen continue their looting, lying, and lunacy? Is that some kind of “loyalty?” with some imagined “benefit?” Are they all on drugs? Under threat of violence to themselves or family?
As I have probably pointed out here at some point, in summer of 1980 I had a 10-week summer fellowship at Battelle Labs in Richland, WA. Their Economics lab had a major grant from Dept of Energy to look at the economic impacts of possible global warming from a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. My piece of that was to explore the potential economic impacts on global fisheries (my PhD major).
There had been several independent studies funded by DOE. They were very sophisticated, with carefully gathered data and analysis of likely effects on atmosphere, winds, rainfall, habitat, food supplies, ecosystem integrity. My paper was later published in Natural Resources Journal at the University of New Mexico a year or so later. At some point it was discovered by a radio station in Toronto (fisheries are a major element in the Canadian economy), which interviewed me online. At close of the interview, when asked about what I thought might happen, I remember musing that, giant energy producers being what they were, they would likely drag their feet. Skeptical, yes, but I never for a moment imagined that the industry would make excuses and do NOTHING for the next 40 years!
So yes, climate change is a Big, Real Deal, and the evidence even 50 years ago in those studies was careful, thorough, and convincing. It was important that action be taken quickly because habitat, food supply, spawning, reproduction, and survival of marine fish are dependent on particular ranges of temperature, salinity, food availability, and successful spawning, all of which would be threatened by global warming.
It is the Big Oil lobby that has kept lying all these years, downplaying the existential dangers of global warming even as fossil fuel production and use continued to grow, until we are so far into it there may be no return.
What kind of people DO s*#t like that??!!
lummi island wine tasting july 10-11 ’26
July- August Hours: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
cloud reflections….
Friday Bread This Week
Whole Wheat Levain – Sourdough mix fermented overnight to start gluten development. About 25% fresh milled whole wheat, a ‘toothy’ crumb, great texture and flavor and a nice crisp crust. – $5/loaf-
Breton – Flavors of the French Brittany region; bread flour, fresh milled buckwheat, and rye make for interesting flavor, and sel gris – Brittany grey salt adds minerality to pair w/meats and cheeses- $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Black Sesame & Candied Lemon Brioche: Brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with fresh lemon zest and candied lemon and topped with a black sesame streusel before baking. – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting flight
MAN Chenin Blanc ’24 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.
Kiona Lemberger ’22 Washington $14
Perfumed aromas with traces of orange zest and flower, with notes of blueberry; an agreeable palate that pairs particularly well with spicy foods!
Pascual Toso Reserve Malbec ’22 Argentina $21
Dry, full-bodied and richly layered with aromas and flavors of ripe blackberry, sous bois, and toasty oak, with firm, fine-grained tannins that go well with savory, rich. or spicy spicy dishes. A long-time local favorite!
Economics of the Heart: Revisiting Joan Robinson, Pondering Graham Platner
Maine Senate Candidate Platner
Over the years on numerous occasions I have instinctively been drawn to a brief phrase from early 20th century economist Joan Robinson. Born in 1903 in England, and an early proponent of Keynesian economic theory, she established what came to be known as “The Cambridge School,” and was a prominent force in shaping economic theory during the Depression.
Here’s the quote: ““Every economic system requires a set of values, a set of rules, and a willingness in the people to carry them out.”
That concept was a central plank in FDR’s New Deal, which increased taxes on the ultra-rich to fund projects that created jobs for unemployed workers and spurred infrastructure development to boost economic development. Like cranking to start an old Ford of the era, it stimulated employment, production, and individual incomes just as Japan and Germany were building war machines.
The very rich were very unhappy about increased taxation on their vast wealth, which they considered as, to quote Dick Cheney, “their Due” for some reason, an entitlement for their investments. This idea that the owners of the means of production deserved huge profits went hand in hand with the notion that workers were sort of drone-like, undeserving creatures who served them at subsistence wages for which they should be grateful.
For nearly 50 years a handful of the world’s wealthiest white men have been plotting to take it all back, reducing wages, eliminating public funding for the expendable needy, embracing climate change, abandoning environmental regulations, and replacing the Constitution with some kind of dumbed-down, compliant, Christian police state.
All of this is the background for strange goings-on around Maine’s 30-yr Democratic Senator (lifetime appointment?!) Susan Collins, who has perfected the art of saying she will vote one way, but always voting with the nastiest Republican version.
Enter Graham Platner, unlikely political contender for Collins’ seat in the coming election. As a Marine he did three tours in Iraq and a fourth year with the Army National Guard in Afghanistan. Service in Iraq and Afghanistan were considerably more risky than service in the earlier Gulf War. Nevertheless, numerous Afghan War and Iraqi War veterans have recovered and returned to combat and have served two or more tours. Also, it is important to note that while the Vietnam War had a 2.6/1 wounded-to-killed ratio, the Afghan and Iraqi Wars registered ratios of approximately 15/1…lots more injuries.
I take a particular interest in this election because a grew up in Maine (Bangor), took ROTC at Bangor High, graduated from the Naval Academy, and my ship did one tour in Vietnam, carrying various cargo and personnel in and out. Later, as a psychotherapist, I learned a fair amount about PTSD, how it blocks people, and how to work with it. And it is that understanding that makes me sad that Mr. Platner was forced to bow out of the election at the last minute because of behavior that was almost certainly a result of PTSD, and a result of his service to this country.
That brings us squarely to operative hypocrisy that the so-called President, a convicted rapist, can steal $billions from our Treasury, fire our professional civil servants and top military leaders on a whim, sever ties with our historical allies, sell national secrets to our enemies for personal profit, and do and say any F-ing thing he wants without consequence while making us a second-rate nation in the eyes of the World. But a decorated combat Marine with PTSD from his service gets humiliated with big slaps in the face from Democratic “leaders.”
2072 Granger Way