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.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
2072 Granger Way