lummi island wine tasting April 3, ’26
Open Friday 4-6 pm
painting by Anne Gibert
Friday Bread This Week
Colomba di Pasqua (aka ‘Easter Dove’): A traditional Italian Easter cake similar to Christmas panettone. Made with a sweet Italian levain, known as a lievito madre, kept at a warm temperature for a sweet, cake-like dough rather than a sour one. Contains plenty of eggs, sugar and butter plus fresh and candied orange peel, topped with a crunchy almond/hazelnut glaze and pearl sugar before baking in a dove-shaped baking form as labor of love Easter dove! – $10/loaf
Italian Breakfast Bread – A delicious sweet 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 on Easter morning – $5/loaf
Hot Cross Buns – An enriched dough made with plenty of butter, sugar and eggs. Full of spices, including cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. And plenty of currants, and candied lemon and orange peel. Topped with a flavorful paste and glazed these are a delicious treat to celebrate spring. 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting
Willamette Valley Vineyards Oregon Blossom Sparkling Rose Oregon $18
88% Pinot Noir, 12% Muscat from Willamette Valley grapes, this slightly sweet sparkler bursts with notes of cherry, strawberry and melon; best with ham and cheese croissants, watermelon/ feta salad, goat cheese crostini, or …??
Tenuta Sant’Antonio Monti Garbi Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore ’21 Italy $21
Spicy and intense, with hints of crushed ash and smoky black cherries; silky texture and pure, with notes of sour wild berries and salty minerality; long, energetic, spicy finish of blackcurrant & mocha,
Torbreck Woodcutters Shiraz ’21 Australia $26
Succulent, rich aromas of dark berries and black plum with notes of sandalwood, rosemary and thyme;
soft tannins and structured, voluptuous mouthfeel adds the poise and piquancy expected from this winery.
Economics of the Heart: The War on Critical Thinking, pt 2
The section below was originally posted in September ’23 to support the case that the glue that held Maga together was at root a methodical War on Critical Thinking— you know, that actual measurable thing that we go to college to learn…? That war swung into action in the late 80’s as soon as Reagan’s FTC removed the long-standing news broadcast rule requiring fair representation of all points of view on any story.
That single change opened the door for a 24/7 barrage of angry, preachy, self-righteous talk show hosts aiming to make conservative white Christians believe that Democrats were lying, conniving sinners that were trying to take their stuff. The arguments were in all cases complete fabrications and deliberate ad hominem lies to make people angry, keep top Democrats on the defensive, and build a completely fictitious world where top Democrats secretly worshiped Satan and ate babies. (I’m not making this up!)
As promised in the Project 2025 manifesto made public in early 2025, Tweetster 2.0 is following a carefully drawn plan to replace Constitutional government in the U.S. with a white, Christian, male-dominated autocracy with no further need for elections, voting, or Congress. This time around from Day One federal laws, rules, chains of authority, security— everything– were to be replaced with an autocratic structure. Workers would have neither contractual rights nor protections; audit trails would disappear; Congressional Democrats would be ignored; and Heritage Foundation would determine and control a Cabinet of people chosen because they were neither capable of nor interested in Critical Thinking.
Think about it…(you know, if you can!)…is there even a single Cabinet member in this administration that is doing the sworn duties of their position? These people are, across the board, all people who think only in black and white, and are proud of it. All of this is richly and gut-wrenchingly illustrated in the hour by hour, day by day insanity of dumping our traditional allies, starting a shooting war in the Middle East with no clear strategic purpose, screwing up the entire global economy and our place in it. And we haven’t even mentioned ICE.
So…it is worth taking a look at what critical thinking is while wondering about where we would be today if our government were actually willing and able to apply it.
*****
Below is broader discussion of the developmental stages of critical thinking from our Sept 29/’23 post
Every creature has some form of sensory discrimination that allows it to survive. We are gifted with a unique nervous system that lets us tell this from that, one from two, gray from black, mine from yours, and right from wrong. Our ability to think, especially to think critically, depends entirely on our ability to observe and make meaning from differences in quantities and qualities of the world around us, and to communicate about them with each other through language.
The abilities to differentiate and reason are the primary characteristic of critical thinking. We all have the sensory ability to discriminate tastes (salty, sweet, sour), feelings (pleasant, unpleasant), and numbers (more, less), and the cognitive ability to tell truth from lies and fact from fiction. We can also form ideas, execute plans, and evaluate and learn from the results. These abilities constitute what is generally known as “critical thinking,” and is the whole point of maturation in general and education in particular.
The most detailed model for the development of intellectual maturity was put forth by William Perry from data gathered back around 1960. Perry’s research found that in general, a student’s college experience could be viewed as “an intellectual Pilgrim’s Progress” in which the student’s way of thinking evolved through four “stages” from a world of binary choices into a world of complex contexts with which to differentiate ever more nuanced distinctions.
Perry observed that beginning college students generally began at Level 1, Duality, a world of opposites: (right/wrong, good/bad). With study and reflection, that view gradually broadened over a couple of years to Multiplicity, which opened a space to hang out with the curious uncertainty of “don’t know for sure.” Over time these broaden to Mode 3, a relativistic layer of “it depends.” The evolution to Level 4, as it turns out, is then a major developmental step in critical thinking with “a fundamental transformation of one’s perspective from a vision of the world as essentially dualistic, to a world as essentially relativistic and context-bound with relatively few right/wrong exceptions.”
The Big Takeaway here is that human beings have been shown to hang out at Levels 1-2 until they learn otherwise from increasing age, education, and/or experience. Which brings us to Maga Republicans. Who are they? According to a study from UW, they have the following characteristics, and they are a mortal threat to our democracy.
- Demographics: MAGA supporters are older, Christian, retired men, the same base as the Capitol riots, with about half middle-class by income, and 1/3 by education.
- Geography: From every state, in proportion to population density from urban to rural;
- Affiliations: 85% support gun rights; 60% support both charities and pro-police groups; 50% support pro-life groups; 38% ‘stop the steal’ ; 23% pro-militia movement;
- Political Activism: Over 75% have signed a petition, contacted representatives, or boycotted, 60% donated $, 50% attended meetings or rallies; nearly 100% voted in every election; nearly all distrust 2020 election results, and believe that voting is too easy.
- Pandemic and Paranoia: 90% agree: COVID rules over-reactive, COVID a Chinese bioweapon, Trump honest about pandemic.
- Race: Large majority disagree that slavery made upward mobility or achieving their potential more difficult for blacks, while agreeing blacks would be doing as well as whites if they tried and should work their way up like other minorities.
- Gender: Large majority agree women interpret innocent remarks as sexist, seek special favors, make unreasonable demands of men, and seek more power than men.
- Immigration: majority believe immigrants change our culture for the worse and break more laws.
The UW analysis ends with this: “These findings are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We have much more to share. For us, the implications are clear: our country is in grave danger since one of the two major parties is essentially captured by the MAGA movement. We invite you to draw your own conclusions from these preliminary findings.”
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2072 Granger Way