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.”
lummi island wine tasting july 3 ’26
Open Friday July 3 from 4-6 pm
(closed on the 4th)
Friday Bread This Week
Barley, whole wheat & rye levain- Nice mix of bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this bread great flavor with just a bit of peppery bite to it. Works well with all sorts of meats and cheese- $5/loaf
Spelt Levain – Spelt is an ancient wheat w/ a nutty, slightly sweet flavor and is made with a levain before blending with bread flour, spelt flour, fresh milled whole spelt and whole rye. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Chocolate Croissants! – The traditional laminated french pastry made with sourdough and another pre-ferment to create the traditional honeycomb interior, rolled out and shaped with delicious dark chocolate in the center. – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting
Quinta de Aveleda Vinho Verde ’24 Portugal $14
Loureiro, Trajadura and Alvarinho blend; apples, lemons and a touch of ripe pear fill the palate. It is an off-dry very young white wine, refreshing and crisp with a mineral aftertaste…a longtime local favorite!
Alto Moncayo Zisnero Garnacha Spain $16
Ruby red; aromas of cherries and currants; pleasant freshness with notes of laurel and toast, balanced acidity, lingering palate.
Stoller Helen’s Pinot Noir ’19 Oregon $25
Elegant nose of heady floral, baking spice, and red fruit, which gives way to secondary notes of earth and black raspberry. The palate is layered and vibrant, which carries red fruit flavors and a ferrous minerality through a long finish.
Economics of the Heart: Corruption, Self-enrichment, Abuse of power, and Defying the courts.
Every American in the last 250 years has known what the “Fourth of July” stands for. We have taken pride and joy in it, marched in parades for it, lit firecrackers and sparklers in summer twilight, picnicked and barbecued with friends and family, and wholeheartedly sang the Anthem, the Battle Hymn, and America the Beautiful together.
We knew we were uniquely blessed and proud, happy, grateful, and committed to doing whatever it might take to preserve this blessed nation and its freedoms. It seemed Solid, Strong, Safe, and Reliably committed to a Constitution which defined the rules.
No surprise it has been gut-wrenching to experience it all being ripped to pieces not by armed enemy nations, but by a domestic coup outlined and described in great detail by Heritage Foundation’s manifesto known as Project 2025 and made public in February of 2024 for all to see. We have written about it here in a scores of posts. P2025 was designed from the beginning to do away with Constitutional government completely and replace it with essentially a business plan to privatize control of Federal Assets into the greedy hands of the 0.1% that already had most of the nation’s wealth but somehow needed it all.
The United States of America, the richest and most powerful nation on Earth has been the target of a massive power grab and no-holds-barred reorganization, looting, and traitorous defiance of Constitutional oversight of the federal government. They systematically replaced the competent, loyal, intelligent, and experienced career civil servants who have kept the lights on, wheels turning, laws enforced, regulations followed, and the work of the nation done to high standards since the New Deal, with deeply unqualified, less-educated, untrained, unquestioning, mean-spirited traitors.
Fast forwarding through 18 months of White House defiance of Congress, the Constitution, federal laws, individual rights of citizens, asylum seekers, people of color, and critics of all persuasions to today brings us to a surreal world. The conjoining fiascos of the White House so-called” fight night,” the reflecting pool disaster(s), the deliberate demolition and despoliation of the White House, its grounds, its art, and its history.
It’s all about Destruction, Insult, looting billions from the Treasury, selling secrets, pardons, and favors through bitcoin and family. It is not governing, it is using the power of the United States to hurt as many people as possible as much as possible. The bottomless greed and cruelty lie directly at the feet of the card-carrying sadistic psychopath who always lies and whose only enjoyment in life is making people suffer.
Below are links to a few quotes from a couple of thought-provoking recent Salon articles by writer Heather Digby Parton, whose perspective we have found ourselves nodding and agreeing with for several months. Below are a few brief quotes from each article to tease your interest.
https://www.salon.com/2026/06/30/how-donald-trump-hijacked-americas-birthday/
“throughout these last 250 years, many have looked to America as a beacon of hope, opportunity and freedom from places that had too little of all of that… this weekend’s “celebration” in the midst of what is more and more looking like a slow-motion ethnic cleansing all the more disorienting. The Supreme Court’s ruling, issued June 25, allowing the deportation back to failed states and war-torn countries of millions who have made lives here drives that point home.”
“It’s tempting to say that the (July 4) celebration has become a metaphor for Trump’s second term — but then everything from the tariffs to the Iran war to the Reflecting Pool is the same metaphor, which pretty much says there’s no need for metaphors. Because of course, our national 250th birthday celebrations would be botched. Everything is.”
And from: https://www.salon.com/2026/06/30/how-donald-trump-hijacked-americas-birthday/
“It’s a cruel quirk of fate, or maybe just a tragic irony, that we are celebrating America’s semiquincentennial during one of the most surreal periods in American history. We’ve certainly been through tougher economic times, and our latest war in the Middle East is not as ambitious as even the ones we waged earlier in this century. But I don’t think things have ever been as downright strange on both a domestic and global level as they are in the era of Donald Trump. Celebrating the Declaration of Independence under these circumstances is downright phantasmagoric.”
“In 1976, having come through the tumultuous period of the Vietnam War, Watergate and massive social change, the country seemed to be in the mood to pretend they had all never happened. The bicentennial celebrations took place over the course of a couple of years and memorably included the 26-car American Freedom train, which carried historical artifacts across the country. There were concerts and festivals in various venues on the Fourth that featured superstars including the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, The Who, Elton John and Elvis Presley. In retrospect, it presaged the flag-waving and jingoism that were at the heart of the Reagan Revolution.”
“Reports from middle American towns — like Lawrence, Kansas, which has welcomed the Algerian national team, and the Algerian fans who have gathered there — may just tell us more about ourselves than the crass, political pageant taking place in Washington. Perhaps the ideals of the Declaration do still live in the hearts and minds of ordinary people who can see the shared humanity in all of us. Maybe, just maybe, this joyful embrace of the world and the sport that binds it together more than any other is the first real sign that, for zthe noise and ugly divisiveness of the Trump era, there is still hope for us yet.”
The breathtaking magnitude of the grifted/grafted $billions being stolen by the Tweetster, his family, cronies, Congressional co-conspirators and federal administrators at every level for their own selfish enrichment has become increasingly obvious, documented “news.” Taken together with the ongoing cruelty of disappearing/torturing entire families of innocent immigrant refugees, a growing majority of Americans want their Constitutional government back, with improved checks and balances, ethical/reliable administrators sworn to protect everyone’s right to vote and have their vote correctly counted and implemented.
2072 Granger Way