lummi island wine tasting jan 17 ’25
Wine Tasting Winter Hours: Fridays 4-6 pm
Sorry, no Bread This Week 🙁
(those on mailing list will get next week’s order info Sunday…)
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday the Bakery emails the week’s bread offering to the mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday (and not already claimed) will be available for pickup at the wine shop Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Contact us at least two weeks before your visit to get on the bread list .
This week’s Wine Tasting
Juggernaut Chardonnay ’22 Sonoma $17
Barrel fermented; aromas of apple, Asian pear and lemon meringue open to rich, lingering flavors of stone fruit, honeysuckle, and yellow plum, with finishing notes of vanilla, butter cream and hints of clove.
Cala Civetta Sangiovese di Toscana ’21 Italy $13
Earthy nose of red plum accompanies a vibrant yet mildly tannic palate of tart cherry with a hint of smoke and ocean brine – a true expression of Scansano, nestled halfway between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Mt. Amiata.
Alain de la Treille Chinon Cab Franc ’22 France $21
From Loire valley alluvial gravel & & yellow limestone terraces along the Vienne, offering complex minerality and a juicy, spicy flavors that dance from plum to cassis, game, earth and tobacco, all with a delicacy that speaks of the village’s cool conditions.”
Economics of the Heart: First the Coup…then the Occupation
Democracy just doesn’t to be working for the obscenely rich. As a class, they have been grumpy since Roosevelt’s New Deal transformed the role of the federal government. The stock market crash of 1929 had ignited widespread unemployment, poverty, and despair to millions of families and communities as businesses collapsed and work was hard to find. FDR cast a wide net for new ideas, finally basing the New Deal largely on the emerging principles of Keynesian economics, which stood in sharp contrast to the prevailing ethos of trickle-down economics that jobs are created by wealthy businessmen and resource owners who own the means of production and out of kindness hire workers to transform raw materials into goods and services. And, as Marx correctly observed, these “capitalist” owners pay workers barely enough to get by, while they continued to get richer at an ever increasing rate.
Keynes’s view, most simply, was that the economy is like big table where everyone has a seat and an ongoing responsibility to get money from the person next to them (for their work) and pass on to the next person (for their purchases). In that way everyone acting individually keeps money coming in and money going out in a circular flow. If some players withhold too much from the stream, the the entire stream slows down, and more and more do not have enough. Keynesian economics guided economic policy until the 80’s, when Reagan, a charming but stupid man, fully re-embraced trickle-down ( like Project 2025, written for him by the Heritage Foundation), cutting social programs that kept an economic floor under the elderly, the mentally and physically disabled, single parents, ethnic and racial minorities, and more, and shifting some $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the highest 1%.
The January 6 coup attempt began years before and has never stopped. All these very rich guys who are still rebelling against the New Deal evolved from the tycoons of the 1930’s to the nastiness of early 50’s McCarthyism. They also regrouped from the more crackpot views of the John Birch Society, the long-term lobbying of the Koch brothers through their Americans for Prosperity PAC, spending about $400 million just since 2020. And of course we haven’t even mentioned the long string of Leonard Leo’s decades-long project to gain enough control of the Supreme Court to overturn key legislation regarding women’s rights, environmental rights, business regulation, and ultraconservative Catholic values.
So: Monday begins the Occupation of the United States of America by domestic enemies that nostalgically still call themselves “the Republican Party.” It seems reasonable to expect that the Tweetster’s puppet masters will keep him out there as the 24/7 distraction while their Project 2025 plan to dismantle our democracy proceeds against the will of over half the country’s voters.
The fight begins in earnest…
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.