Lummi Island Wine Tasting June 22 ’13
Buoygone Era…?
Over the weekend the Coast Guard sent the long-awaited Buoy Tender (no, it is NOT something to put on the grill for dinner!) to retrieve our visiting Bell Buoy from Legoe Bay. One can’t help but wonder if it has been returned to it Rightful Place in the Great Waters, doing its solitary duty, or sent to some kind of Shelter for Wayward Buoys, or perhaps refurbished and placed on call to await its next “Buoy Wanted” assignment…:)
This particular tender is from the relatively new 175-foot “Keeper” inland class, one of several that replaced the old 180-ft class that served for a half-century and more. Many of us around here spend time on the water, and completely take for granted that buoys will be in their correct locations, that their lights will blink at the correct intervals, that they are painted the correct colors…in short, that the marine and coastal highway is properly marked and maintained. When we can take such things for granted it generally means the job is getting quietly and competently done…for which all boaters are grateful!
see fun video
see detailed history of buoy tenders
Blog Care and Feeding
So. As regular followers of this blog (both of you!) know, we have been wrestling for several weeks now with getting our blog feed emailed out to you each time we make a post. (yes, the editorial “we”– it is at once so efficiently inclusive, charmingly self-effacing, and effectively evasive…)
Anyway. in today’s episode, I was fooling around with the code in one of the bazillion or so pages each WordPress site uses to dispense its content to the World, when for reasons unknown, the several browser windows I had open for the task all started displaying their little swirlies, you know, the new “hourglass from Hell” indicating your program has just gone over a virtual cliff. So I did what any of you would have done: took the dogs for a long walk in the rain!
Just as I got home, the guys at my local server were calling to tell me that I had apparently put their server in some kind of iterative loop, where, like a Black Hole, it was gulping resources at such a rate as to threaten our entire Galaxy! And to think: I did it with just one tiny bit of misplaced Code! Who knew it was all so Fragile? Could it be that our entire intergalactic internet eavesdropping system is this vulnerable, not only to deliberate attack by Mutant Hackers, but — so much more likely and therefore so much more dangerous– to inadvertent collapse from the random explorations of innocent bloggers just trying to get their next post to mail properly? Do we really want people like me to have that kind of Power?! More to the point, this week will subscribers finally get this blog post in their emails again???
Another Summer Solstice
It’s nice to have things you can count on, things that aren’t political or subject to outsourcing by their current corporate owner. All of this world is, after all, about Impermanence, and so it seems natural to look for something Steady to moor your boat to. Once a year our planet completes a revolution around the Sun, and once a year we mark the northernmost point on our horizon where the sun will rise. Our ancestors built icons like Stonehenge to the Mystery of it. Mystery is a good thing; it keeps us on our toes.
Maybe, if our planet were not tilted so greatly on its axis, and there were no seasons, life might never have evolved, or humanoids might never have evolved. But this business of seasons, with its times of plenty and times of scarcity, times of darkness and of light, of warmer and colder, brings impermanence right into the realm of daily weather, and has made survival a bit more complicated, especially in higher latitudes, raising the bar in the Darwinian struggle.
Bottom line: it’s good to be here, and it’s good to celebrate the coming of another Summer!
This Week’s Tasting
Ryan Patrick Naked Chardonnay ’11 Washington $10
Clean and crisp with a bouquet of melon followed by hints of apricot and pineapple on the palate. (note: ‘Naked’ means ‘unoaked’).
Saint Nabor Gris de Gris Rose ’12 France $10
Bouquet of red fruit and honeysuckle with linden-tree nuances; light, crisp and easy drinking, with palate of wild strawberries and blueberries with mineral nuances.
Villa Luisa Chianti ’11 Italy $9
Satisfying well beyond its humble price point, showing red fruits and violets on the nose, with smooth, soft palate.
2010 Brian Carter Abracadabra Red Wine ’10 Washington 89pts $16
Musky, reduced aromas of redcurrant and smoky oak, followed by intense redcurrant and spice flavors; finishes with firm tannins, hints of pepper and herbs and very good length.
Bodegas Volver Single Vineyard Tempranillo ’10 Spain 91pts $15
Explosive, seductively perfumed aromas of candied red and dark berries, incense, rose pastille and Asian spices. Sappy, penetrating black raspberry and blueberry flavors, with smoky mineral and star anise nuances, lingering spiciness, and gentle tannins.
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