lummi island wine tasting march 22-23 ’24
Spring Hours
Fridays 4-6 pm
Saturdays 3-5 pm
This week’s wine tasting
San Martin Les 37 Rose ’21 $16 France $16
Syrah, Grenache and Mouvedre. Fresh and fruity, light and delicious; rich pink in color with bright, floral, fruity nose; fresh and substantial on the palate with good length and crisp minerality on the finish. Ah, Spring is here!
Lievlud cab sauv $16 South Africa $16
Inky purple/blue with plummy aromas of blackberry, blueberry, and cassis with nuances of chocolate and spice with lingering palate of blueberry and plum on the well developed tannins and a spice on the finish.
Torbreck Woodcutters Shiraz Australia $26
Succulent, rich aromas of dark berries and black plum with notes of sandalwood, rosemary and thyme; palate shows
soft tannins and structured, voluptuous mouthfeel from plump Shiraz berries gives this young vineyard the poise and piquancy we expect from this well-established producer.
Friday Bread Returns Next Week
Our baker is traveling this week ( annual baseball spring training trip, we hear…), no bread orders or deliveries this week.
If you are already on the mailing list you should receive the bread/pastry menu for next week by email on Sunday.
Island Bakery has developed a lengthy rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before Wednesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list.
Economics of the Heart: An Embarrassment of Villains
Pt 1: Even Avalon Has Its Challenges
Tuesday this week marked the end of our nearly two-year Island discussion with the County about the division of ferry cost burdens between the County-wide Road Fund and the narrowly-defined-by-statute “ferry fare box fund.” Tuesday evening the Council essentially dismissed our position entirely in favor of the County Executive’s order to go ahead and charge fare revenues for $800k of major capital renovations and cut off public insistence that such expenses are definitely NOT “regular and routine maintenance” and cannot legally be charged against fare revenue. Rather, we have argued, they must be paid from the broader County tax base along with other depreciable assets.
The upshot of Tuesday’s decision is that the County can charge any public works costs they want against ferry fares with no oversight whatsoever. (fyi, here’s my own summary of the situation sent to Council members before their meeting on Tuesday.)
Curiously, this Final Defeat is a sort of relief, in the same way as taking a break from banging your head against an impervious wall is a sort of relief. After nearly two years of community effort the Council’s sudden dismissal of islander concerns suddenly leaves us with only one option: filing suit against their flagrant violation of the County ordinance governing what costs may be charged against fares and which can’t. It’s not complicated.
But there is a sense of relief to get it, to feel it, that “resistance HAS been futile,” and that a court is the only available arbiter of the law. Stay tuned…
Pt 2: Glimmers of the Coming Apocolypse
The other issue is one we have been discussing over the last few months: the powerful and dangerous coalition of ultra-wealthy, ultra-corporate, ultra-religious conspirators who are close to realizing their socio-political wet dream of transforming the United States into an Ultra-Conservative Christian Autocratic State controlled by merciless, white, wealthy “Christian” men. These men will assume complete authority over who lives and who dies, who will have dignity and who will be punished and persecuted, who will rewarded and elevated, who will be shamed, beaten, tortured, and murdered…you know, the basic Authoritarian Recipe Book.
These are the same people who have taken over our Supreme Court, the Republican Party (or what is left of it), and become billionaires. (see this very well-constructed series of talks by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of RI.) They are the same people taking away the rights of women, non-whites, and immigrants. They either do not believe or care about individual freedom or dignity, global warming, ecosystem protection, education, health care for all, or the assertions of the Declaration of Independence that every human is endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights.
We have also discussed recently how think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which were already “conservative,” have in the past couple of years turned very sharply to the Very Far Right, are committed to bringing the Tweetster back into power, breaking our country away from our historical allies around the world, and emulating authoritarian states like Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and Saudi Arabia. And of course we have all heard the Tweetster’s promises to gut the entire federal civil service force and replace them with boneheaded authoritarian bullies with the intelligence of slice of tofu.
Folks, these are grave and deeply disturbing developments. While we watch the meltdown of the Tweetster, these Far Right agents seem intent on launching their “revolution” soon, this year, and taking over, with him or without him. The current obvious implosion of the Tweetster side be side with the continuing consolidation of power by the enemies of democracy in our country are not and never have been about the Tweetster. He has just been their wiling barker, and he did his job well: his follower are all now in a deep trance, reinforced 24/7 by cable news and talk radio.
All our lives we have accepted that periodically whole populations of sweet little lemmings, for no particular reason, commit mass suicide by throwing themselves off perfectly supportive cliffs into a deadly ocean. Why? Common hysteria? Drugs? Jumped or Pushed? Can we believe the story pushed by the handful of survivors (naw, they wuz crazy, man, they just jumped…)
So here we are with a growing population of people being brainwashed online to believe that liberal thought is their enemy, that freedom of anyone is a danger to everyone. Therefore, it seems reasonable to be curious about how we can respond as a community, a State, a nation (or a County!) to this level of psychoemotional manipulation by a 24/7 audio-visual barrage of lies, from well-funded, predatory manipulators now 30 years down their road to abolish liberal thinking completely. Just like 1984. Only way worse!
On that note, a reminder we are now on Spring hours, open Friday (4-6) and Saturday (3-5) for wine tasting, sales, and conversation.
Y’all come on by now, heah…?
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2072 Granger Way