lummi island wine tasting sept 27-28 ’24
Hours, September 27-28 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Vaguely threatening mushroom at Otto Farm…
Friday Bread This Week
Whole Wheat Levain – Begins with a sourdouinal mixing of the dough- which is then fermented overnight in the refrigerator. This long slow process allows the fermentation process to start and the gluten to start developing. About 25% fresh milled whole wheat, a ‘toothy’ crumb, great texture and flavor and a nice crisp crust. – $5/loaf
Semolina Levain – Semolina is made from durum wheat, which is a hard wheat and often used in pasta. The flour has a lovely golden color that comes through in the bread. Uses a sourdough starter/levain that ferments overnight before mixing the final dough with bread flour, semolina and fresh milled whole wheat and little butter for a soft crumb. Makes great toast! – $5/loaf
Gibassiers – A traditional french pastry recipe from southern France. Made with a delicious sweet dough full of milk, butter, eggs and olive oil, with orange flower water, candied orange peel and anise seed. After baking they are brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with more sugar. – 2/$5
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:
Maryhill Winemaker’s White ’21 Washington $14
Sauv blanc, viognier, semillon, albarino, pinot gris; careful early morning harvest, slow press cycle, limited oak, and blended to keep each varietal’s profile in both aromas and flavors– a complex, versatile, and tasty white blend!
Domaine Chibaou Surnaturel Merlot ’22 France $25
Complex nose of black fruits, candied strawberries, and caramel; round, rich and concentrated, balanced, with good length in the mouth. No sulfites.
Greenwing Columbia Valley Cab Sauv ’21 WA $19
Alluring aromas of Bing cherry, rooibos tea, loamy earth with hints of cinnamon, clove, and wild herbs; palate of red currant, raspberry and wild strawberry, fine-grained tannins and bright acidity.
Economics of the Heart: Six Weeks and Counting…
Tweetster in the Fall
There’s an old saying: “If you want to live like a Republican, you should vote for Democrats.” This philosophy follows logically from the actions of Republican Administrations over the last 40 years. Reagan came in with the support of the Heritage Foundation, which had put together a legislative plan for his term to shift costs from big business onto consumers while doing away with spending on social safety nets for the old, the sick, the hungry, the poor, and the mentally ill.
The poor were blamed for being lazy and conning the system by having too many babies, drinking too much alcohol, not looking for work, and being a drain on society. Reaganites called them “welfare queens” and Reagan actively cut back social support for the needy of all stripes while giving massive tax cuts that transferred some $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
“For well over a decade economists and other social scientists have documented strong advantages in economic performance during Democratic administrations. A new Economic Policy Institute report updates this work to the latest data available and confirms that this Democratic advantage has persisted since 1949. Positive indicators like growth in gross domestic product (GDP), income, and wages grew faster, while negative indicators like unemployment, inflation, and interest rates have been lower. Further, the fruits of economic growth are distributed substantially more equally under Democratic presidents.” (Economic Policy Institute)
Indeed, EPI reports that since 1949 Democratic administrations have been very much better at managing the economy than Republicans, with:
- 1.2% higher growth;
- 1.5% higher annual job growth;
- Twice the private job growth and business investment;
- Lower rates of inflation;
- Nearly 200% faster income growth among the poorest 20%.
The Maga movement largely consists of less-educated people who bear a sense of grievance that they are somehow victims of those with less than they have. Curiously, many Democrats have a sense of grievance, too, but ours is against the billionaires that buy politicians and judges to bend the rules in their favor.
Which brings us to this particular moment in this particularly unique election season. Over the past two months, Democratic hopes have risen behind the Harris-Walz ticket. Large numbers of younger voters, including many first-time voters, right-to-choose voters, gender explorers, and young women in red states have been registering to vote by the hundreds of thousands.
Meanwhile the world sees the Tweetster melting down, stumbling through his endless mantra of grievances as one by one his loyal fans leave his rallies early. These are all promising signs for a post-Tweetster world.
But in a very real sense, this election increasingly has less and less to do with him, and everything to do with with Heritage Project 2025 and its smug self-assurance that regardless of actual voting outcomes, they have enough control over enough election apparatus in enough places to tear our country to pieces by force and perhaps with the blessings of the Supreme Court.
So…keep an eye to weather, mates, yer powder dry and near to hand, and keep rowin’ steady till the tide turns! Arrgh!
lummi island wine tasting sept 20 ’24
Hours, September 20-21 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Note: Special tasting on Friday, see below!
Friday Bread This Week
Heidebrot – Translated as “bread of the heath,” after a region in central Germany known for fields of red heather. This is a farmhouse bread from an aromatic, lighter sourdough made with whole grain rye. a rye-fed sourdough starter, fresh milled whole grain rye flour, and regular bread flour as well – $5/loaf
Sweet Corn & Dried Cranberry– Made with polenta and bread flour, then enriched with milk, butter and honey for a soft and tender crumb and loaded up with dried cranberries for great corn flavor… A delicious bread that makes great toast!– $5/loaf
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
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 .
Another Fall Equinox
Here is a Sunset from our place on a past Autumnal Equinox. Equinoxes being what they are, corresponding Sunsets appear more or less in the same direction near the horizon every year on a given date. At the Moment of Equinox someone at one particular place on the Equator can experience looking straight up at the Sun at Local Noon. An instant later the Sun is over a spot below the Equator. That’s right…the Equinox happens in a Single Moment over a Single Spot on Equator.
For those non-Navigators our there, “local noon” is the moment on any day when the Sun is directly South of you in the Northern Hemisphere, or directly North of you in the SH. One Very Cool thing about this “Local Apparent Noon” (LAN) is that at Sea you can always tell your Latitude by observing the angular elevation of the Sun over a period near noon. You can observe it increasing to a maximum and then start decreasing. The maximum elevation always occurs when the Sun is on the same North-South Meridian as you are and it is a relatively easy matter to compute your Latitude from this One Observation. That also explains how, by the way, Joshua Slocum (author of the Classic “Sailing Alone Around the World”) was able to navigate Around the World back in 1898 using a wind-up clock that had lost its minute hand…!
This week’s Wine Tasting: Kasari Cellars
On Friday we will host Marty Kmiecik, owner/winemaked at Kasari Cellars. Marty has deep connections to Lummi Island. His Dad is Mike Kmiecik, a familiar island resident and prominent member of Funny Side Farm on Granger Way, with its well-kept gardens and landscape of fruit trees and a broad array of whimsical artistic structures. Marty lives in Skagit County, but also owns a two-acre parcel almost across the street from us on Granger Way.
Marty is just releasing his first commercial vintage, and we are delighted to provide this venue for you to meet, greet, and taste the new wines! Grapes for these wines come from several well-established Washington vineyards.
Kasari Sauvignon Blanc ’22 WA $22
100% sauv blanc; aromas of citrus, melon, and herbs leading to primary flavors of lime, cantaloupe, and lemongrass, complimented by a refreshing minerality on the clean finish.
Kasari Roussane ’22 WA $24
Aromas of honeysuckle, baked apple, and beeswax lead to a palate poached pear, floral notes,honey and white pepper with refreshing acidity, supple mouthfeel, and lingering finish.
Kasari Malbec ’22 WA $34
90% malbec, 10% cab sauv; vibrant garnet color; opens with abundant aromas of fresh blueberry, dark cherry and vanilla bean; palate of berry compote, baking spices, and earthy, well balanced tannins.
Economics of the Heart: Polling and the Sword of Damocles
en.wikipedia.org
An ancient Greek story tells of a tyrannical King (Dionysius) who was feared and obeyed but also hated. His inability to imagine another way of ruling made him quite paranoid (although in his case they probably were out to get him!) and caused him to take extraordinary measures to protect himself from treachery, and which made his wealth and position a great burden.
When Damocles, one of his loyal followers, complimented him on how happy and contented his wealth, power, and position must make him, he grew irritated, because he was neither. To give Damocles a sense of the King’s everyday burden, he indulged him in luxuries of food, drink, and comfort, which young Damocles very much enjoyed…until he became aware that above his head dangled a great sword, hanging by a single horsehair which might break at any moment to kill or maim him. Thus did he understand how the King’s burden of living under constant threat of injury or death takes an emotional toll Damocles was happy to give up.
The November 5 Presidential election is unlike any in our nation’s history, with one party embracing a platform of doing away with our Constitution entirely and replacing it with the Fascist tyranny of Project 2025 led by the muddled, brain-impaired, aging Tweetster who cannot finish a single thought, grasp a single concept, or perform even the most simple kind of reasoning.
This has been increasingly clear in all of his recent appearances, whether in court, at the Debate, at his Convention, or at his rallies. To make matters worse, his VP pick also has no qualifying public executive experience and is not any more qualified by temperament, education, or experience to be President than the Tweetster– putting the whole world under a Sword of Damocles.
Our country and to some degree the entire world are at present divided into irreconcilable political camps of Authoritarians vs. Humanists. Authoritarians believe the natural order of human society is for One Tough Guy and his loyal lieutenants to control how power and wealth are allocated, and that objective Truth is whatever the Leader pronounces it to be. Humanists believe that: 1) all human beings share the same needs for safety, affection, attention, approval, and equal opportunity to live healthy and satisfying lives, and 2) that Truth is based on observable facts which can be verified by observation, repetition, and analysis.
For 250 years our nation has struggled toward inclusion, fairness, justice, and equal opportunities for all citizens to share in both common responsibility and prosperity. But over the past 50 years, would-be authoritarians have been at work sabotaging this fundamental American principle with their own goal of white male supremacy and its associated rascist, sexist, patriarchal religions. In today’s world it has become perfectly clear that Republicans have abandoned democracy in favor of an authoritarian government that specifically promises (in Project 2025) to do away with our Constitution entirely.
We see behind us in our nation a stained tapestry of deals, trades, treachery, lies, murders, ambition, and the unbridled vanity we call “politics,” which we have survived as a nation. We see in front of us a particularly virulent form of the political disease, wherein a massive subculture has been created over the past forty years which is completely unwilling or unable to distinguish fact from fiction or truth from lies, and which sees the Constitution as a constraint, not a sacred commitment.
So: the coming election is the Sword dangling by a thread over Civilization itself. At this moment we, like Damocles, are enjoying a bit of luxury as hopes rise, young people flock to support Harris/Walz in many swing states, and we really want to be Optimistic, but we are worn down by a legal system that has let the Tweetster skate on legal case after case, and a Supreme Court that has replaced the constraints of Constitutional law with political and religious overreach.
At the moment Truth, Justice, and guarded optimism seem to have a little edge thanks to growing numbers of advocates for women’s rights, the pride and commitment of service vets, and young voters registering en masse to vote against the tyranny of Project 2025. Not to mention, you know, Taylor Swift...
Even though that Sword still looms over us, each day seems to add a comforting (and tentative) thread or two of hope…
lummi island wine tasting sept13-14 ’24
Hours, September 13-14 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
the essentials of island life
Friday Bread This Week
Levain w/ Dried Cherries and Pecans – From an overnight levain starter that allows the fermentation and gluten to start developing. The final dough adds bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat with dried cherries and toasted pecans. A nice rustic loaf that goes well with meats and cheese – $5/loaf
Pan de Cioccolate – A delicious chocolate artisan bread made a rich chocolate bread made with a levain, bread flour, fresh milled rye flour, honey for sweetness, vanilla, and plenty of dark chocolate. Makes fabulous Fench toast. – $5/loaf
Black Sesame & Candied Lemon Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with fresh lemon zest and candied lemon and as if that wasn’t enough, topped with a black sesame streusel before baking. Ooh la la, what’s not to like. I can only make a limited number so be sure to get your order in early. – 2/$5.
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
Hecht& Bannier Piquepoul Blanc Chardonnay ’23 France $14
Piquepoul blanc brings bright mineral tang and the Chardonnay brings orange and lemon, honeysuckle and acacia notes for a refreshing sensory lift.
La Atalaya del Camino ’20 Spain $15
Intense aromas, fruit, and elegance on the nose with a distinct spiciness and a touch of floral notes. Rich and meaty structure, with rich dark fruits and hints of spice. Smooth and pleasant long finish.
Bold Wine Cabernet ’21 Paso Robles $26
Co-fermented cab-malbec-petit verdot; carefully hand-harvested, sorted, and destemmed, 6-day cold-soaked, and native yeast fermented in stainless, followed by extended maceration for big flavors & lingering palate.
Economics of the Heart: Time for a Paradigm Shift
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTEaaAUZWqozj7n0xtH2lKrEdTS5HIRVlQGr1q-l1eVjXeNQxo&s
We current old-timers were babies in the late forties, kids in the fifties, teenagers in the early sixties, and voters by the late sixties. By the time we were voters, the world had rebuilt and reorganized after the horrors and destruction of WWII. Nations changed names, boundaries, politics, and allegiances. I turned 7 as Ike was winning the 1952 Presidential election, and turned 15 as JFK won in 1960. Ike had cast for us kids of the fifties a reasoned, stable sense of special good fortune to be Americans, and Kennedy brought a youthful “vigah” that charmed our world with a sense of peace and promise right alongside an ongoing anxiety of a surprise nuclear attack.
The Cold War began soon after the surrenders of Germany and Japan to the Allies, which included the US, Russia, Britain, and Western Europe, among others. Stalin’s emergent Soviet Union promptly asserted control over Eastern Europe (in which it played a substantial role in liberating), as its necessary buffer against future German aggression. The US, western Europe, and Britain deferred to Stalin’s concerns, resulting in the “Iron Curtain” that gave control of Eastern Europe and East Berlin to the emerging USSR.
The Cold War brought air raid drills in schools, hunching under our desks for “shelter,” and little books with images of Russian bombers so, we imagined, we could sound some kind of alarm. (I am not making this up!) There was an Air Force B-52 base in my town in Maine, with familiar sounds of their engines revving on winter nights, ever on alert to launch at a moment’s notice. (Which is why “Dr. Strangelove” had such resonance with our generation…the Cold War was always lurking in the background.)
The Sixties saw deepening divisions in American politics. Even into the 70’s there were liberals and conservatives in both parties. But ending segregation drove Southern Democrats to the Republican Party along with the Birchers, the KKK-ers, and the emerging class of country-neutral Corporatists started a new movement at the Heritage Foundation to steer federal money to the private sector in more creative ways. In Reagan they found the perfect spokesman/salesman for White Corporate Entitlement. They invented subtly racist Reaganism with thousands of ready-to-vote-on legislative bills (the original Project 2025) they had already written before he became the candidate, and were passed on his watch.
www.cnn.com
In the late 80’s Reagan’s FCC removed the requirement that news broadcasts gave air time to all sides of a controversy. Within months, beginning with Limbaugh and followed by countless other radio talk shows, the airwaves were full of nonstop slander of the Clintons and the vile ego-bluster of Newt Gingrich in the 90’s. Fake News was made into a political weapon that still runs 24/7 on social media and talk radio as well as Fox and others. Don’t forget the 2000 election and Dubya “winning” by 500 votes, looking the other way when 911 happened, and invading Iraq and Afghanistan with a death toll so far of some 500,000 people in some 20 years. These proxy wars have long been the servants of industrial interests as a means to shift wealth to the top and costs to the bottom with ruthless efficiency.
The Republican marriage to Corporatism and its concentration of wealth into the hands of a small number of white billionaires, with everyone else barely getting by at subsistence levels, is pretty much just what Marx predicted about capitalism and why it is essential fairness for the productivity of the means of production (“the return to capital”) to be owned collectively. So right now, in this little moment in World History, we Americans stand at the edge of a Paradigm Shift. Should everyone have a path to getting ahead, or only rich white guys with Bibles?
The last Paradigm Shift started in the late 70’s with a concerted attempt by an elite group of very wealthy private organizations (Heritage) and individuals to take control of the United States military, technical, organizational, and financial resources and use them to concentrate their own power. In 1980 Reagan was their guy. In 2016 the Tweetster was Their Guy. He himself is meaningless to them, but his ability to con people into believing things that are not true offers these back-room players cover and distraction from what they are really up to. They came within a hair’s breadth of stealing the 2020 election and they are all in to try it again this year with Project 2025.
www.npr.org
The rest of us want to preserve this country, its Constitution, and the Rule of Law which gives all of us both rights and responsibilities. This election is a Decision Point on whether to keep or discard our Constitution and the America it has made possible. Voting for Harris is voting for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Voting for the Tweetster or not voting at all is to bestow Enormous Wealth on a very few, modest wealth on an emergent class of Overseers, and misery and persecution for the masses. Chaos. A particular kind of Hell.
“When we vote, we win!”
lummi island wine tasting sept 6-7 ’24
Hours, September 6-7 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
the doodad pole on Blizard Trail
added a couple of very old watch cases
to the hundreds of charming charms already there…
NO Friday Bread This Week! 🙁
Look for next week’s offerings in your email Sunday afternoon!
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
Natura Rose ’21 Chile $12
Cold-soaked before pressing and cold-fermented on the skins to develop rich and nuanced aromas and flavors of grassy lime, tropical fruits, and lychee, with a crisp, lingering finish…a long-time local favorite.
Vielle Ferme Blanc ’23 France $12
Flavorful blend of bourboulenc, grenache blanc, roussanne, ugni blanc, & vermentino delivering seductive aromas of jasmine, hawthorn, and pear with flavors of blood orange with delicate saline notes.
La Vielle Ferme Rouge ’22 France $11
Great drinkability, with seductive bouquet of red fruit, spices, and cherries, well balanced palate full of delicacy, freshness, and very soft tannins.
Metis Red Blend ’21 WA $30
Lively aromatics of blueberry and jam with notes of kalamata olive, black tea, engaging tannins with notes of cedar and leather for a lingering palate of fruit and spice.
Economics of the Heart: Inflation: When the Crumbs Aren’t Enough
Jesus expels the money changers from the Temple…
A friend just invited our attention to this article in Salon, which takes a lengthy dive into the devolving relationships among capital, labor, government, environment, and fairness across our national economy. While it doesn’t come right out and say it, the basic message is that since Reagan officially initiated “Supply Side Economics” in 1981 with the help of the Heritage Foundation, Big Banks, and Republican tax cuts, the wealthiest corporations and individuals on the planet have had $iv’s plugged into the veins of the bottom 99% and are still sucking.
Since those policies were initiated under Reagan, and institutionalized under Bushes I and II, some $50 trillion has been transferred from the lowest-income 99% of Americans to the top 1%…with most of it going to a tiny fraction of that 1%.
We all remember the curiously timed “subprime meltdown” that triggered the economic Crash of 2008, just as Dubya was leaving office. It came at the end of a long string of “financial innovations” involving complex private equity “products” like subprime mortgages and various “derivatives” of mortgages, all intertwined and interdependent…and with very little “There” there, a house not even of cards, but of the flimsiest paper. And Bush’s Fed had been dropping interest rates for years “to stimulate the housing market.”
Oh, and by the way, around that time we had a very happy visitor to the wine shop around then who was a broker in NY who had just invented a new derivative that was about to hit the markets and make him a bazillionaire. Hmm, I wonder how that turned out…?
Many of our friends here on the Island had bought their homes with the “new mortgages” available then (to stimulate home ownership) with lower down payments, but higher interest rates and lots of fine print and hidden risks. Countless defaulted properties were repossessed at that time under various unfavorable terms that basically took away any equity that had been earned. Lots of those home owners got dumped back into the rental market, the direct victims of the private equity robbers who had both ripped them off first with bogus mortgages and then by pushing rents up and up.
And that’s not all. On top of all that, these private equity firms then just sat on the repo’d properties for years while they continued to generated massive tax write-offs for them while also limiting supply and keeping housing prices high. The 2008 crash then brought economic ruin for lots of ordinary people but built Scrooge McDuck money bins for the billionaires.
It is hard to imagine how exactly these thieves imagined an actual economy could survive either this kind of wealth concentration or the financial power concentration that would most likely go with it. Of course, maybe that’s the secret plan– building Utopia and then just turning over the keys to the survivors? Hmm, doesn’t seem likely, does it?
In any case here we are two months from the election that will decide whether there will even BE a future of any kind. We are seeing and feeling the winds of change all around us in a way that is beginning to feel almost hopeful, and that feels comforting in tentative sort of way. And each day we see more signs that the Tweetster is shriveling before our eyes.
Maybe these Project 2025 guys don’t need him to govern; they just need him long enough to give them their Authoritarian Amerika, and they can take it from there without him.
Scary stuff.
2072 Granger Way