lummi island wine tasting Feb 21 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Feb 21 4-6 pm
clouds’ illusions we recall…
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Breton – Incorporates the flavors of the french Brittany region. Bread flour and fresh milled buckwheat and rye make for interesting flavor and the salt is set gris -the grey salt from the region that brings more mineral flavors to this bread. – $5/loaf
Spelt Levain – Spelt is an ancient grain that is a wheat. It has a nutty, slightly sweet flavor and has gluten but it isn’t as strong as the gluten in modern wheat. This bread is made with a culture that is used to create a levain before the final dough is mixed with traditional bread flour, spelt flour, fresh milled whole spelt and fresh milled whole rye. It is a great all around bread – $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
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.
The Wolftrap Syrah Mourvèdre Viognier ’21 South Africa $13
Consistently appealing aromas and flavors of ripe plum, red currant, violets, Italian herbs and exotic spices; vibrant flavors of dark berries and spicy plum with hints of orange peel that linger on a juicy finish. (read more)
Marietta Old Vine Red ’22 California $16
Zinfandel-based red blend from Geyserville with lovely bright plum fruit, dark and focused notes of briar and black tea, perfect balance of big flavor and vibrant sophistication, with medium body, sweet spice and velvety tannins to pair with almost any occasion.
Economics of the Heart: Prosperity Depends on Trust
Maggit leader poses proudly for Fox cameras…
While musing for a topic this week, I came across this site for Deloitte’s Economic Outlook for January. In the early years of the wine shop we had a periodic Canadian visitor who would load up a box of white wines, stay for a little chat, and disappear for some months. As I recall he had been with Deloitte for some years, and that they had something to do with “accounting.” Those were always enjoyable conversations, and I have been curious about the company; so on a whim clicked on the report and was pleasantly surprised to find an engaging perspective on a broad range of international economic topics that affect everyone, everywhere, every day.
Moreover, every one of these global economic perspectives underlines the absolute necessity of open, honest, collaborative economic and political relationships among all the countries of the world to have any collective hope for a sustainable future. Below are links and brief intros to four arenas that will be affecting the future of the entire world, and which will be made much worse by the ongoing coup attempt of Maggit loyalists, who have no clue about any of it, angrily tearing down 250 years of Constitutional government for no particular reason.
Read on…
“The best” combination of policies should allow real US GDP to grow by 2.4% in 2025 before slowing to 1.7% in 2026. The negative economic effects of tariffs, such as higher inflation and weaker real GDP growth, are not expected to be fully felt until 2026 as per our baseline scenario. In the meantime, rising tariffs will encourage frontloading of imports and consumer spending. On the positive side, this is expected to boost consumer spending temporarily and raise business inventories. On the downside, it is expected to cause imports to grow faster than exports, thereby creating a drag on GDP from the external sector making our baseline scenario highly unlikely to materialize exactly as we have outlined here. Understanding the uncertainty surrounding federal policy, we have created alternative scenarios where the economy could perform better or worse depending on the mix of those policies. This scenario would cause US real GDP to grow by just 1.6% in 2025 and contract by 2.1% in 2026.
There are countless ways international goods trade will keep changing in response to climate change. For example, EU countries impose a carbon tax on energy imports proportional to their carbon impacts, decreasing their demand relative to renewable or lower-carbon resources. Despite Maggit-man’s $multimillion debt to Big Oil while alienating much of the world against the US, both our carbon production and consumption are likely to substantially slow our progress toward a greener economy.
COVID-19 and Income Inequality
Disparities in income and wealth continue to be exacerbated because of differentials in occupational employment among US racial groups. Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately employed in low-paying occupations5; low-paying jobs were often shed most quickly in a recession, Black and Hispanic jobs were both more likely to be disrupted by Covid shutdowns, least likely to have health insurance, and most likely to have been earning the least. Rising income inequality during recessions is a consistent consequence of worsening labor market conditions during a downturn, making rising income inequality a predictable consequence of worsening labor market conditions during a downturn.
The Link Between Trust and Economic Prosperity
The share of the global population that believes “most people can be trusted” fell by roughly 20% over the last 15 years.1 Rising inequality, political polarization, and a higher frequency of what were previously considered once-in-a-lifetime disruptions, such as the Covid pandemic, have exacerbated this downward trend, with serious implications for the economy. In fact, in 1972, Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow famously wrote, “Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time.”2 A business (or government) thrives on the cumulative trust each of its stakeholders place in it. In this sense, trust is like an interdependent web that connects all actors in an economy and influences how they work together to drive or stifle growth; as trust improves, economic prosperity grows…and, we presume, vice versa.
lummi island wine tasting Feb 14 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Feb 14 4-6 pm
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Pan de Cioccolate – A delicious chocolate artisan bread that isn’t an enriched sweet pastry dough with lots of eggs, butter and sugar. Rather this bread is a rich chocolate bread made with a levain, bread flour and fresh milled rye flour, honey for sweetness, vanilla and plenty of dark chocolate. Makes fabulous toast, even better french toast – $5/loaf.
Dried Cherries and Pecans – also made with a levain that is mixed the night before final mixing of the dough using a sourdough starter. The final dough is made with the levain, bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and then loaded up with dried cherries and toasted pecans. A nice rustic loaf that goes well with meats and cheese –$5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Chocolate Babka Rolls – A sweet pastry dough full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled and spread with a chocolate filling, rolled up and cut into individual rolls that are placed in baking forms for baking and then brushed with sugar syrup after baking. I’ve heard some people say they hide these to keep them all to themselves. – 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
Cloudlift chardonnay ’22 Washington $28
Scents of honeysuckle, sweet lemon curd, and pear drift out of the glass, with mouth watering acidity carrying flavors of crisp green apple and pear with a burst of lemon zest on the finish.
Humble Roots Shiraz – Viognier ’20 Australia $18
Delightful blend of 98% Shiraz and 2% Viognier; shows layers of fleshy plum, oak, and blackberry with earthy hints of incense, ash, cocoa, black currant, and pepper.
Chiarlo Barbera d’Asti ’21 Italy $18
Ruby red with violet hue; elegant nose of rich plum and berry with notes of flowers and bark; palate of red cherry and red currants with a savory finish.
Economics of the Heart: Underground Discussions
A lot of us believe that the emerging American civil war is the culmination of decades of deliberate lies from right-wing newspapers, radio, internet, and TV (is there still “tv?”) programming with the single goal of making millions of people believe wholeheartedly in a fake reality. While we can probably trust our local media about local events, our new federal “government” has now abandoned both law and conscience in its apparent mission to create as much pain for as many people as it can. (see last week’s post about the Red Meanies).
One natural outcome of that recent history is that a lot of mainstream media has lost our trust. At the same time, a lot of talented writers and activists have moved their regular columns into backrooms on the web where they get subscribers interested enough in their ideas to pay a modest subscription fee. We are pretty new at this, but here are a few that are consistently informative and thought-provoking as we gear up to protect our democracy.
lummi island wine tasting feb 7 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Feb 7 4-6 pm
….time to Reinvent Elephant Repellent
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Pain Meunier –also known as miller’s bread and was developed to honor the miller who mills the wheat. Made with pre-fermented dough it contains all portions of the wheat berry: flour, fresh milled whole wheat, cracked wheat and wheat germ. Always a favorite and a great all around bread. It makes the best toast! – $5/loaf
Sonnenblumenbrot – aka Sunflower Seed Bread; made with a pre-ferment that ferments a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast overnight before mixing the final dough. with freshly milled rye, then loaded up with toasted sunflower seeds and some barley malt syrup for sweetness.. a typical German seed bread- $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Kouign Aman “with : Made ” with a twist” from the same traditional laminated french pastry as croissants, with a levain for sourdough flavor and some pre-fermented dough for strength. Rolled out w/ sugar, black sesame seeds,and ginger, cut into squares and baked in cupcake tins to caramelize sugar and butter for a delicious, crunchy, delightful pastry. – 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
Chapoutier Belleruche Blanc ’22 France $14
Delicious blend of grenache blanc and roussanne; fragrant and perfumed with a light, grilled-lemon note over ripe melon, and a lingering palate of rich white peach.
Marietta Old Vine Red ’22 California $16
Zinfandel-based red blend from Geyserville with lovely bright plum fruit, dark and focused notes of briar and black tea, a perfect balance of big flavor and vibrant sophistication, with medium body, mouth of sweet spice and velvety tannins to pair with almost any meal or occasion.
Natura Carmenere ’22 Chile $14
Attractive bouquet with cherry aromas and hints of chocolate and spice. Big volume taste on the palate with soft round tannins and a firm, well-balanced structure. Good balance between fruit and oak with a long, juicy finish. 100% organically grown grapes.
Economics of the Heart: Attack of the Red Meanies
The Beatles’ zany Yellow Submarine animated film came out in 1968 and was instantly a global hit. The Bad Guys in the film were named after the blue meanies species of psychedelic psilocybin mushroom. (film clip). In the past week the Republican Senate has approved most of Magaman’s breathtakingly unqualified Cabinet appointments; the richest man in the world has dismantled core elements of our national security data protection apparatus; and the new AG’s first order of business is to proclaim the beginning of an illegal purge against all federal employees whose duties during the Biden Administration happened to include work on the Jan 6 investigations.
We have all seen the many interviews and hearings with these appointees, and seen that not a single one is qualified for their specific positions or a high-level security clearance. Meanwhile, Teslaman has already trashed much of our national security apparatus in a hubris-heavy unauthorized raid. Similarly, most of the Maga ‘lawmakers’ (we use the term very loosely) turned two blind eyes to the irresponsible lunacy of the Project 2025 coup now in progress.
The only consistent philosophy behind the current coup is some shared Anger of Unfulfilled Entitlement. We see it in each of the Cabinet nominees and across a wide swath of Republicans in the House since about 2006.
It is not lack of intelligence that disqualifies them; it is their complete lack of Honor. No rationalization they use to justify their current incarnation as deliberate traitors to their oaths absolves them from the damage they mean to inflict on their fellow citizens in particular and on a stable world order in general. It’s been only two weeks and already our allies are backing away from us.
These conspirators will never be content just to get rich and powerful. Just as Musk never seems able to come to rest and savor his accomplishments, their common thread is an unconscious conviction that no matter much they own or control, they will never get the emotional nourishment they need.
The sad irony for them and for all of us is not that they don’t have enough already; it’s that early childhood experiences with parents convinced them they would never get the love they need. In Buddhism there is a mealtime ritual of setting aside seven grains of rice for the Hungry Ghosts, beings who are unable to take in nourishment no matter how much they eat.
So…the Blue Meanies probably didn’t have any conscious reason to be mean. No one has a viable reason to to be mean. But when children despair their loneliness for long enough, the unconscious core belief behind Red Meanie faces is a small child’s hidden expectation that “I will never get the love I need.” And even when they get it they can’t let it in.
So we must of course have compassion for all these meanies. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to stop them in their tracks.
May all beings be free from suffering,
Enjoy the ease of well-being,
Be free from fear and violence,
Be stewards of all living things,
With kindness, compassion, love,
patience, clarity, and wisdom…
lummi island wine tasting jan 31 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Jan 31 4-6 pm
Jan 20 wine shop observation of Martin Luther King Day…
(candle-lit due to temporary power outage…a good time had by all and
a distracting relief from “other matters most devoutly to be eschewed.. 🙂
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Sorry, no Bread This Week… 
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
Schmitt Pinot Blanc ’17 Alsace $19
Creamy-smooth nose of subdued pear notes adds an earthy element on the palate and adds an earthy element toward a dry, smooth finish.
Argento Malbec ’20 Argentina $13
From organically grown grapes; deep purple hue; inviting aromas of red berries and flowers, and flavors of plum and sweet blackberry; finishes with ripe, balanced tannins– way over-delivers for its modest price.
Tre Donne D’Arc Langhe Rosso ’22 Italy $20
Blend of oak-aged Barbera, and Pinot Nero with unoaked Dolcetto and Freisa that makes for a lively, fresh wine with rich, moody fruit, bracing purity, and fascinating depth.
Economics of the Heart: La Résistance a commencé…
St Mary’s school Bangor, Me
My mother was a third-generation Irish Catholic, and my father’s parents were Polish immigrants, also Catholic. I went to a Catholic school in Bangor, Maine from “subprimary” through second grade. My teacher the first two years was an attractive, kind, cheerful, and pleasant young nun named Sister Cecilia whom I recall with some affection.
The three-story school building was of very solid stone, with somewhat dim corridors and a little army of habited nuns aging from young and charming to old and crotchety that were kinda witchy and scary. From time to time some kid would do something wrong and get sent upstairs to the principal to get “the Strap”…a spanking with a leather covered steel bar. The kids would come back sobbing. (gulp!)
The windowless stone corridors always had a threatening element of darkness, of hidden rules with grave implications, and cause for some memorable nightmares in which the school was haunted…and the nagging fear that if you died without going to confession you could go to Hell or purgatory and suffer horrible tortures. After all, you’d think, the pictures in the little kids’ catechism showed them with little black sin-dots would grow on their white, sinless hearts every time they said a dirty word or did a million other bad things you didn’t even know were sins. Heavy stuff for a little kid…!
It was therefore a huge relief to start third grade in a modern, light-filled public school with well-educated, kind, interesting teachers of both genders in ordinary clothes. For a 6 yr old it was like being set free from a dark, scary prison. The teachers included many WWII vets and wives, kind and generous with their time. Occasionally they would talk about Bible stories as stories, not “religion.”
My takeaway from those experiences has for a long time been that there has to be a line between religion and politics. The glue that holds people in Maga’s grip is a toxic blend of personal grievances, built on 35 years of deliberate lies from right wing media convincing lazy minds that liberals, gays, Democrats, immigrants, blacks, women, the poor are coming to take their stuff. These Maggites claim to be “Christian,” but instead of aspiring toward kindness, compassion, love, patience, clarity, and wisdom, they preach meanness, malice, cruelty, selfishness, spite, hatefulness, maliciousness, hostility, and violence in the name of the same mythic Jesus (you know, the one that drove out the money-lenders). How does that make sense??
Now only ten days into the new Maggite assault on our Constitutional rights, environment, economy, safety, and long-held national values, we are beginning to see increasingly organized resistance against Project 2025’s corporate-funded, autocracy-aspiring, angry white supremacist aspirations from many State Attorneys General, environmentalists, women, veterans, and everyone else committed to our 250-year old Constitutional government.
It’s gonna be a long battle, but la Résistance is already gearing up, as shown for example in the following recommended articles:
link to Bishop Budde’s NPR interview
link to Olivia Troye note about Kash Patel
2072 Granger Way
