lummi island wine tasting mar 7 ’24
Spring Hours!
- Fridays 4-6 pm for wine tasting and bread order pickup;
- Saturdays 3-5 pm for wine tasting…and sales…and the usual frivolity and chatter…!
ahquiet enough for conversation…
This week’s wine tasting
Marchetti Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico ’22 Italy $14
Verdicchio/Malvasia blend using only free-run juice; pale straw color with green overtones; intense bouquet of citrus, lemon zest, and floral notes,with complex fruity character, and crisp, well-balanced palate.
Cote 125 Corbieres Rouge ’19 France $15
Classic Corbieres blend of carignan, grenache, syrah, cinsault; rich and concentrated with blueberry and strawberry aromas and flavors, with notes of spices and black pepper, good balance, and a long, smooth finish.
Chakana Estate Selection Malbec ’20 Argentina $20
Opaque, bright purple in color; pleasing nose of plums and spicy attic dust; full bodied palate of plums and spice with good length, balanced acidity, soft tannins, and lingering finish.
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Honey, Wheat, Lemon & Poppy seeds – Made with a poolish that ferments some of the flour, yeast and water overnight. This results in a very active pre-ferment which is mixed the next day with the final ingredients which includes a nice mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. Some honey, poppy seeds and freshly grated lemon peel round out the flavors. – $5/loaf.
Rye w/ Currants, Pumpkin Seeds & Cracked Coriander – Made with a starter fed with rye instead of wheat flour, the final dough includes bread flour and freshly milled rye flour, some molasses for sweetness and pumpkin seeds, currants and cracked coriander seed make for an interesting flavor profile – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Pain aux Raisin – Made with the same laminated dough as croissants; the dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with a mix of golden raisins and dried cranberries soaked in sugar syrup,and rolled up and sliced before baking. – 2/$5
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: Authoritarian Followers
Trump-26 by TaylorHerring
We all either already knew or have been learning about authoritarian leaders, and we pretty much get it: they are only okay when they are in complete charge of everyone else. But why anyone would believe, follow, support, or agree with these people is a total mystery to many of us. So who are these people who line up for Tweetster rallies, send him money, threaten anyone who doesn’t back him, get all their “facts” from Fox News and talk radio, and apparently sin as much as anyone else but don’t let themselves enjoy it or admit it to anyone.
It turns out that the personality of the authoritarian leader is quite different from that of the followers. While the authoritarian leader is driven by a sense of “I’m only okay when I have absolute control,” social psychologist Bob Altermeyer studied the followers of such people for many years and found they share several traits and beliefs:
- A willing submissiveness to those they accept as established and legitimate authorities;
- Ongoing general aggressiveness against people they perceive to be sanctioned (against) by established authorities; and
- A high degree of adherence to the narrow social conventions they perceive to be endorsed by those they accept as established authorities.
So for the followers there seems to be a lot here about “I’m only okay when someone very strong is in complete control,” but to a lot of us that sounds like something “devoutly to be eschewed,” as one old sailor once said about being in a hurricane in a sailboat.
The dynamic between the authoritarian leader and his (usually) followers is that he gives them both license and approval for physical aggression against those who are perceived as inferior and nonconforming in various ways. They share an unspoken ethos that the most nonconforming deserve the worst punishments, the most powerful deserve the most deference, and apparently, that delivering punishment to those the leader pegs as “enemies” is irresistible. (picture the mob-mind at the Capitol on Jan 6…)
Curiously, these followers also share a narrow conventionalism about how people should behave, even in their private lives. In that sense, many are religious fundamentalists, with limited abilities to discern or perhaps even imagine shades of gray. In this sense they seem deeply imprisoned by the absolutism of their beliefs.
We close tonight with a few interesting related research findings for the US:
— Authoritarian voters have generally preferred Republican leaders;
— Tweetster supporters are substantially more likely than other Republicans to score highly on authoritarian aggression and group-based dominance; and
–Authoritarianism is different from Conservatism because authoritarianism reflects aversion to differences across space (i.e. diversity of people and beliefs at a given moment) while conservatism reflects aversion to changes over time.“
We all see and feel these deep divisions in our country about very basic values of what is true or not true, good or bad, desirable or undesirable, fair or unfair, right or wrong, and find it puzzling that there could be such broad disagreement about such fundamental perceptions.
On reflection it seems extremely unlikely that these nation-threatening divisions just happened by themselves. It seems more likely that a lot of deliberate effort has gone into fostering and promulgating them across our country for many years toward our downfall and their ascension. Creepy stuff…!
(We started this piece by looking at this item in Wikipedia, and found it so interesting it’s as far as we got…)
lummi island wine tasting mar 1 ’24
Spring Hours: now open both Friday and Saturday afternoons!
Beginning this weekend we begin our new Spring hours,
OPEN…
Fridays 4-6 pm for wine tasting and bread order pickup;
Saturdays 3-5 pm for wine tasting…and sales…and the usual frivolity and chatter…!
This week’s wine tasting
Celler Can Blau Can Blau Montsant Red
Ponzi Pinot Gris ’21 Oregon $16
Aromas of honeydew melon, candied citrus peel, white peach and honeysuckle; balanced palate
of sweet tangerine peel, meringue, lime, apricot and light white pepper.
Can Blau Can Blau ’20 Spain $16
Aromas and flavors of cocoa bean and ripe, dark fruits and berries, a seamless texture, and long, silky finish that improves with aeration.
Chakana Estate Selection Malbec ’20 Argentina $20
Opaque, bright purple in color; pleasing nose of plums and spicy attic dust; full bodied palate of plums and spice with good length, balanced acidity, soft tannins, and lingering finish.
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Multi Grain English Muffin Loaf – Originally intended for English muffins that instead became a loaf, with nice mix of bread flour, spelt, whole wheat and oatmeal for a lot of flavor. Add buttermilk and butter and get a nice light, tender crumb. Delicious for toast or sandwiches! – $5/loaf
French Country Bread – A levain bread from a sourdough culture of bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat, and a bit of toasted wheat germ. The final dough gets a long cool overnight ferment to develop into a rustic country loaf! – $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, cut into individual rolls, and placed in baking forms, and brushed with sugar syrup after baking. Some people say they hide them to to be sure to get one…!.- 2/$5
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: Following the Bread Crumbs
A few weeks ago we started musing about how our nation and its Constitution seem to be arriving at the brink of being overthrown by a bizarre, extremely well-funded, and decades-long constellation of very wealthy, focused, and patient conspirators whose plans have been festering and evolving for decades. Below are a few reads to ponder, and see if you can find any links among the bread crumbs.
John Birch Society ...“Birchers helped forge an alternative political tradition on the far right and that the core ideas were an anti-establishment, apocalyptic, more violent mode of politics, conspiracy theories, anti-interventionism and more explicit racism and…were some of the first people on the right to take up questions of public morality, of Christian evangelical politics…”
Heritage Foundation (see also) ...reporter asks : “At CPAC last year, Victor Orban said Hungary is “the place where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it.” …HF President’s reply: “It’s all true. It should be celebrated.”
Project for a New American Century “To win the “War on Terror,” the signatories outlined several key steps: capturing and eliminating Osama Bin Laden, overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime, targeting Hezbollah, defending Israel and forcing the Palestinian Authority to eradicate terrorism and finally, to substantially reinforce the United States defense budget.”…
******** ******* *******
Just a moment…just a moment...uh-huh….uh-huh…WHAT?? ARE YOU SERIOUS????...the Supreme Court did WHAT??!!
Um, sorry folks, but we are terminating this broadcast early because recent events have demonstrated that there is now no need to make a case that the enemies of democracy have been working on scuttling ours for several decades, because today’s news demonstrates two things very clearly:
1. Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to stop all pending federal court cases against the Tweetster for the foreseeable future (presumably till after the next election and ITS years of litigation while the nation and the world succumb to Global Fascism and Global Warming); and
2. Sadly, since the Republican coup we were intending to warn about and fight against is now un fait accompli, and our worst fears sont devenus réalité, we must unite and VOTE if we are to have any hope of restoring the Constitutional Democracy we grew up in.
We have eight months to save our nation and our planet. No time to waste…
lummi island wine tasting feb 23 ’24
Friday, Feb 16
OPEN for wine tasting and bread order pickup Friday from 4-6pm
NOTE:Beginning in March we will also be open Saturdays from 3-5pm!
This week’s wine tasting
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.
Domaine Chibaou Sauvignon Blanc ’22 France $19
no notes available
Garzon Tannat Reserva ’21 Uruguay $35
Deep purple color, fresh spicy aromas of plums and raspberries, full-bodied palate with ripe tannins and minerality make for a terroir-driven wine of unique identity.
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Multi Grain Levain – Made with a sourdough culture and using a flavorful mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A nice mixture of flax, sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds and some oatmeal add great flavor and crunch. And just a little honey for some sweetness. – $5/loaf
Polenta Levain – Also made with a levain, known as sourdough, in which the sourdough starter is fed and built up over several days, then mixed with bread flour and polenta in the final dough mix. This bread is a nice rustic loaf with great corn flavor. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Black Sesame & Candied Lemon Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with fresh lemon zest and candied lemon and topped with a black sesame streusel before baking. Ooh la la, what’s not to like? – 2/$5
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: Alexey Navalny
“Alexey Navalny чб 2” by Митя Алешковский is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5.
For the past week I have been grieving for this man at some semi-conscious level. I never understood why he chose to go back to Russia after Putin had already tried to kill him once. Nor could I understand his perennial good spirits in prison. But since his apparent execution in Russia, it has been hard to think about him without feeling tears in my eyes. It is heartbreaking, and I don’t know exactly why.
He must have known it would eventually happen before he chose to go back, but he went anyway; and in most photos during his incarceration he seemed in good spirits. On a mission, perhaps, to make his people recognize their oppression and stand up to it themselves…?
I came to feel that he was in his way leading something important, something he believed in deeply about how people should be allowed to live. He confronted the megalithic power and penchant for cruelty of Putin’s post-Soviet Russia with a rare inner strength, commitment, and an endearing kind of innocence and commitment, all honorable pursuits.
It is hard to say why I feel such grief about his deeply symbolic, sacrificial journey…some combination perhaps of futility, horror, sympathy, outrage at the brutality, and hanging out here for so many days on the edge of tears I don’t understand.
And I wonder…is this touching everyone this deeply…?
lummi island wine tasting feb 16 ’24
Friday, Feb 16
OPEN for wine tasting and bread order pickup from 4-6pm!
contrails over the slough…
contrails over the slough…
This week’s wine tasting
Rocks of Bawn Shafts and Furrow White ’22 WA $19
Flavorful white Bordeaux blend of sauv blanc and semillon showing the waxy texture and fig flavors from semillon contrast beautifully with the fragrant aromas of the sauv blanc.
Top Source Columbia Valley Red ’19 WA/OR $23
60% Grenache, 40% Syrah; aromas of Bing cherries and crushed strawberry with aromas of black pepper, chocolate, and grilled meat and flavors of blackberry, dark plum, thyme, rosemary and spicy paprika; smooth, soft mouthfeel, tangy acidity and silky tannins.
Cote 125 Corbieres Carignan/Grenache France $12
Low yields of Syrah, Grenache and old vines Carignan; rich and concentrated, with blueberry and strawberry aromas with spices and black pepper on the palate, nice balance, and a long, smooth finish.
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Kamut Levain – Kamut, aka khorasan wheat, is an ancient grain with more protein than conventional wheat that some people find more digestible. The bread is made with a levain fermented overnight before mixing with with bread flour and fresh milled whole kamut flour. It has a nutty, rich flavor and makes a golden color. – $5/loaf
Le Pave d’Autrefois – Translates roughly as old paving stones. This is a ciabatta like bread which has a lot of hydration so it isn’t really shaped so much as simply divided into approximate squares – hence the paving stones name. Made with a mix of bread flour as well as fresh milled whole wheat, rye and buckwheat flours for a lot of hearty whole grain goodness. A great artisan bread -$5/loaf (or paving stone)
and pastry this week…
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 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: Following the Bread Crumbs
Vietnam War 1966 – SWIFT Boats
Our inquiry from last week continues to explore how the hawkish, intolerant, pro-corporate Republican Party we never liked but could work with, sort of, sometimes, became the Maga-bots and domestic enemies we see everywhere today. Here are a few reads for this week as we search for the common threads that tie these things together, in chronological order…
1985: Under FCC Chairman Mark S. Fowler, a communications attorney who had served on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, the FCC released a report stating that the fairness doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. In 1987 Reagan vetoed Congressional resistance, thus removing the “single most important requirement of (broadcast) operation in the public interest – the sine qua non for grant of a renewal of license, and opening the door for the nonstop, anger-mongering Fake News that has proliferated and expanded across every media platform. This is what made Maga possible.
1997: The Project for a New American Century was launched by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Originally conceived to promote American Leadership in the world, and espousing “strong interventionist and moral clarity foreign policy,” it was intertwined with both Kristol’s American Standard and the American Enterprise Institute, and was the foundation for the neoconservative policies of the Bush II administration. This is the kind of thinking that brought us the downfall of Colin Powell and the invasions and long-time occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
2000: Bush v. Gore : Bush won the popular vote in Florida by some 500 votes after a month of court battles and was declared winner by the Supreme Court. There was never an official state-wide recount. Gore won the national popular vote by a substantial margin.
2004: Bush v. Kerry: Bush prevailed after a campaign season of smearing Kerry’s service with the truly despicable campaign tactic that became known as “Swift-Boating” and several eyebrow-raising voting irregularities in Ohio.
Yesterday: Speaker Johnson recessed the House, ditching a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, important allies with whom we have a mutual interdependence and upon which the rules-based international order depends. WTF? Is he even Human…?
to be continued…
2072 Granger Way