lummi island wine tasting feb 25 ’22
Wine Shop Schedule Update
Based on today’s updated Covid data for Whatcom County, we will remain closed this weekend. However, daily new cases in our area continued to fall last week, with a 43% reduction in hospitalizations, and test positivity rate down to 20% from over 80% two weeks ago. Based on these numbers and forecasts, we are now open for shopping and sales appointments.
If these trends continue we expect to open for tasting in the next couple of weeks.
We are in the process of restocking our shelves, updating our “order wine” link above, and looking forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks!
Friday Bread This Week
Weekly bread order pickup will continue to be at Island Bakery this week.
If you are on the bread email list, you will have received order and pickup info from Janice. Pickup is in her driveway out on West Shore Rd from 4-5:30, with a fire pit to keep the Usual Suspects (and their dogs) comfy for a bit.
Current expectations are that bread pickup will likely return to the wine shop in some fashion in the next few weeks.
To get on the bread list, click on the “contact us” link above and fill out the form.
Mailing List Issues
Last week the new mailout system sort of worked, again with a full day’s delay. So still a few glitches.
So tonight we will mail the link via gmail, and when the auto feature decides it’s in the mood, you should receive the email version.
Economics of the Heart: War and Entitlement
Parable of the Monk and the Scorpion, Mattimore Cronin https://medium.com/@mattimore/parable-of-the-monk-and-the-scorpion-1dcbc77891c3
The Big News across the entire world tonight is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is hard to imagine that anyone on the planet– even Putin– finds either joy or solace in it. So what kind of economic calculation leads someone to believe such an action will yield benefits that will make it worthwhile? Well, it all depends on the congruency between our principles and what is expedient.
One major drawback of our primate ancestry is the strange combination of having the characteristics of both highly social herd animals on the one hand (paw?) and asocial predators on the other(s) as circumstances evoke in our nervous systems.
Every war begins with some group of males deciding that some other group of males either has or wants to take their group’s Stuff, be it land, or water, food, women, or gods, and decides they must attack them and take Their Stuff first. History is replete with examples: The Sunnis and the Shia, the Catholics and the Protestants, the Christians and the Jews, the Whites and the Blacks, the Hutus and the Tutsis, Us and Them, per omnia secula seculorum.
Most wars are in some way about one group’s sense of entitlement to something some other group controls. In this case it is a bit more perverse, denying a country’s right to an independent existence, and being willing to destroy it completely as punishment. Here’s hoping the Russians have a 25th amendment and a growing willingness to use it. And wishing miracles for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters.
lummi island wine tasting feb 18 ’22
Wine Shop Schedule Update
Based on today’s updated Covid data for Whatcom County, we will remain closed this weekend. However, daily new cases have been falling rapidly, and as we go to press tonight there were no new cases reported today, a landmark to celebrate as the Omicron tidal wave gets past us. With luck we can all start exhaling again soon!
Gov. Inslee, like many other state governors, has announced an end to mask mandates in most places around the Spring Equinox on March 21. This is part of a trend described this week by Jennifer Rubin that those of us who have chosen to get fully vaccinated can stop worrying about trying to protect those who have not and will not. There is a growing consensus that in another month the risks will be as low as they are going to get, and the options for treating those who do get it continue to improve.
In preparation for reopening in early March, we are restocking our shelves, updating our online order/pickup links, and looking forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks!
Friday Bread This Week
Weekly bread order pickup will continue to be at Island Bakery this week.
If you are on the bread email list, you will have received order and pickup info from Janice. Pickup is in her driveway out on West Shore Rd from 4-5:30, with a fire pit to keep the Usual Suspects (and their dogs) comfy for a bit.
Current expectations are that bread pickup will likely return to the wine shop in some fashion when we reopen.
Mailing List Issues
Last week the new mailout system sort of worked, but with an unexpected delay. So still a few glitches.
This week we will be another test. Thanks for bearing with us; hopefully we will have it sorted out before we reopen in a couple of weeks!
Fingers crossed…again!
Economics of the Heart: Freedom from Religion
St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Bangor, ME ca 1950
I started school a long, long time ago, in the fall of 1950, in a Catholic school in Bangor, Maine. I was four years old (birthday in the fall), and they didn’t call it kindergarten, they called it subprimary. The school was a three-story, very solid stone building with dark, windowless corridors and occasional overhead lights, cave-like. But the classrooms were walled with windows and quite bright and pleasant.
My teacher was Sister Cecilia. She was young, bright, and charming, and the following year she was my teacher again in first grade, a good thing. In second grade things got complicated, and I went to a couple of schools in Hartford in the fall of ’52 before coming back to finish second grade at my old school in Bangor. My teacher then was a small, crotchety old nun who looked (to a little kid) for all the world like a witch. Kinda scary.
Several times a day we knelt in the aisles to say prayers, and on Fridays the whole school would spend much of the afternoon in the next-door old Church (beautiful but vaguely threatening) for novenas or rosaries. There was also Catechism, a little book with things to memorize and idealized cartoon pictures of little boys and girls so you could see how their pure white hearts got little black spots on them if they said a bad word, or did a bad thing, or ate meat on Friday. And if you did something really bad ( a Mortal Sin) and died before you went to confession and got communion, you would Go To Hell Forever and Ever. I can’t imagine I was the only one who had serious nightmares about all of that. Scary stuff. So I was about six years old when I started suspecting that Religion is the Original Authoritarianism.
From third grade on I went to public school. It is hard to describe what a Relief it was to go to a well-lit, big-windowed “modern” school, with cheerful teachers in ordinary clothes, no threats of eternal damnation, no Dread of saying or doing something wrong and maybe having to go upstairs to Sister Mary Principal and get The Strap, sort of a black leather slide rule case she might hit you with and make you throw up when you came back to class and a janitor would come and pour stuff like eraser pieces on it so it wouldn’t smell so bad. It is still amazingly vivid, though I haven’t thought about it for 70 years. So yes, public school was a huge relief.
So it is with some serious concern that we read this recent article in Salon about the Supreme Court’s ongoing war against every American’s right to the freedom to Practice or NOT practice any religion as they choose, as recent Supreme Court decisions have begun to question. It is also very much worth noting that Two Thirds of the current justices are Catholic: Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and…one outlier, even-keeled Justice Sotomayor. Sadly, Justice Gorsuch is a “former” Catholic, with all the baggage that goes with it, and Kagan and Breyer are not. And though our Prez is a Catholic, let us all pray that he takes care not to appoint another one. More than Congress, more than the Cabinet, more than any other governing group, the Supreme Court should provide proportional representation of religious, racial, and ethnic ideology, and this court is Way, Out-of-control Catholic and White. Refer to paragraphs one and two above about why that is a Really Bad Idea.
The original Constitution was quite vague about many things, including religious freedom, saying only, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And this has left the fundamental question open for 250 years about whether citizens of this country have to right not only to practice whatever religion they choose, but also the secular freedom to make their own moral and ethical decisions. The obvious contradiction here is the Right’s insistence that on the one hand no one should be required to get a vaccine during a devastating Pandemic, but any woman can be forced to give birth from an unplanned pregnancy.
The controversy before us is whether every American is free to choose to follow or not follow the beliefs and practices of any particular religion. This is the realm of secularism, which we are apparently not clearly guaranteed by our Constitution. This ambiguity and the increasing Starboard (right) List of our current Supreme Court to impose the Catholic doctrine is made clear by this article, which provides a pretty good summary of the Right’s Assertion that our Country is and always has been “Christian.” And like all tyrannical regimes in history, it starts with the Book of the Law, declares their personal anointment as Interpreters of the Law, and asserts their Obligation to punish anyone who does not follow Their Law.
lummi island wine tasting feb 11 ’22
Wine Shop Schedule Update
Based on current Covid data for Whatcom County, no wine tasting again this weekend.
Whatcom County continues to be a Covid hot spot. On the bright side, new cases across the County have fallen off by almost 70% during the past week, and case numbers are lowest for residents over 65, and next lowest for those between 45 and 64…you know…our base! Interestingly, vaccination rates are highest in the 25-49 age group (92%), next in the 65+ group (85%), closely followed by the 50-64 group (78%).
The bad news is that because the Omicron variant is by far most contagious variant so far, it has spread virtually unimpeded across the country, the fastest by far, finding ready hosts in the unvaccinated. Compared to the first wave two years ago, the Omicron wave has raced across the world in the space of only a few months. New cases are falling rapidly, and deaths are expected to follow them with about a two-week lag. If those trends continue, risks are expected to fall rapidly over the next several weeks as herd immunity grows from new vaccinations and from acquired immunity from having had the disease.
We are beginning the process of restocking our shelves, and will be updating our online order/pickup selections over the next week, and hope to be open for sales soon.
Friday Bread This Week
For the time being Bread Pickup will continue to be at Island Bakery. If you are on the bread email list, you will have received order and pickup info from Janice. Pickup is in her driveway out on West Shore Rd, with a fire pit to keep the Usual Suspects comfy.
Current expectations are that bread pickup will likely return to the wine shop when we reopen.
Mailing List Issues
Well, this week we will try posting this brief missive via a new app suggested by a “trusted source” who is responsible for getting this blog started in the first place back in ’09. At the moment we have no idea how or whether it works. If it does, great! If it doesn’t we will follow up with an email tomorrow (Friday).
Fingers crossed!
lummi island wine tasting feb 4 ’22
Wine Shop Schedule Update
As we mentioned last week, no wine tasting again this weekend.
Whatcom County continues to be a Covid hot spot. On the bright side, cases across the County have definitely fallen off during the past week, and case numbers are lowest for residents over 65, and next lowest for those between 45 and 64…you know…our base!
We are beginning the process of restocking our shelves, and will be updating our online order/pickup selections this week. Predictions are for new Omicron cases to continue declining rapidly as the variant burns through the County, but we want to see a significant drop in Covid cases in the area before we do.
Friday Bread This Week
For the time being Bread Pickup will continue to be at Island Bakery. If you are on the bread email list, you will have received order and pickup info from Janice. Pickup is in her driveway out on West Shore Rd, with a fire pit to keep the Usual Suspects comfy.
Current expectations are that bread pickup will likely return to the wine shop when we reopen.
Mailing List Issues
Well… last week our brief missive was delivered Friday morning as intended. Maybe we’ll get lucky again this week…?!
Economics of the Heart: The Paradox of Entitlement
https://www.toonsmag.com/tag/josh-hawley/
We have long held the belief that Feudalism is the default organizational structure of human beings. There’s only so much Stuff out there, and it takes a lot of work to find it, acquire it, and manage it. For thousands of years decisions have been made by Entitled Elites that reserved the bulk of community resources to their own interests, leaving the dregs for the masses. Most of us, if given a choice, would rather have the options of the elite than not.
The fantasy we grew up with is that here in America everyone had the same chance of achieving enough political autonomy and economic freedom to live lives of relative comfort and security. Social and economic freedom and autonomy were more than one person’s bank account; they were the measure of the mutual success of our economic system.
Today Jennifer Rubin posted a brief note about Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) recent machinations that points out an interesting paradox in the ongoing Culture War between Right and Left in our country. Her opening sentence pretty well captures the topic: “In a body full of MAGA sycophants and Ivy League-educated senators spewing anti-elite rhetoric, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) manages to stand out.”
There are a couple of eye-rolling takeaways here. First, Hawley is criticizing the Biden Administration for its overly hawkish position on supporting Ukraine’s right to self-determination, while second, asserting that Ukraine is not worth going to war with Russia. And after a blistering commentary by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, he tweeted that “This (rebuke) from an Administration that has coddled Russia from Day One and now brought Europe to the brink of war…”
Second, and even more of a head-scratcher, is that there are a bunch of Republican Senators who rode their Ivy League degrees to Congress even while they continue to decry those institutions as bastions of the Liberal Elite. What seems most clear is that these Maga Ivy-Leaguers are cynically using their “elite” educational backgrounds they as tickets to entitled positions in the New Post-Democracy Feudal America they want to rule.
Clearly, their shared sense of Entitlement is the glue that holds their movement together.
2072 Granger Way