lummi island wine tasting oct 1-2 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
This weekend’s forecast is for relatively dry weather, maybe even a little sun, so we will have outside tasting as an option both Friday and Saturday.
We tried a little indoor tasting last Friday, and people were having such a good time that some degree of Covid mindfulness was lost for a bit.
We will try it again this weekend by being open for wine tasting and sales Friday and Saturday from 4-6pm, with the following guidelines:
- You must have completed a full Covid vaccination protocol to participate;
- We ask all to maintain appropriate social distancing from people outside your regular “neighborhood pods.”
Friday Bread
Each Friday Island Bakery delivers fresh bread ordered by customer email earlier in the week. Each Sunday offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to the mailing list. Orders must be returned by 5 pm on Tuesday for pickup at the wine shop the following Friday from 4-5:30.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which are selected two different artisan breads and a pastry each week.
If you would like to be on the bread order mailing list, click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page and fill out the form.
This week’s pickup:
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 sel gris -the grey salt from the region that brings more mineral flavors to this bread. Goes great with meats and cheeses – $5/loaf
Spelt Levain – Spelt is an ancient grain with a nutty, slightly sweet flavor; it has gluten but it isn’t as strong as in modern wheat. This bread is made with a levain before the final dough is mixed with traditional bread flour, spelt flour, fresh milled whole spelt and rye. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Traditional Croissants – Made with two preferments, a levain as well as “old dough” where a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast has been fermented overnight. The final dough is then made with more flour, butter, milk and sugar, and laminated with more butter before being cut and shaped into traditional french croissants. – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Betz Clos de Betz ’08 Washington $45 Parker 95 pts
Rooting around in the cellar for wines to pour this weekend we discovered a nearly full case of 2008 Betz Clos de Betz , and knowing how carefully Betz wines were made, this one is probably just starting to hit its stride.
We have probably mentioned in earlier posts that winery founder and long-time winemaker Bob Betz has such a deep affection for French wines that he modeled many of his blends after the style of particular French wine regions.
For example, Clos de Betz is his take on Right Bank Bordeaux, a Merlot-dominant blend with other Bordeaux varietals Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, and Petit Verdot. This contrasts with his Pere de Famille, styled after Left Bank Bordeaux blends in which Cab Sauv is the dominant grape.
Washington merlot often features an unusually weighty richness, lush fruit, and an elegant tannic structure with great aging potential (like, right now it should be just about optimal!), and this wine is a great example.
The Economics of the Heart: Humanism at the Crossroads
It’s been a rough bunch of years for virtues like ethics, kindness, humility, caring, and wisdom. A long forty years ago American politics took a sharp turn to the Right when Reagan began dismantling the New Deal. Safety nets were put in storage while the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, and the homeless were left to fend for themselves, and the money saved quickly started funneling into the bank accounts of the wealthy. The investor class became the new Feudal Lords and amassed great fortunes while multitudes in the middle class saw their real wealth and wages stagnate for an entire generation.
It became common practice over those forty years for Republican administrations to begin each legislative cycle by cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans while increasing government spending on war materials and subsidies to private industry. The results are all around us in the form of climate change, widespread poverty, and worn-out dwellings, roads, bridges, railroads, and utility grids.
Republicans have never understood the difference between economics and finance. Finance is the process of borrowing the resources of others to pay for something for you. Economics is the process of determining whether something is worth doing in the first place, not because it is or is not “profitable,” but because the overall benefits to society exceed the costs. Finance is about maximizing net monetary benefits for lenders; economics is about maximizing net social benefits for Everyone, including concern for equity among winners and losers and the health of the planet.
To digress for a moment, last week we were coming home from a dog walk when Ulee’s leash came unfastened, and with high enthusiasm he took off into the woods after a deer. His barks grew fainter as they got further away. Then I heard other dogs barking as well. Time passed and he didn’t come back. We went looking, no luck. I worried in particular that he might have gotten into a fight with a couple of mean dogs down the street (long story).
Anyway, I walked home, got the car and made a patrol of the area. No sign of him. As I got back in the car, I was suddenly hit with a sense of Hopeless Dread and burst into deep, sobbing, wailing tears. In that moment I really believed he was not going to come back, and it was deeply heartbreaking. I knew it was irrational, that most likely he would be home when I got there. And he was! But that didn’t stop me from doing the same thing then, with a big hug from Pat and a furry snuggle with Ulee.
My takeaway from that experience is that we have all been under a Lot of stress from the exhausting combination of four years of the Daily Chaos of the Tweetster, almost two years of Covid isolation and anxiety, and nearly one year (and counting) of the attack on the Capitol and the subsequent Big Lie.
Now, TODAY, as in this very day, September 30, 2021, a political battle has been joined in our Nation’s capitol for the Future of Life in our country in particular and on our fragile planet Earth in general. At this moment, the outcome rests on the whims of a couple of nominally Democratic Senators whose egos may turn them Republican at the last minute and scuttle both bills, opening the door for a New Republican Fascism from which this fragile and intricately interdependent world will never recover.
There’s a LOT at stake; may Wisdom prevail.
This week’s $5 tasting:
Betz Clos de Betz ’08 Washington $45
66% Merlot, 25% Cab Sauv, 9% Petit Verdot. Tight and precise, with sharply defined edges. Expressive nose of pain grille, graphite, Asian spices, with hints of balsamic, black currant, and blackberry; superb concentration, complexity, layers of fruit, and a lengthy finish. Parker 95 pts
Olim Bauda La Villa Barbera d’Asti ’17 Italy $14
Aromas and flavors of dark, rich red berries and currants; rich, ripe style with lots of up-front fruit and beautiful cleansing acidity.
Maryhill Viognier ’18 Washington $14
Carefully picked and slowly pressed to extract vibrant aromas of melon, pear, and apricot with traces of pineapple and grapefruit, continuing into a sensational and crisp fruit finish.
lummi island wine tasting sept 24-25 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
Attendance has been sparse the past two weekends due to annual ferry drydock as well as Covid. Lots of folks leave the island, others hole up, and last Friday’s freak windstorm kept people hunkered down at home. So it has been quiet and low-key around the wine shop, which is just fine during Covid.
This weekend’s forecast is for nice weather, so we will have outside tasting as an option both Friday and Saturday. We will be open for wine tasting and sales Friday and Saturday from 4-6pm, with the following guidelines:
- You must have completed a full Covid vaccination protocol to participate;
- We ask all to maintain appropriate social distancing from people outside your regular “neighborhood pod.”
Friday Bread
Each Friday Island Bakery delivers fresh bread ordered by customer email earlier in the week. Each Sunday offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to the mailing list. Orders must be returned by 5 pm on Tuesday for pickup at the wine shop the following Friday from 4-5:30.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which are selected two different artisan breads and a pastry each week.
If you would like to be on the bread order mailing list, click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page and fill out the form.
This week’s pickup:
Multi Grain Levain – Made with a sourdough culture and a flavorful mix of bread flour with fresh milled whole wheat and rye flours as well. A nice mixture of flax, sesame sunflower and pumpkin seeds and rolled oats add great flavor and crunch. And just a little honey for some sweetness. A great all around bread that is full of flavor – $5/loaf
Polenta Levain –Also made from a levain of bread flour with polenta added in the final dough mix for a nice rustic loaf with great corn flavor. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Brioche Tarts au Sucre – otherwise known as brioche sugar tarts. A rich brioche dough full of eggs and butter is rolled into a round tart and topped with more eggs, cream, butter and sugar. – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: The Wolftrap Syrah Mourvèdre Viognier ’19 South Africa $11
Boekenhoutskloof farm was established in 1776. Located in the furthest corner of the beautiful Franschhoek Wine Valley of South Africa, about 50 km east of the Cape of Good Hope.
The farm’s name means “ravine of the Boekenhout” (pronounced Book-n-Howed), which is an indigenous Cape Beech tree greatly prized for furniture making. In 1993 the farm and homestead were bought and restored and a new vineyard planting programme was established that now includes Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Grenache, Semillon and Viognier.
When the farm was founded, the Franschhoek valley was far wilder than it is today. Though the mountains are still alive with indigenous animals, including the majestic leopard, the only evidence that wolves once roamed here is an ancient wolf trap found long ago. This wine was named in homage to the mysteries and legends of days gone by.
Most of the Syrah in The Wolftrap comes from the Swartland region (photo, left), where it develops its robust character and elegant aromas of violets and ripe plums, accentuating its spicy, peppery profile while retaining the juicy, fruity character which is its hallmark. The Mourvèdre, also from the Swartland, lends a red fruit character and smoky body while the dash of Viognier brings perfume and vibrancy to the blend and makes for a rustic Rhône-style blend that seriously over-delivers for its $11 price point.
The Economics of the Heart: The Plot Thickens
Politicians have always done a dance with the truth. To some degree the art of tactical deception is part of being human, the product of millions of years of primate evolution. As social animals, everything we do has consequences for our relative position in a tribal hierarchy, well-being, and survival.
Experiments have shown that we humans begin learning to lie as toddlers, and get better at it as we age. In one experiment, children were asked to guess the identity of a hidden toy. When left unsupervised for a few minutes, 30% of two-year-olds cheated by finding the toy and lying about it, increasing to 80% for eight-year olds. And not only was deception more common among older kids– they had also gotten more skilled and subtle at it. Whether we call it Charm or a con game, we all try to highlight our skills and divert attention from our weaknesses, to cozy up to power and oil the wheels of our own progress.
To some degree, politics and wealth are the Major Leagues of social hierarchy…yup, Money and Position. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t always been Rules. As economic philosopher Joan Robinson reminded us, every economic system requires a set of values, a set of rules, and a will in the people to carry them out. By implication, of course, we are in Real Trouble when we find ourselves in a society that does not agree on either a set of values or on a set of rules. What then?
In the 1930’s, shaken to its economic foundations by the Great Depression, the United States, under the leadership of FDR, instituted a new set of economic rules. The New Deal was a major reorganization of the nation’s economic structure. It established the first economic safety nets in the form of Social Security, a progressive income tax , and government-funded public works projects. The goal was to get more people housed, fed, and employed. Under the new Keynesian economic theory, the injection of more spending would create demand for products and services, creating more demand, and so on through a Multiplier effect.
As we all know, this Keynesian set of policies, together with the increased economic demands of WWII, fired up the US economy and kept it going until the election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency in 1980. Beginning with their idiotic notion of “supply side” economics, Reagan Republicans committed themselves to dismantling the apparatus of the New Deal by lowering tax rates on the wealthy and corporations, gutting low income safety nets and industrial regulation…you know, the Whole Catastrophe.
Even so, there was a measure of formality and collegiality in Congress and State Legislatures until the ascension of Newt Gingrich to House Speaker in the mid-nineties, and everything changed, perhaps best summed up by a local state legislator of the era who, speaking on the topic of allowing some grade school classes to be taught in Spanish, referred to the Bible and said “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!”
Fast forward to Today and the stunning revelations from the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on the details of Tweetster and company’s attempted coup against the United States after losing the election last November. All the evidence has pointed to this since the Muller investigation began. Woodward and Costa have gathered together a stunning documentation of a complex conspiracy of Congressional Republicans and other Trump loyalists to overturn the election results.
This time, we think, the facts will win the day. But we also remember that the facts have not counted for much since 2016. They didn’t count in the Muller hearings, or the Kavanaugh hearings, or the First impeachment, or the Second Impeachment.
Let’s not mince words: we are talking about Treason here: a deliberate conspiracy to overthrow the results of the 2020 Presidential election and install the Loser. Most of the Republicans in Congress and the Senate are co-conspirators.
So, no, we do NOT agree on a set of values or a set of rules. And we are still in a pandemic. And Global Warming is huffing and puffing at the front door AND the back door. Where’s that corkscrew…?
This week’s $5 tasting:
Marchetti Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico ’19 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.
The Wolftrap Syrah Mourvèdre Viognier ’18 South Africa $11
Aromas of ripe plums, red currants, violets, Italian herbs and exotic spices lead to vibrant flavors of darker berries and spicy plum with hints of orange peel that linger on a juicy finish.
Jordanov Vranec ’15 Macedonia $12
Aromas of ripe berries with notes of clove, nutmeg and cardamom. In the mouth it is full bodied with ripe dark fruit and hints of herbs with a noticeable dark chocolate edge on the well-structured finish. Enjoy with cheese, beef or lamb dishes or grilled sausages
lummi island wine tasting sept 17-18 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
The highly contagious Covid Delta variant continues to infect thousands of Americans, including vaccinated people, who may have no symptoms and no awareness if they/we are carriers. Here in Whatcom County, over 90% of residents over 65 (most of our regulars!) have been completely vaccinated so far. Nevertheless, right now Covid cases and hospitalizations in our area are higher than during the previous peak last February.
Because our car ferry will be in drydock for the next three weekends, we will be open for wine tasting and sales Friday and Saturday from 4-6pm. And, because heavy rain is expected, we will return to our indoor tasting format:
- You must have completed a full Covid vaccination protocol to participate;
- We ask everyone to maintain appropriate social distancing from people outside your regular “neighborhood pod.”
Friday Bread
Each Friday Island Bakery delivers fresh bread ordered by customer email earlier in the week. Each Sunday offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to the mailing list. Orders must be returned by 5 pm on Tuesday for pickup at the wine shop the following Friday from 4-5:30.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which are selected two different artisan breads and a pastry each week.
If you would like to be on the bread order mailing list, click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page and fill out the form.
This week’s pickup:
Sesame Semolina – Uses a sponge pre-ferment before mixing the final dough, made with semolina and bread flour as well as a soaker of cornmeal, millet and sesame seeds, with a little olive oil to round out the flavor and tenderize the crumb. The finished dough is rolled in more sesame seeds before baking, resulting in a bread with a lot of great flavors – $5/loaf
Black Pepper Walnut- Made with a nice mix of bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this bread great flavor with a distinct peppery bite. Excellent paired with all sorts of meats and cheese…and wine, of course! – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Cruffins – A cross between a muffin and croissant developed by the Bakehouse in San Francisco. This version is made with puff pastry instead of croissant dough, for a different kind of Delicious! The pastry is rolled out, spread with sugar, cinnamon and a bit of cardamom before rolling up, sliced, and baked in muffin tins. Makes a delightful, crisp, crunchy, buttery, sugary pastry. – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Bonanza Cabernet Sauvignon California $21
Bonanza is an excellent example of a primary difference between Old World and New World wine sensibility. Across Europe, where wine production goes back to Roman times in many places, the history of wine is completely intertwined with regional geography, geology, climate, food, music, and art. They are inseparable elements of regional identity.
In the New World, (North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to various degrees), the subcultures of invading Europeans quickly displaced the thousand year old cultural traditions of indigenous Native Americans. In the American melting pot, these cultural fragments have overlapped each other for mere hundreds of years, not the thousands of the Old World.
We can taste the foods of scores of cultures in “American” restaurants. In the five-century old melting pot of the New World, many immigrant traditions coexist in a broad and highly varied cultural landscape in which the economic development interests of profit- oriented capitalism have replaced the long-term resource allocation time horizon of traditional, interdependent cultures with short-term, exploitive profit motivation.
This distinction is exemplified by this week’s Wine of the Week, because it does not come from any particular place. Rather, it is an artifact of widespread transfer of ownership of prime vineyards from family-owned and operated “artisan” wineries to corporate conglomerates which bought these prime vineyard sites and their trademark names from families who have no heir to take on the commitment of running the family winery. You don’t find many fourth and fifth generation winemakers in the New World.
Bonanza is a brand established by Chuck Wagner, whose parents pioneered the elevation of Napa Valley as The Place to grow the best cabernet grapes in the world with their development of the Caymus winery in the early seventies. For many years it has been regarded as perhaps the first “collectible” Napa cab, and its price and value soared. Many, many other families followed suit. Those that started early got by on a lot of hard work, but in recent decades prime vineyards and wineries were bought by conglomerate corporations. While Mr. Wagner grew up in a very successful family estate winery (grew its own grapes), his firm (and others like it) now control enough vineyards across California (and many brand names) that they can blend wines from many different vineyards and different vintages into a consistent wine product from year to year.
On the one hand, Bonanza is a very tasty wine that most of you will enjoy, and it makes a certain economic sense for an entrepreneur to find ways to minimize risk.
Mr. Wagner says on the bottle: “Casting aside the boundaries of individual appellations or vintages, we have greater freedom to make good wine.” Drop by and see what you think!
The Economics of the Heart: Why Trickle-Down Has Never Worked
Here we are eight months into the Biden Administration. The good news is that President Joe Biden is an honest, decent, hard-working, dedicated, and politically experienced man who earns our respect every time he opens his mouth. Over and over he chooses being Real over being Political. He is as politically experienced as it is possible to be, and he has maintained wide respect. He has suffered enormous personal losses and made them resources for empathy when others suffer.
Our nation and the world stand not at a crossroads, but an an Abyss of human making. After a hundred years of unbridled industrial resource consumption powered by fossil fuels and the externalization of the corporate costs of environmental destruction onto the long-term ability of Our Planet to maintain life, we find ourselves within a very few years of crossing a Line of No Return with climate change.
In the entire world, the only human beings who refuse to accept that this is happening are Republicans. They have no interest in resource allocation for the common good, no awareness that their failure to take action will trigger massive Extinction of all life on Earth, not just for a while, but Forever. WTF is Wrong with these people?
Thermodynamics, population, and economics form an interactive System. Everything that happens in one realm has consequences for the other two. Most simply,
- More people => more demand for energy => more greenhouse gases => more heat trapped in atmosphere => hotter climate
— By the way, at some point in the melting of permafrost as the polar regions warm, HUGE amounts of methane will be released from the decaying of the ancient plants and animals frozen in the tundra. The last time this happened (about 50 million years ago) there was only a fraction of the greenhouse gases we already have in our atmosphere.
Now, back to Trickle-down. Republicans have been claiming for the past sixty years that the answer to every problem is cutting taxes so people will have more money to spend as they choose, not as The Government chooses. Republicans have Never meant All people would get the same amount or same percentage. For every Republican President in the last fifty years, the first order of business has been a massive tax cut for the wealthy. The idea is that giving more money to the Investor class will increase investment in infrastructure, innovation, technology…hell, Everyone will be better off!
Sadly, that has Never happened. Rather, because Republicans typically lower federal taxes and at the same time increase federal spending they incur a double deficit. That’s why Bush I lost re-election– he had promised “no new taxes” but in fact raised them (the responsible thing to do, actually) and lost a bunch of his John Birch Society supporters to Ross Perot. And it’s why the end of Bush II’s administration caused a profound recession (no, it really qualified as a Depression) that left millions without homes or jobs. (We aren’t even going to talk about “the former guy,” which was more of the same.
Now we have Republicans in the Senate playing the same card they played against Obama when he had to get the country out of the Depression they left him.
Charlie Brown expressed our feeling best when he leaned his forehead against a tree, muttering, ” I can’t stand it!”
This week’s $5 tasting:
Argiolas Costamolino Vermentino ’18 Italy $14
Pale golden-tinged straw color; botanical herbs and white stone fruit on the nose and palate, with good length and freshness, finishing clean and medium-long, pairing well with everything from salad to pasta to fish and savory meat dishes.
Perazzeta Sara Rosso ’15 Italy $12
90% Sangiovese, 10% Ciliegiolo from the Tuscan south; bright and full-bodied with cherry, crisp acidity, and tantalizing earth tones make this pretty wine a winner with savory dishes.
Bonanza Cabernet Sauvignon California $21
Opens with scents of currants, dried roses, grape pomace and fresh tilled soil; nose shows notes of smoked meat, along with blueberries and blackberries, vanilla and toast. Silky tannins and striking smoothness.
lummi island wine tasting september 10-11 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
The highly contagious Covid Delta variant continues to infect thousands of Americans, including vaccinated people, who may have no symptoms and no awareness if they/we are carriers. This creates a quandary about how to manage our social interactions.
For our part, because we put high values on both safety and being with “our people,” we have come up with this risk-benefit compromise for wine tasting this weekend:
- 1. Wine tasting this weekend will be Friday and Saturday from 4-6pm, outside on the deck;
- 2. You must have completed a full Covid vaccination protocol to participate;
- 3. Please maintain appropriate social distancing from people outside your regular “neighborhood pod.”
Friday Bread
Each Friday Island Bakery delivers fresh bread ordered by customer email earlier in the week. Each Sunday offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to entire list. Orders must be returned by 5 pm on Tuesday for pickup at the wine shop the following Friday from 4-5:30.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which are selected two different artisan breads and a pastry each week.
If you would like to be on the bread order mailing list, click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page and fill out the form.
This week’s pickup:
Sonnenblumenbrot – aka Sunflower Seed Bread; made with an overnight pre-ferment before mixing the final dough made with bread flour and freshly milled rye, then loaded up with toasted sunflower seeds and some barley malt syrup for sweetness. This is a typical German seed bread- $5/loaf
Pain Meunier –aka Miller’s Bread to honor the person 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
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 that have been soaked in sugar syrup. Rolled up and sliced before baking. These are my favorites! As always, quantities are limited, be sure to get your order in early – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Greywacke Pinot Noir ’16 New Zealand $32
Most simply, Greywacke is a type of sandstone that has a lot of rock grain and fragments in it, kind of a lumpy batter that set up before it was completely stirred. It is often associated with continental shelves, and is believed to have formed by mudslides along the shelf. Greywacke is made up of dull-colored sandy rocks that are mostly grey, brown, yellow, or black which can occur in thick or thin beds, and which bear some similarity to formations of “Chuckanut sandstone” that we see on our own shores here on Lummi Island and around the San Juan Islands.
Last year we learned that many of the formations at the Aiston Preserve (recently acquired for restoration and preservation by the Lummi Island Heritage Trust) and much of the southern half of Lummi Island contain significant deposits of greywacke. These formations are about 150 million years old, and overlay basalt and chert from an even older ancient sea floor.
Greywacke is also a major part of the geological structure of New Zealand, and just a couple of years ago we learned there is a NZ winery of the same name. We have been stocking their sauvignon blanc and pinot noir for a couple of years now, and so far it has been universally satisfying. The rocky soil gives the wines a complex minerality with aromas and flavors of dark fruit and nuances of cedar, earth, and smoke.
Winemaker Kevin Judd was the longtime winemaker at the consistently highly regarded Cloudy Bay winery before starting his own winery at Greywacke in 2008. It’s good! (read more)
The Economics of the Heart: Remembering 9/11
This weekend is the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York. Like very few dates in our collective national history– including the 1918 Armistice ending WWI (11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month), the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that marked our entry into WWII, and JFK’s assassination in November 1963, we all remember where we were when we first heard the news.
Pat and I were just waking up on our sailboat, tied to a mooring at Clark Island, about three miles west of and in sight of our house on Lummi Island. While we were making tea and fixing breakfast we turned on the radio. It took a several minutes of puzzled listening before the news began to sink in, and I heard myself exclaiming “OMG, we’re at War!” But it would never become clear with whom we were at war, or why, or what to do about it, if anything.
About noon we sailed a few miles north to anchor at Sucia Island, a very popular boating destination in the San Juans. In mid-afternoon a small skiff motored around the many boats at anchor to announce a gathering on the island for a memorial to the day’s events. There were maybe fifty people there, gathered in a large circle. There were several American flags, which seemed strange. Several people spoke. We remember a pervasive mix of shock and sadness…but already strangely contaminated with angry vengeance. What began as a gesture of solidarity felt dissonant and insensitive.
Over the next few days there were, eerily, no sounds of airplanes in the sky. All flights had been grounded to their nearest airports, many in Canada, where generous householders took stranded passengers into their homes for the better part of a week. From around the globe came an outpouring of heartfelt compassion from our fellow humans. For a few days it felt as if our entire country was being cradled and embraced by the whole world. It was beautiful and deeply moving.
At the same time, Dubya, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the Neocons fully embraced the flag-waving vengefulness we had first felt out at Sucia Island the afternoon of 9/11. It was a call to anger and to arms. How DARE they! Whoever they were, we should “Bomb them back to the Stone Age.” And indeed, full of Hubris and Outrage, we invaded Afghanistan on a stated quest to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the likely mastermind of the hijackings, and then Iraq, ostensibly because of nonexistent WMD’s.
In those days there was a particularly moving piece in the NY Times by writer Kim Stafford which has stuck with me all these years. “When I turned from the TV images the morning of September 11, 2001, to call my mother, she told me, ‘I’m watching the news. Everyone is saying this is just like Pearl Harbor, but I feel it’s really our Hiroshima. Now we’re part of the suffering of the world.’ (read more)
As we all know, our national political response to 9/11 was to use it as an excuse to invade two countries and expend trillions of dollars and twenty years chasing phantom enemies in remote and impoverished lands in yet another futile proxy war of counterinsurgency. We disgraced our values with the cruelties of Guantanamo, Abu Graib, Extreme Rendition, enhanced interrogations, the excesses of Blackwater, hundreds of thousands killed, and millions of fleeing refugees.
“When will we ever learn?….when will we Ever Learn?”
So on this painful anniversary many will look for something honorable in our national values and intentions over the last twenty years. Tonight’s sad and futile feeling about all of that is best summed up in an ironic old Maine story that goes something like this:
A young man is driving his sporty car (spohty cah) too fast on a country road to avoid hitting a cow. Feeling sheepish, he walks back to look over the cow as the farmer (fahmah) walks up to assess the damage. “Well,” says the kid, hopefully, “looks like she’s all right!” To which the farmer spits on the ground and says, “Well, sonny, I’ll tell ya…if y’ think y’ done ‘er any good, I’ll be glad to pay y’ for it.”
This week’s $5 tasting:
Crios de Susana Balbo Torrontes ’19 Argentina $11
Highly perfumed aromas of lemon drop, grapefruit, white flowers, peppermint and white pepper. Supple, pliant and easygoing, with citrus, herbal and floral flavors joined by a hint of licorice.
Corvidae Lenore Syrah 2018 Washington $12
Displays rich notes of blueberry, boysenberry, red currant, and plum, mouthwatering acidity, balanced tannin structure and layers of bright bramble fruit, finishing with hints of chocolate and raspberry.
Greywacke Pinot Noir ’16 New Zealand $32
Delicious aromas of juicy blackberries, blueberries and strawberry jam, with suggestions of black olives, cedar and a hint of lavender. Finely structured palate shows red and black fruit with earthy, smoky nuances.
2072 Granger Way