lummi island wine tasting july 18 ’20
click on photos for larger images
New: Wine Tasting By Appointment
For the past couple of months we have been exploring how we might recapture some of the living energy of our usual weekly wine tastings at the ferry overflow parking lot for a couple of hours on Friday afternoons. Since Janice had already established the venue for weekly Bread Pickup and Happy Hour, it seemed worth a try. But after some reflection on how that has gone, we have decided NOT to continue the practice. Instead, we will drop down to pick up our bread, put out our chairs, and join you to schmooze, share a little wine, and visit in the relative safety of the spacious outdoor setting.
We have tidied up the wine shop entrance area to accommodate very limited Saturday afternoon outdoor wine tasting appointments for groups of up to four people at a table. There will be the usual tasting fee of $5 for members, $10 for non-members. Social distancing rules will be observed, hand sanitizer will be provided, and masks are encouraged.
The current plan is for two sittings per Saturday, at 3:00 and 4:30. Our goal is to have little or no overlap between parties, and adequate social distancing both between and within the separate parties. Any group that chooses to share a table takes responsibility for appropriate distancing among its members.
Obviously seating is very limited; call number next to our logo (above, right) to make a reservation!
Ordering Wine Online
We have been enjoying filling your phone and email wine orders since the Shutdown began in March, and are planning to continue that practice until we can reopen safely. For the many of us of a Certain Age, that probably won’t happen until there is an effective vaccine.
You can order wine for pickup here at the wine shop or at Friday Bread Pickup at the ferry parking lot. Just click on the “Order Wine” heading at the top of this page for a partial list of our current offerings.
When you have made selections, you can submit an order as follows:
- Click “Contact Us”on the website header bar at the top of this page; enter the names and quantities of each wine you would like to order, and click “Submit,” or…
- Phone us your selections at the number next to our logo, above right.
It’s that Simple!
Art Will Save You
Last fall,when the world seemed normal and maybe even a little hopeful, our artist for Studio Tour was Kim Obbink, with her beautiful water colors of plants and sea creatures. A few weeks later when she took down the show, she gave us a handful of cards that just said “ART WILL SAVE YOU,” without saying much about them. We have had some in the wine shop and one on our refrigerator in the house since then. They seemed a little mysterious, but having spent twenty years or so as a potter, it had some resonance. You can find out more at the website of the same name.
When I noticed one of the cards this week in the wine shop, it reminded me of how much I enjoyed watching the conversation between Governor Inslee and Paul Simon on Zoom last week. The card reminded me of how insightful I found Paul Simon’s ability to tie art and music to the deeper truths that keep us sane in difficult times. He spoke of how unifying it has been for him to play music with people of widely varying cultural backgrounds from all over the world.
Art and music seem to be some kind of common denominator that all people share, a language of feeling that can express realities and common human experiences that cannot really be expressed in any verbal language. When we paint, we only paint. When we sing, we only sing. No language to trap the mind. It brings a certain freedom that is its own kind of salvation. Take time to make, write, build, paint, craft, sing, sew, doodle, or play something, however simple. It’s a crazy time, and Art may be the mercy that will keep you centered.
Mar a Lago Update: 108 Days Till Next Election
Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock. The referee waves his (or her) arm…the clock is ticking. And it sounds Ominous.
We now approach a National election that could either restore or extinguish our National commitment to the values of Liberty and Justice for All that we Old-timers were nurtured in and willingly committed ourselves to as children in the Fifties. Today’s news included discussion of how the Republican Party has increasingly morphed toward pandering entirely to the Tweetster’s simplistic Populist Messaging.
We saw in the words and behaviors of Republican members of Congress during the Impeachment hearings last Fall a preference for mock outrage over Reason. All of their little speeches were clones of each other, aimed mockingly, angrily, and emptily against the truths and values we were trained to hold dear.
Over the last few months we have seen a continuing practice among Republican Senators, Representatives, and Governors to tell outright lies in support of their Party’s President with full knowledge that he has, in the most profound sense Star Trek’s Lt. Worf could imply, “They have NO Honor!”
At present there is considerable speculation as to whom Joe Biden will select as his running mate. Over the past couple of weeks we have seen several interviews with former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor Susan Rice, very much formatted as public vetting for the job. With all of the Dark Forces that seem to be gathering before us, not unlike something from Tolkien, she has presented herself as intelligent, poised, experienced, and competent, and we are happy to provide her with the full endorsement of our tiny wine shop on our tiny island our here in Northern Ecotopia!
lummi island wine tasting jul 10 ’20
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Phase II Wine Ops
For the past couple of months we have been exploring whether we could move some semblance of our usual weekly wine tastings to the ferry overflow parking lot for a couple of hours on Friday afternoons. Since Janice had already established the venue for weekly Bread Pickup and Happy Hour, it seemed worth a try. But after some reflection on how that has gone, we have decided NOT to continue the practice. Instead, we will drop down to pick up our bread, put out our chairs, and join you to schmooze, share a little wine, and visit in the relative safety of the spacious outdoor setting.
Over the next week or so we will be setting up the wine shop entrance area to accommodate half-hour Saturday afternoon outdoor wine tasting appointments for groups of up to three people at a time. There will be the usual tasting fee of $5 for members, $10 for non-members. Social distancing is required, and masks are encouraged. More on this next week!
Ordering Wine
While the Shutdown continues, we hope you will all continue to think of us for your wine shopping while Covid keeps our shop closed. You can phone or email wine orders for pickup here at the wine shop or delivery at Friday Bread Pickup. Just click on the “Order Wine” heading at the top of this page for a partial list of our current offerings.
When you have made selections, you can submit an order as follows:
- Click “Contact Us”on the website header bar at the top of this page; enter the names and quantities of each wine you would like to order, and click “Submit,” or…
- Phone us your selections at the number next to our logo, above right.
It’s that Simple! Operators are Standing By!
Jay Inslee, Paul Simon, and E. O. Wilson
We took time to watch a special Zoom event on Monday evening featuring our Governor Jay Inslee and music icon Paul Simon, who sang several of his iconic songs (American Tune, Homeward Bound). Mostly the hour-long session was a conversation between them about climate change, politics, and art.
Simon has been an active advocate for global cooperation to save our Planet from the mass extinctions that climate change is already causing, and which will get worse at an increasing rate if we humans do not immediately start rolling back carbon emissions. He is a strong advocate and supporter of the ideas of biologist E. O. Wilson (see photo, left), including his Half-Earth proposal: “By setting aside half the planet in reserve, we can save the living part of the environment and achieve the stabilization required for our own survival.” Read more
Their conversation was notably positive and hopeful, despite the array of Deep Holes we humans seem to have put ourselves into, discussing the roles of artists in inspiring us to our better selves, and the array of man-made challenges threatening the very existence of Life on Earth. The great Takeaway from their mutual positivity and determination was a feeling like Obama’s inspiring “Yes, we can” speech. We don’t know what is going to happen in the future. There are a lot of Threats to everything we hold dear, and solid ground is hard to find these days. We have some tough choices ahead.
Mar a Lago Update: Shifting Gears
I began this part of the weekly blog in February 2017 as a small but ongoing commitment to Resist accepting that a psychopathic narcissist had been the winner of a fair election. I still don’t believe it, just as I don’t believe Dubya was actually “elected” in either 2000 or 2004. And I believe that Obama only won in 2008 because more people turned out to vote for him than the Republican gerrymandered, voting machine-rigged 4% advantage that they had built into the system over many years.
As part of those concerns, in about 2002 I discovered an organization called verifiedvoting.org, dedicated to making every vote verifiable everywhere in the country. They discovered major vulnerabilities in voting machines, conflicts of interest with politicians involved with particular voting machine manufacturers, and many more. Over all these years the organization has sought one universal metric for all voting systems: that every ballot cast should have a verifiable paper trail to assure that every individual vote actually reflects the intention of the person authorized to cast it.
In fact, it isn’t all that difficult to design such a voting system. The one we use right here in Washington does a pretty good job of providing a paper audit trail for each vote cast. But lots of states (especially Red ones) use machines that provide no such trail, and which are easily hacked or falsified by either outsiders or insiders. In addition, of course we know that it is common practice in many Red states to make voting either impossible or very difficult in Democratic districts by reducing both the overall numbers and the hours of operation of polling places to cause long waiting lines in Democratic districts and the opposite in Republican ones. In addition it has become common practice in many Red States to remove vast numbers of legal Democratic voters from the rolls.
As we go to press here on July 9, we are now fewer than four months away from the next National election. The coronavirus has placed a major Damper on likely voter turnout at the polls and increased likely demand for absentee ballots, which, like our ordinary ballots in Washington, are sent out and returned by mail. However, Republicans around the nation are lining up against absentee ballots, claiming they are unreliable and subject to falsification and forgery.
In fact, it is exactly the opposite: universal use of mail-in ballots would make voting both more inclusive and more accurate. So let’s all pay attention to the discussion over the next few months about how individual states handle their voting. It will say a lot about institutional Integrity.
lummi island wine tasting july 3 ’20
click on photos for larger images
Wine Tasting Reset Time
For the past couple of months we have been trying out piggy-backing a minimal wine tasting on Janice’s Friday bread pickup and DIY Happy Hour at the ferry parking lot each week. As you know, she is taking this weekend off, so we remind you there is no bread pickup this weekend. Look for next week’s menu email sometime Sunday.
After experimenting for a couple of months now with with the Friday Tailgate tasting, we have decided to discontinue the practice. That will free us to just drop by and visit along with everyone else on Fridays…and to focus on promoting tastings by appointment. We will have more on that next week.
In the meantime, have a relaxing, sunny, and Happy Fourth of July (with caveats as noted below…!)
Annual Fourth of July Alert
Every Fourth of July we like to remind you all to “Watch out for Falling Elephants!” That’s because of an old limerick (even back then!) that was popular in my neighborhood in Maine when I was a kid in the Fifties. It goes like this:
“I asked my mother for fifty cents
To see the elephant jump the fence;
He jumped so high he touched the sky, and
Didn’t come down till the Fourth of July.”
So, a word to the wise for this Saturday: Take nothing for Granted…Keep a Sharp Eye For Falling Elephants!
Mar a Lago Update: How’s That MAGA Thing Goin’, Mate?
Here it is now July, 2020, and a Long, Long time has passed since the most recent Republican Coup in 2016. As Jesus said in Superstar, “I’ve tried for Three years, Seems like Ninety..!” America’s last three years have been Exhausting and Crazy-Making. We occasionally think back to the Republican Candidates’ Debates in 2015 and just scratch our heads. How could this have happened?
It’s not that any of the other candidates would have been more worthy than the Tweetster in any measurable way. It’s more that their particular forms of insanity were Familiar. We didn’t Like them, and had little respect for them, but weren’t Afraid of them. On the other hand, the Tweetster’s whole MO is his penchant for the Outrageous, his complete willingness to pull the chain that flushes Everyone and Everything down the toilet. As if the only Element of his actions that is relevant is that they make the Front Page, not that they accomplish or contribute anything of lasting benefit.
Supposedly the Tweetster’s strong suit is the Economy. But a recent article in Independentaustralia.net presents a damning Statistical assessment of the Tweetster’s economic failures.
First, although the economy was supposedly Booming, government revenue went from 85% of gdp in 2016 to 75% in 2019, the worst budgetary outcome of all 36 wealthy members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Second, his penchant for Trade Wars (you know, the Art of the Deal guy) led him to start trade wars with numerous trading partners in 2018, causing increasing trade deficits. Exports have tumbled, trade deficits have deepened severely, production has declined, farms and businesses have gone bankrupt, and hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs.
Third, The rationale for Trump’s costly 2018-19 trade wars was that our deficits were too deep, averaging $39.8 billion over the last ten months of 2016. The trend continued for two more years, with exports falling and imports rising, costing tens of billions in lost treasure, thousands of farmer suicides, and trade deficits approaching $50 billion. At the same time, since the 2018 tariffs, counterbalancing production and exports have continued to fall.
Fourth, the Tweetster has claimed since taking office in 2017 that he deserved credit for jobs expansion that was more correctly attributed to the policies of the Obama Administration: “It took gross mismanagement of the Coronavirus pandemic to reverse the positive trend in American jobs which started back in 2010, although the rate of decline eased somewhat in 2018 and 2019 as exports and economic growth faltered.”
Bottom line: There is no Art of the Deal. There is no Business Acumen. There is no Art and No Deal, no Leadership, no Understanding, no Heart, no Mind, no Caring, no Responsibility. And most disturbing of all, our so-called President has not even a Touch of Class.
New Wine Tasting Protocol
Pretty simple: call or email us to make a 30-minute appointment for a tasting on our deck. We will pour five wines (as usual over these many years– members $5, non-members $10). More details next week.
Happy Fourth of July!
lummi island wine tasting june 26 ’20
click on photos for larger images
Covid Wine Schedule
- As long as COVID remains a risk, we will be pouring a comp!imentary 3-wine tasting on Fridays during Bread pickup from 4:30 till 5:30pm at the north exit of the ferry overflow parking lot (bring your own glass!) and…
- You can order wine online for U-pickup by appointment or during bread pickup (details below!)
Buying Wine During Covid Shutdown
During the Shutdown we are happy to fill wine orders online or by phone for pickup at the wine shop or during the weekly Friday Bread Pickup and Happy Hour mentioned above. Just click on the “Order Wine” heading at the top of this page for a partial list of our current offerings. To submit an order:
- Click “Contact Us”on the website header bar at the top of this page; enter the names and quantities of each wine you would like to order, and click “Submit,” or…
- Phone us your selections at the number next to our logo, above right.
It’s that Simple! Operators are Standing By!
Friday Bread, Social Distance, and Wine Tasting
As mentioned last week, Janice continues to send the week’s Bread Menu to our mailing list each Sunday, and accepts orders till Wednesday for Friday pickup. Though the wine shop remains closed for indoor tastings due to social distancing precautions, Friday bread pickups have morphed into an impromptu Tailgate party at the Ferry Parking Lot beginning around 4-ish each Friday afternoon.
No, it’s not as Festive as our regular gatherings at the wine shop, but it IS nice to see some of the friends you’ve been missing (with appropriate physical distancing, of course!). So pack up your folding chairs and wine glasses and drop by to share company and conversation and visit for a while (and there’s plenty of parking!).
To make it more like old times we are now offering a mini-tasting (three wines, see below for this week’s menu) from the back of our car. It’s not the same experience as the wine shop, but it is an entirely pleasant and safe opportunity to grab some relief from the ongoing Isolation, taste a few wines, and enjoy some company.
We all thank Janice for beginning this tradition by moving weekly bread deliveries from the wine shop to the parking lot to allow for appropriate Distancing. It has become an enjoyable weekly Relief to catch up on some of the conversations and camaraderie we have been missing during the Shutdown!
Mar a Lago Update: Matters of Principle
We have mentioned before the continuing relevance of National Oceanographer Maury’s memorable ethical assertion some 150 years ago: “Where principle is involved, be deaf to expediency.” It is often claimed that “We are a Nation of Laws,” and we need assurance from time to time that our laws are principled in purpose and enforced honorably, equitably, and fairly. Without Principle, laws become the means of tyrannical oppression by an autocratic minority. When we look around our country and the World today we see lots of reasons to believe that basic Principles have become a quaint and archaic fantasy, wholly and purposefully undermined at every turn by players willing to abandon every ethic in order to stay in power.
In the last few decades politicians have strayed far beyond misspeaking, misstatement, and everyday spin into an ongoing practice of crafting Outright Lies, nowadays straight-facedly calling them “Alternative Facts.” It has become everyday practice for Republican office holders and their media surrogates to slander their political rivals in mock outrage to maintain their grip on their Base– you know,”the Some of the People they can fool All of the Time.” The Washington Post has documented some Twenty Thousand Public Lies by the Tweetster since he took office, any one of which would have done in most politicians. He seems to have the gift of the true Con Man, the ability to “Pat you on the back with one hand while picking your pocket with the other.” His gift is the unconscious ability to to spew Nonsense to a crowd in such a way that each person hears only “what they want to hear and disregard the rest.’
Since about 1992 these behaviors have been legitimized in the public arena by endless repetition across a broad constellation of cable TV programs, right wing media personalities like Limbaugh and Beck, Hannity and Carlson, and countless blogs and websites. We take our hats off to the morally courageous acts of Republican Senator Mitt Romney and Congressman Justin Amash who broke with the party and voted in favor of the Tweetster’s Impeachment.
It has been clear for some time that Republicans have given up all pretense of having a Platform or meaningful Guiding Principles. Under the Tweetster they have one by one even abandoned those they have pretended to support since the 1950’s: invincible military, strong international alliances, balanced federal budget, low taxes. In the last four years it has become clear they will abandon any pretense of integrity to hold onto Power. At this point we can safely assume that the next few months will not look like any campaign season we have ever seen before. We should expect no rules, no Integrity, and no limits to Dirty Tricks, like:
- Rigging the election: We have suspected that since 2000 Republicans have controlled enough voting machines to consistently add several percent of false votes to their tallies in a number of states like Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and a number of Southern states that lean Right and have Republican Secretaries of State like Katherine Harris of Florida. It worked in 2000 and 2004. In 2008 and 2012 Obama’s lead was too big to fudge. In 2016 the fix was in again, this time with the help of Putin, Cambridge Analytica, and far-right billionaire Robert Mercer. In 2020 they will have All the tricks that money can buy. Which begs the question: how much will we have to beat them by to make up their hacking advantage?
- Covid 19 and Economy: The virus has vastly changed the playing field for this year’s election. The T has claimed credit for an economy that Obama had rebuilt brick by brick after the Republicans broke and looted it in 2008. The combination of the Impeachment trial, his failure to prepare the nation for the virus, the economic collapse it has caused, and his failures of leadership in responding have put him far behind Biden in current polling. If the lead is large enough, one could imagine the Handlers pulling the T out of the race somehow and replacing him with someone more palatable. Or taking Biden out the race somehow. Or burying the entire election in Chaos.
- October Surprise Menu: Well, let’s see… there’s Declaring Martial Law; igniting a scandal about Biden; starting a War somewhere; letting Covid go totally out of control; doing away with either Biden or the T; starting a Foreign War…the list is endless and none of the options requires checking a moral compass.
Remember: as in the Twilight Zone, we are now Traveling in Another Dimension with no Rules, no Guard Rails, and Anything goes. And the head lemming thinks it’s time for us all to jump off a cliff into the Sea.
Scary stuff.
This Week’s Friday Tailgate Tasting
La Vielle Ferme Rosé ’19 France $10
Classic and tasty blend of grenache, syrah, and cinsault from Ventoux; fruity, dry, crisp, delicious, smooth, at a bargain price.
Folie a Deux Pinot Gris ’18 Calif $14
Guava, pineapple and lemon-lime flavors make for a fleshy, brightly layered expression of the varietal, both soft on the palate and crisp on the palate.
Oregon Solidarity Chardonnay ’18 Oregon $18
Bursts with fresh apple, pear and peach aromas. Barrel fermentation has smoothed any rough edges and polished the flavors to a bright sheen.
Oregon Solidarity Pinot Noir ’18 Oregon $25
Rich and intense fruit flavors that reflect the warm and dry growing season. Aromas and flavors of cherry, blackberry and spice. Excellent balance, with solid structure, concentration and firm tannins.
2072 Granger Way