lummi island wine tasting April 4 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday April 4 ’25 4-6 pm
spring quince always a welcome sign…!
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 SORRY, PASTRY this week is reserved for participants in the annual Island Road cleanup beginning at the Grange Saturday , April 5th for annual Island road cleanup!
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday the Bakery emails the week’s bread offering to the mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday (and not already claimed!) will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Contact us at least two weeks before your visit to get on the bread list!
This week’s $10 Wine Tasting
Laurenz V Kremstal Sophie Singing Gruner Veltliner $15 Austria
Sustainably produced; youthful nose of orange blossoms, straw, and apples; spritzy on the medium-bodied palate, with notes of yellow grapefruit and a refreshing crisp acidity for a sunny afternoon.
Idilico Tempranillo ’21 Washington $19
Made in Washington in the Rioja style, with aromas of leather, forest floor and balsamic notes wrapped around a core of red fruit, notes of fresh dried herbs, sweet spice and red currant; medium bodied with juicy mouthfeel, soft tannin, and a lingering finish.
chinon wine region https://www.wine-searcher.com/regions-chinon
Alain de la Treille Chinon Cab Franc ’22 France $21
From Loire valley’s alluvial gravel & yellow limestone terraces along the Vienne, offering complex minerality and juicy, spicy flavors that dance from plum to cassis, game, earth, and tobacco, all with a delicacy that speaks of the village’s cool conditions.”
Economics of the Heart: Not Even Billionaire Hungry Ghosts Can Ever Feel Nourished
Followers of this blog will be familiar with our numerous rants about the economic incompetence of Republicans in general and Maga in particular. After nearly 100 years of practical evidence that, yes, in fact, the economy is a circular flow of exchange in which everyone digs, builds, grows, finds, fishes, or otherwise creates a product or service that contributes value. That value manifests through exchange in markets, contracts, purchases, and rentals. Most people have roles as both producers and consumers, borrowers and lenders.
Exchange only happens when seller and buyer feel a sense of mutual satisfaction from an exchange. The buyer shops for the lowest price and the seller holds out for the highest price. Metaphorically, picture a huge table where everyone alive has a seat and a stock of skills and assets which are passed to them from their right and they pass on as they choose to their left to maximize their own well-being. Some need to keep a big pot in front of them, and some prefer very little or even nothing.
And like any game, all of this operates under a set of rules. As economist Joan Robinson aptly put it, “Every economic system requires a set a values, a set of rules, and a will in the people to carry them out.” Well nowadays, some at the top want it all, and don’t feel like passing it around anymore. And that threatens the whole system.
The ugly truth is that for as long as there have been human beings some proportion (males in particular) can never get enough (wealth, power, adoration ) to feel secure or comfortable. Like the robber barons of the early 20th century, they are driven to accumulate more and more, like Disney’s Scrooge in his money bin. Theirs is not so much a political movement as a psychological disorder, and the people who have it have been pissed off at “liberals” since the 1929 stock collapse that they caused brought a global economic Depression.
Since the end of WWII there has been a continual political tension between those whose definition of “enough” in a Maslovion sense is modest, and those who are quite incapable of experiencing “enoughness,” either of love, or esteem, or deference.
Picture a mom with her little son looking up at her and asking, “Mommy, it is true Republicans have hearts of stone?” And she is saying, “No dear, it’s not…Republicans don’t have hearts…”(yeah, that’s my mom and me above in 1952..!.)
Seriously, how else can you explain the constant need of a handful of billionaires to own ever more wealth, more even than many entire nations; who are still pissed off about even a modestly graduated income tax, and who are now willfully destroying our country and the global economy to get even more wealth? In Buddhist terms they qualify as Hungry Ghosts, creatures with ravenous appetites but cursed with no ability to take in nourishment no matter how much they swallow.
In a world of scarcity, hunger, and misery for hundreds of millions of people, there is no morally acceptable rationale for not following the old adage “from each according to ability; to each according to need.”
Which brings us to this moment in human history where a small group of ego-centric white men are claiming Divine Right, in the name of their Authoritarian Jesus, as the chosen ones to tear down our 250-year old democracy, abandon our Constitution, crash the global economy, and doom human civilization and our entire planet to the climate-driven extinction of life itself– all for a few more shekels in their money bins that will not make them happy. Does Elon Musk look like a happy man with his ketamine?
The Reality of this moment, right now, in early April of the year we humans call 2025, is that a small bunch of angry, bullying men of cruelty (beaten into them by damaged fathers…?) are actively engaged in destroying our democracy, crashing the global economy, and inflicting enormous suffering on our entire planet.
It has to stop, and we all must all work together to make it happen.
lummi island wine tasting mar 28 ‘ 25
Wine Tasting Friday Mar 28 4-6 pm
Molly’s spring garden next to the ferry dock…
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
French Country Bread – A levain bread made with bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and and a bit of toasted wheat germ in a sourdough culture with a long cool overnight ferment for a rustic loaf that you would find in the countryside. – $5/loaf
Multi Grain English Muffin Loaf – English muffin dough made into a loaf, with nice mix of bread flour, spelt, whole wheat and oatmeal for a lot of flavor, plus buttermilk and butter and get a nice light, tender crumb. Delicious for toast or sandwiches! – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Bear Claws! – Made with a danish pastry dough rich in cream, eggs, sugar and butter. The dough is rolled out and spread with a filing made with almond paste, powdered sugar, egg whites and just a bit of cinnamon to round out the flavor. Then, because bears love honey, topped with a honey glaze after baking. –2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday the Bakery emails the week’s bread offering to the mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday (and not already claimed!) will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Contact us at least two weeks before your visit to get on the bread list .
This week’s $10 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.
Marietta Old Vine Red ’22 California
Zinfandel-based red blend from Geyserville shows lovely bright plum fruit with dark, focused notes of briar and black tea, with medium body, mouth of sweet spice, and velvety tannins to pair with almost any meal or occasion.
Torbreck Woodcutters Shiraz ’21 Australia $26
Succulent, rich aromas of dark berries and black plum with notes of sandalwood, rosemary and thyme;
soft tannins and structured, voluptuous mouthfeel adds the poise and piquancy expected from this winery.
Economics of the Heart: AGs, IGs, & US
Norman Rockwell Museum Store – MAD Exhibition Alfred E. Neuman …
Project 2025 demands that all Cabinet Secretaries swear allegiance to the Tweetster, not to our country or its Constitution. It was shocking to watch the fawning obsequiousness and astonishing lack of relevant education and experience of many Cabinet candidates at their Senate hearings. Even more alarming, despite the fact that most nominees were vastly unqualified by lack of relevant training, experience, and temperament for these key leadership roles in our government, most Republican Senators voted for most of of them anyway after a few softball questions. Each nominee now controls a substantial portion of essential federal operations and finance across the breadth of US global interests. Historically of course, Cabinet nominees have been picked for their expertise and experience. But these nominees were selected because they all agreed to defer to the Tweetster/ Project 2025, not the Constitution.
Since the Carter administration in the late 70’s, every government agency has been overseen by an independent, watchdog Inspector General’s Office. These IG offices were specifically created to root out corruption, fraud, abuse, waste, and mismanagement from federal agencies, and have done those jobs very well. These professionally staffed IG offices had long provided ongoing audit trails and accountability for every expenditure. So why did Project 2025 call for all of them to be closed? Most likely succumbing to the lure of “No audit trails => no guard rails=> no accountability,” the P2025 Maggits are now free to drive caravans of trucks to Fort Knox and and drive away with the nation’s gold, both literally and figuratively. The word “looting” seems to fit the facts here pretty well.
Similarly, since for some 50 years the IG Offices have been effectively and professionally rooting out fraud, waste, and corruption in our government, there is no conceivable case that can be made for replacing the IG’s with Musk’s supposed DOGE band of 20-yr-olds barging into federal offices with their laptops and accessing banks of confidential information on individual citizens, taxpayers, employers, retirees, businesses. They are there to help Musk, and he has no loyalty to anyone but himself. Just like the Tweetster.
This week, of course, the news is buzzing about this Cabinet-of-amateurs major national security blunder of discussing a secret military operation on an unsecured chat app that had inadvertently invited the editor of The Atlantic to sit in. None of the new Cabinet has shown any particular concern about the broad implications of this security lapse, shrugging it off as insignificant. Their casual attitude toward classified information mimics the Tweetster’s Mar a Lago document scandal, for which he should have gone to jail and been barred from future office. Instead, every one of them could be on the cover of a new Mad Magazine with a stupid smile saying, What–Me Worry?
As we saw in the various nomination hearings, though few of these candidates even came close to the “highly qualified” bar that their positions require, they were passed almost unanimously by Republican Senators. Despite the candidates’ limited qualifications for the positions, Senators’ questions were soft-balls, their comments inconsequential, and many approvals seemed to be given reluctantly. So one has to wonder: what sword of Damocles is hanging over the heads of Republican Senators? Threats of harm to them or their families? Worse? How else can we explain the incongruity of so many unacceptable Cabinet nominations garnering approval?
Meanwhile, permeating the air like a resurgent plague, the current Tweetster has become almost child-like on screen these days (downers?), ad-libbing a repetitive inchoate stream of internal dialogue that somehow passes for “interview.” If he ever had the abilities to listen, assess, learn, reason, or conclude, those days are obviously over, and his Act remains onstage only to serve Heritage’s apparent goal of turning our country into a white, fundamentalist, mean-spirited place that would have had the historical Jesus chasing them out of the temple with a stick.
The P2025 agenda is being challenged by the ACLU, and many lawsuits have been filed in federal courts around the country by a united group of 22 state attorneys general that was formed over a year ago, largely due to the efforts of our own then-AG and now Governor Bob Ferguson. Project 2025 is breaking a lot of laws.
to be continued
lummi island wine tasting mar 21 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Mar 7 4-6 pm
welcome signs of Spring…
NO Friday Bread Pickup This Week 🙁
This time every year our baker goes somewhere to watch a bunch of basketball games!!
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday the Bakery emails the week’s bread offering to the mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday (and not already claimed!) will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Contact us at least two weeks before your visit to get on the bread list .
This week’s $10 Wine Tasting
McManis Chardonnay ’22 CA $14
Lush and inviting with pure fruit flavors, voluptuous palate of peach, apricot, vibrant citrus, and melon and an easy, creamy texture with hints of vanilla and a smooth, lingering finish.
Natura Carmenere ’22 Chile $14
Attractive bouquet with cherry aromas and hints of chocolate and spice. Big volume taste on the palate with soft round tannins and a firm, well-balanced structure. Good balance between fruit and oak with a long, juicy finish. 100% organically grown grapes.
Jacob Williams Syrah ’21 Washington $34
Hand-destemmed, open-top fermentation, manual punchdowns, 11 months in 12% new American oak; earthy aromas of crushed gravel and a juicy blue- fruit palate with flavors of red pepper berries and spicy finish.
Economics of the Heart: SS United States Still Afloat
flickr photo by chrisinphilly5448
The SS United States was the last great passenger ocean liner. She was launched at Newport News Shipyard in 1952, is about 1000′ ft long, 100′ wide, and 150′ from keel to masthead. And, because the Korean War was still happening, she was overbuilt and powered to allow easy conversion to military duties.
She holds the record average speed (30kts/35mph) for Atlantic crossings in both directions, and was iconic until nearly 1970, when air travel made such vessels too much of a luxury to sustain. For decades the United States Conservancy tried unsuccessfully to refit the ship, and the current plan 🙁 is to sink her in Okaloosa County, FL as an “artificial reef.” Alas, so it goes, as Vonnegut might have said.
In many ways the history of this ship parallels the history of our country; born in wartime, carefully built to the exacting specifications of our Constitution, and setting the high bar by which ourselves and others could be measured. Hers has been a long, slow passing from public consciousness as fewer and fewer are left that remember her era.
The story of SS United States is a haunting metaphor for our presently unfolding national crisis. Over the last two months, our country has been taken over by a small group of habitually angry, mean-spirited, sexist, racist white men. Driven by a toxic sense of personal entitlement, they are committed to destroying our 250 yr-old ship of state, dismantle her for parts, throw the passengers and crew overboard (or worse), severely punish anyone who resists their cruelty, and embrace our historic enemies-turned-fascist-dictatorships as an offering of adoration and obeisance. No one who has ever taken an oath to defend the Constitution will ever willingly accept that. Resistance will take as long as it takes.
We have learned a few encouraging things in these two months. First, these guys are not the brightest bulbs in the box. Second, their ham-fisted and illegal mass firings of essential workers at all levels across the federal government have led to chaos and legal pushback. Third, the heart-breaking sudden abandonment of our long-term traditional allies around the world, imposition of trade-stopping tariffs on long-established imports, and slashing of the federal workforce have put us in an entirely avoidable downward economic spiral which will hurt everyone.
To consider that let’s pull out the dog-eared chart of the Economic Circular Flow. The simpler versions only included households, businesses, products, and labor, leaving out environment, natural resources, health, and community well-being. My long-time personal favorite version is this very entertaining video from a long time ago by career environmentalist Annie Leonard, who explains it all clearly and convincingly. The government’s stated goals of pumping more oil and gas, backing off development of renewable energy sources, and doing away with the EPA will hit a lot of roadblocks in a nation much more committed to climate change than even a few years ago.
Since January we have watched in horror as the Project 2025 playbook has selected targets with the dual goals of crippling specific functions of federal offices and inflicting pain on specific categories of “enemies.” Their goals are not to save federal money but to steer it for their own $interests and for the sadistic pleasure of inflicting suffering on legal and illegal immigrants, non-whites, young women, and blue-state residents and governments. The glue that holds all the elements of Project 2025 together is the underlying philosophy of white male supremacy, often thinly disguised as “Christianity.”
Some 23 blue state attorneys general began meeting early last year to prepare for the “second coming” of the Tweetster. Their dedication to the rule of law prepared them to respond to each unfolding breach of the law with an array of federal lawsuits, most of which are in process at the moment. Their preparation and dedication has markedly slowed the ongoing coup agenda. Their aggressive efforts are an ongoing positive sign.
Also encouraging is the recent brief comment from the very conservative Chief Justice Roberts regarding the Tweeter’s desire to impeach judges he didn’t like: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” The comment is widely interpreted as a “teaching moment” that the T should not ignore.
Last and definitely not least mixed note: 1) our unilateral withdrawal from NATO and huge tariffs against historic trading partners are crashing the stock market, killing our farm export markets, and raising costs for everything we buy, making it likely our entire economy is in for a very rough ride; and 2) the worse things get economically, hopefully the more people will, you know, “turn Blue!”
lummi island wine tasting march 14 ’25
Wine Tasting Friday Mar 7 4-6 pm
shown: today’s Brunelli Rosso di Montalcino
a little wine can brighten some of these dark days…
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Seeded 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 adds 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 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 as if that wasn’t enough, topped with a black sesame streusel before baking. Ooh la la, what’s not to like…? – 2/$5.
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday the Bakery emails the week’s bread offering to the mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday (and not already claimed!) will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Contact us at least two weeks before your visit to get on the bread list .
This week’s $10 Wine Tasting
Vielle Ferme Blanc ’23 France $12
Flavorful blend of bourboulenc, grenache blanc, roussanne, ugni blanc, & vermentino delivering seductive aromas of jasmine, hawthorn, and pear with flavors of blood orange with delicate saline notes.
Garzon Tannat Reserva ’21 Uruguay $18
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.
Brunelli Martoccia di Luca Rosso di Montalcino ’20 Italy $24
Classic, dignified structure with approachable, wonderfully bright fruit; bright nose of cranberry, cherry, and slate; smooth, integrated tannins, and thoughtful, composed finish.
Economics of the Heart: Ego => Karma
In 1965, a typical CEO got paid about 20 times what an average employee earned. In those days the top goal of a company was to maximize the return to shareholders; executive focus was on quality, reliability, productivity, and customer, client, and employee satisfaction. But by 1980 CEO focus was starting to shift away from long-established goals of maximizing productivity, product/service quality, research and development, which slowed innovation and started reducing product/service quality and reliability.
Instead, because CEO compensation was becoming increasingly tied to a company’s share value on the stock market, board rooms became more concerned with keeping share price high and costs (including employee compensation) low than in keeping quality high. These same forces are responsible for turning Boeing into something of a poster child for the purposeful decline of a highly respected company with the disastrous series of failures in its rollout of the new 737 Max a few years ago. Hundreds of people died and a highly regarded, iconic company’s reputation was trashed; but the CEO still makes millions.
The forces behind these shifts in long-term American business pride and practices can be traced directly to the changing focus of top business schools over the same period, as students were taught to extract resources instead of creating value. Of note is that in 1985 Harvard Business School deliberately shifted its curricular focus by hiring a graduate of Milton Friedman’s “Chicago School” for a top position. Friedman long championed the idea that only when markets were completely unregulated could the magical forces of the market’s “Invisible Hand” lead inexorably to the optimal allocation of scarce resources in which all players would thrive. Btw, Friedman is the guy who made famous the line “there’s no such thing as a Free Lunch.” (My personal feeling was always that Friedman was only believed because the corner of his mouth turned up in a perennial little smile…but we digress…
The problem that we resource economists have always had with Friedman is that he refused to consider significance of the vast number of ways in which markets consistently reward unfair labor practices, price gouging, monopolization, pollution, environmental damage, over-extraction of resources, and gross inequality in economic outcomes. Business schools went all in for deregulation of markets, and Reagan and his merry band of Heritage Foundation financial advisors launched the ongoing war on economic efficiency, social fairness, environmental protection, and the worthy goal of modest economic security for every citizen. It also led to the deep recession at the end of 2007. Btw, it is no coincidence that for some decades we have seesawed from Republican administrations looting and crashing the economy to Democratic ones that get it back on track. Dubya crashed it and Obama fixed it. Tweetster crashed it and Biden fixed it. At the moment the Tweetster is on track to crash the entire world economy. So how did we get here?
Starting in the 1980s, consistent with the 1000-page Heritage Foundation’s “Plan” for the Reagan administration, business schools began a long transformation in philosophy and orientation that reflected shifts in business practices and in the economy at large. In 2016 William Lazonick saw that changes in the core teachings of business schools would ensure that firms would not give workers a fair shake. At that time, Wall Street was taking off and American businesses were becoming increasingly “financialized” —meaning that executives started to base their business decisions more on the goal of boosting their firms’ stock prices, and turning away from investing in the productive capabilities of employees, which had long been the cornerstone for rising American living standards.
For 40 years these wealth-concentrating practices have been squeezing millions of households between decreasing wages and higher prices for everything. People are hungry and homeless not because they are lazy, but because those who are already financially secure are not spending enough of their earnings to keep the economic circular flow economy going. Many well-educated workers can barely make ends meet, while more and more less-educated people cannot afford housing even if they work full time.
The basic fact is that everyone on the planet is by necessity both a worker and a consumer, and ultimately the purpose of an economy is to manage household income and expenses optimally. It is the basic Circular Flow: at the end of each day, the total amount spent by everyone has to equal the amount received by everyone. If anyone is hoarding, then someone is starving. If lots of players are hoarding, lots of people are starving. We are all in this together.
Congressional Republicans are curiously united in their reticence on these developments and thereby are declaring war on our Constitution just as we should be planning the celebration of its 250th birthday. Let’s be clear: this Administration has been spitting in the face of the Constitution all day every day since before Inauguration. All of their actions demonstrate their commitment to replace our Constitutional government with an authoritarian dictatorship, realign our country away from our traditional allies and trading partners, and realign it with Russia and its ilk, in defiance of the very specific oaths all have taken to support and defend the Constitution.
Let’s be clear… this is not “politics as usual.” Every such action by a Congressional Republican or Cabinet member in direct contradiction to the Constitution is a conscious, deliberate act of treason, and should be treated as such. They are all already traitors, every single one. Project 2025 Republicans (pretty much all of them) have deliberately conspired to start this new Civil War. We all know at a gut level that everything we have known and loved about our country is at stake, and that we must fight these bozos for it until we win, however long it takes.
2072 Granger Way
