lummi island wine tasting august 7 ’26
This week open Friday only, closed Saturday
August blooms next door…
Friday Bread This Week
Baker’s week off…no bread this week! 🙁
This week’s wine tasting flight
Maryhill Viognier ’24 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.
Argento Malbec ’22 Argentina $13
From organically grown grapes; deep purple hue; inviting aromas of red berries and flowers, and flavors of plum and sweet blackberry; finishes with ripe, balanced tannins– way over-delivers for its modest price.
Chiarlo Le Orme Barbera d’Asti ’22 Italy $23
Ruby red with hues of violet; elegant and intense aromas, with notes of fresh cherry and currant; harmonious palate, with good structure and roundness, beautiful savory finish, and a local favorite!
“Disaster Relief…?!”
Last week we lamented about the impacts of losing one’s wallet/purse/briefcase or whatever contains the legal documents that give us the personal & portable proof of Identity that define our legal existence and allow us to drive, buy, rent, or own the material things and services that make our lives possible and enjoyable.
Therefore it is quite disturbing to suddenly lose any parts of the precious trove of identifying documentation we usually carry with us everywhere to prove our social identities and economic relevance when we suddenly find ourselves with no cash and no ID.
After several searches in numerous places I had been that day, none turned up any clues. Active credit cards were canceled, banks were advised, and processes were begun to get replacements even as the search continued.
That went on for nearly two weeks, until I had vacuumed up some of the dog fur that gradually accumulates around the house this time of year, including under a couple of comfy and well-used chairs in the living room. The chairs have round, circular wooden bases with curved struts that make a perfect hiding place for anything wallet-sized. I tilted each of them a bit to the side to push the vacuum under each one. Lo and behold, a short time later the missing wallet appeared, quietly lying on the floor between the two chairs, looking completely innocent, as if it had been there all along.
Whew and Hallelujah, what a relief! How it got there remains a mystery. BIG sigh of relief, and a brief thumbs up thanks to St. Anthony with a brief eyebrow lift for the long delay…! 🙂
Economics of the Heart: Lemming Gene Confirmed in Congressional Republicans!
Arctic lemming courtesy Wikipedia
Recent DNA analysis has confirmed that nearly every Republican in Congress shares a little-known gene with the tiny sub-Arctic lemming. The finding emerged from numerous studies by behavioral scientists trying to make sense of the extraordinary similarity between the observable suicidal behavior of both species.
Lemmings, of course, are well known — and often thought of with sadness — because of their occasional penchant to commit mass suicide by throwing themselves into icy Arctic waters. In a sense it is understandable. These darling little creatures are small, only 6-7 inches long, and as you can see in the photo, they are Really Cute! But they live a tough life, being among the smallest, most fecund, and most vulnerable prey of their larger ecosystem.
Republicans, of course, are not cute at all, yet we see very similar behavior in their spineless unwillingness to defend themselves against the constant bitching of their Boss (the Tweestster), who seems to enjoy fantasizing about which one’s leg he will have for dinner tonight, and which one’s brain tomorrow. As their numbers diminish, the skittishness of the Congressional herd grows more debilitating by the day. As you can imagine, when the most important thing in your life is getting the approval of Unreasonable Leader, and he knows it, you will be forced to do things that even YOU find disgusting. SAD!
Lemmings, on the other hand, are not at all interested in any of this nonsense. I mean, c’mon, they are just a sweet bunch of Really Cute, Really Sweet little furballs, and you just have to pet their soft fur and hear them gurgle in pleasure. Think about it…what the Heck kind of person could ever want to hurt these sweet little bystanders…victims of a sort, really…or see or hear them suffer…? You know, besides the Tweetster, who actually only bothers to stay alive for the sublime pleasure of making other creatures suffer…Nothing else can even come close.
Like the lemmings, most of us are just trying to get along as best we can with the resources we have at hand. We believe in rules, in compassion for every living being, in keeping kindness going around and coming around, and saving our Planet from the inevitable extinction if Global Warming is not turned around immediately.
We find Life on Earth itself threatened mightily because one Very Stupid Man is motivated by only one emotion, Cruelty, and has successfully used it to bring the continuing existence of our Nation and Life on Earth itself into question.
There is no excuse for Big Oil’s deliberate choice to have lied to the public for over 50 years about global warming while accelerating production and use of fossil fuels when they KNEW the consequences from studies that THEY THEMSELVES had sponsored! There were several and they all agreed that increasing average global temperature by more than 1.5 degrees C would be catastrophic. So what did they do? They lied, and instead of curbing production did everything they could to increase it.
This isn’t any old crossroad, folks— this is THE crossroad for the survival of life itself on this planet. CO2 must start coming down immediately. Renewable energy must replace fossil fuels immediately. The US government must be restored to its Constitutional order immediately.
Everything about today’s politics derives from the same hubris that somehow makes money today worth more than survival tomorrow. That’s just Crazy!
lummi island wine tasting july 30 ’26
This week open Friday only, closed Saturday
reefnetters ready to start fishing this year’s runs!
Friday Bread This Week
Dried Cherry and Pecan – a levain is made the night before final mixing of the dough, starting fermenation and gluten development. The final dough includes bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat, dried cherries and toasted pecans. A nice rustic loaf that goes well with meats and cheese – $5/loaf
Pan de Cioccolate – A delicious chocolate artisan bread made with a levain, bread flour and fresh milled rye flour, honey for sweetness, vanilla and plenty of dark chocolate. Makes fabulous toast, even better french toast – $5/loaf.
Remember pastry sells out fast. I can only make so much – and all pastry is a popular! if you wait to order I’ll probably be sold out and you’ll be sad.
Rum Raisin Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with golden raisins and chunks of almond paste and topped with a chocolate glaze before baking. Ooh la la, what’s not to like?! – 2/$5.
This week’s wine tasting flight
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.
Matchbook Red Gravel Cab ’22 California $17
Medium-bodied white wine with dense texture, rich, elegant aromas, and succulent flavors of pineapple, lemon zest, chamomile, sea salt, stone fruits, and a bright, tangy acidity, pleasing creamy texture, and deep flavors!
Edi Simcic Duet ’21 Slovenia $27
Balanced blend of merlot, cab sauv, cab franc; bold and compelling, with notes of chocolate, cherries, cheesecake, and coffee on silky tannins, a lush, ripe, fruit-full body, and a finish that goes on and on.
A Brief Lament (wah!) on Personal Identity
Last Saturday morning we went to the weekly Saturday Market next to the Islander, shopping and schmoozing with vendors and neighbors, then took the dog for a quiet walk at Curry Preserve, then home, and learned that somewhere in those activities I had lost my wallet! That began a fruitless search of tracing steps at home, cars, market vendors, but all coming up short.
I know that many of you have gone through this, and while I felt some sympathy hearing about each one, one doesn’t really “Get It” about the intensity of the intrusion it imposes until you experience it. When it happens to you it is like being hit by some kind of locomotive. Every aspect of our social identities is tied up in those credit cards, driver’s license, ID’s, cash, ferry punch cards, health insurance, library, and more. Without them we are suddenly ghost-like, not quite fully materialized, with, literally, no purchase on Reality!
All of these bits of identity have to be replaced with new ones, and each one involves its own strange trip over its own particular hurdles, rules, idiosyncrasies, websites, robotic phone menus, and occasional helpful, knowledgeable agents that walk you down from that particular ID ledge toward solid social ground of actual existence!
We also know, of course, that anyone who finds the cards will have the opportunity to try to use them to buy things, sell them, or use them in various scams. It’s a really creepy experience, one that qualifies for the comment of an old sailor in his book on Heavy Weather Sailing: “experiencing a hurricane at sea in a small sailboat is “something most devoutly to be eschewed.” Well, maybe it will turn up.
Fingers crossed…!
Economics of the Heart: The Brutality of Republikan Avarice
The goals for the New Republikan America are now becoming fully visible in all their sadistic cruelty, selfish entitlements, environmental disdain, misogyny, and self-importance, making them a pretty good manifestation of the Seven Deadly Sins defined not in the Bible, but in the teachings of the early Catholic Church. Over the centuries the teachings of the Church let everyone know that, yes, these are the things you must reveal in confession and do penance for if you sincerely desire not to spend Eternity in Hell (for a mortal sin) or a big chunk of Eternity in Purgatory (for too many of those pesky venial sins) before an eventual (how long is half an eternity…?!) transfer to Heaven. This is what I learned from the nuns in their complicated black robes.
It was certainly enough to generate some seriously terrifying nightmares when I was just 6 or 7 years old. Nowadays our government uses fear and coercion to control our behavior by “disappearing” people off the street, never to be seen alive again, like American Ice does every day. It is to get us to shut up and toe the line or expect trouble ahead.
So on the one hand spreading the concepts of Deadly Sins- confession- penance on a social level– made for a peaceful, kind society where the Church played a dominant role. But at the same time it opened the door to all kinds of abuse as well. So it promises to be if the Republikan billionaires-turned-Christian Nationalist succeed in doing away with all vestiges of democracy, Constitutional rights, or civic action.
On the current Republikan trajectory we see the mobilization of a very different kind of so-called Christianity where mercy, kindness, moderation, responsibility, and service to others have been replaced by a sociopathic structure more akin to a Russian Gulag, a sadist’s tools of torture, and a disdain for individual rights. Postponed indefinitely are attending to essential survival needs to reverse global warming, to value and nurture each human being, and to pool global knowledge and intention toward building a sustainable, interdependent world where every family has the resources for comfort and safety.
In various ways Republicans are trying to Own the emerging subservient Christianity, control media where people get information, and get the masses to keep settling for less and less. Every day it becomes more and more clear that they are to a person a cruel, heartless lot who seem hell-bent on the destruction of all life on Earth.
What are we talking about here…. ” a better World for fewer trillionaires…?”
lummi island wine tasting july 24-25 ’26
This week open Friday only, closed Saturday
crescent moon sunset
crescent moon sunset
Friday Bread This Week
Spelt Levain – Spelt is an ancient wheat grain with a nutty, slightly sweet flavor and a milder gluten than modern wheat, from a levain of traditional bread flour, spelt flour, fresh milled whole spelt and fresh milled whole rye, and just a touch of honey. It is a great all around bread – $5/loaf
Italian Breakfast Bread – Made with bread flour eggs, yogurt, a little sugar and vanilla as well as dried cranberries, golden raisins, and candied lemon peel. Perfect for breakfast as toast or even better for french toast – $5/loaf
and pastry this week:
Brioche Almond Buns – Made with a delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Rolled out and spread with an almond cream filling. The almond cream is a delicious creamy filling made with lots more butter, sugar and eggs as well as almond flour. Yum, yum! – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting flight
Bread & Butter Chardonnay ’22 California $16
Essentially this is a mass-produced California chardonnay blend from many sources and engineered to mimic the pleasantly rich texture and smooth, vanilla-y, oakiness of CA chards of the past…surprisingly tasty and balanced.
Duck Pond Red Oregon $14
Curiously the thirty-year old family winery with a great reputation has no notes on this wine…puzzling, see what you think.
Angels & Cowboys Proprietary Red ’22 California $22
Attractive nose of red berries, orange peel, spices, and crushed stone; medium to full-bodied and succulent, with silky, mellow tannins and flavorful finish.
Economics of the Heart: Calling Out the Rascals
The topic of the day as we write was Heather Cox Richardson’s post containing the text of a lengthy presentation to the U.S. House of Representatives by Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern. She quotes it at length because it lays out in great detail the vast and somehow-still-growing Gulf between the planet the Republicans think they live on and the one their voters actually inhabit.
In a great speech, McGovern goes chapter and verse through the 24/7 litany of Republican lies, misrepresentations, fantasies, excuses, and crimes as they dissemble, assert, talk too loud, and keep their heads down as they dismantle democracy and kill the Planet. Their primary goal (pun intended) is to cover their own butts by giving the Tweetster complete freedom to tear apart our 250-year-old democracy and sell it to our enemies for bitcoin and favor with a handful of billionaires. Is a mere seat in Congress worth that depth of humiliation? Really?
All in all, McGovern’s tongue-lashing is a great example of the turning tide of public outrage at the trashing of everything that is noble and good about our 250-year national experiment with Constitutional Democracy. The underlying Republican principle that every person matters, deserves respect, an equal voice, opportunity, freedom, and agency is an anathema that aspiring oligarchs despise and fear.
Above all, McGovern is naming what a substantial majority of Americans are now feeling. Everything that has happened since this so-called Administration slimed itself into office has wrought a cheapening, a shallowing, a lowest-denominator dismantling of the entire social, legal, and governmental structure defined by our Constitution. Below are a few excerpts from his speech.
“Let’s talk about the Republican Party. A party that worships one man above the Constitution in a cult of personality. A party that demonizes immigrants and says they poison the blood of our country. A party that calls the free press the enemy of the people and sics the Justice Department on journalists who they don’t like. A party that says their political opponents are internal enemies and calls them, quote, the enemy within. A party that is okay with invading our allies, including other democracies…”
“The Republican Party has become the party of…far right fascists who are hell-bent on destroying our country and our way of life. And every single time they call us communists, it is nothing more than a projection of their own radicalization…they definitely don’t want to talk about the Tweetster’s increasing prices of groceries, gas, health care, housing, and taxes for their new, endless, illegal war which has now cost over $100 billion.”
One especially powerful section of Rep. McGovern’s caustic commentary noted that “in 1945, the United States War Department explained to U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II that Fascism “is government by the few and for the few to seize complete control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state…The People run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.” Hmm, I guess that does sound like a typical Republican platform.
Every day more and more Americans are seeing, feeling, lamenting, and beginning to rebel against this ongoing Republican effort to privatize public assets, restrict individual freedoms, and reorganize the economy into the hands of a small group of vaguely autistic multi-billionaires who seem to live, as James Joyce described his main character in A Painful Case as “living at a little distance from his body.”
It remains a mystery to understand what in the world a handful of multi-billionaires are pressing Republican politicians to get from a national economy in which they already own some 20% of everything.
And it’s even more of a mystery why so many Republican politicians seem so willing to surrender their dignity in such a pursuit. It would seem that all honor has been completely sold out in favor of some Scrooge-like need to have the biggest money bin. Or, maybe worse…getting primaried by failing the Tweetster’s daily loyalty tests.
lummi island wine tasting jul 17 ’26
This week open Friday only, closed Saturday
another glorious morning…!
another glorious morning…!
Friday Bread This Week
Kamut Levain – Kamut, also known as khorasan wheat, is an ancient grain with more protein than conventional wheat and more digestible for some. Starts with a levain, fermented overnight before being mixed with with bread flour and whole kamut flour for a nutty, rich flavor. – $5/loaf
Rye w/ Currants, Pumpkin Seeds & Cracked Coriander – Made with a rye starter and mixed w/ bread flour and freshly milled rye flour, some molasses, malt syrup, pumpkin seeds, currants and cracked coriander seed. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week:
Morning Buns – Made popular by Tartine Bakery in San Francisco using the same laminated dough as croissants. Dough is rolled out, spread with a filling of brown sugar, orange zest, butter and cinnamon, rolled up, and sliced before baking. – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting flight
Cannonball Chardonnay ’22 Calif $16
Nose of pear, pineapple, citrus, and stone fruit; medium bodied, smooth palate; polished style with hints of oak; partial malolactic fermentation and lees-stirring adds a pleasing rounded texture.
Angeline Cab Sauv ’24 California $16
Fruit-forward with aromas of lush cherry, cassis, rich cherry, and plum flavors with hints of vanilla and soft oak that over-deliver for the modest price.
Chakana Estate Selection Malbec ’20 Argentina $25
Opaque, bright purple in color; pleasing nose of plums and ‘spicy attic dust’ (?) ; full-bodied palate of plums and spice with good length, balanced acidity, soft tannins, and lingering finish.
Economics of the Heart: Big Carbon Still Claims Climate Change Isn’t Real
Lummi Island reefnet fishery
Everybody knows that the accelerating Global Warming over the last 50 years is being caused primarily by the burning of “fossil fuels” formed in the Earth’s crust over millions of years from the bodies of carbon based life forms.
Beginning in Britain around 1760, human beings figured out that that the potential energy available from burning coal offered enormous potential for generating energy to drive production, transportation, heating, cooling…the foundation of the global Industrial Revolution. Very quickly human society evolved from an agrarian and craft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing, mass production factories, assembly lines, and capital-based economies which concentrated wealth into the hands of a burgeoning population of “Capitalists.”
In a certain sense the Industrial Revolution was not that big a change from the long-standing feudalism in Britain and Europe, in which wealth was already concentrated among titled landowners and hereditary royalty. Workers learned trade skills, apprenticed, and found employment where possible. The long-term effect would be to concentrate wealth even further, not just with Royalty, but also with the emerging capitalist class, which developed their own sense of entitlement getting their indoctrinating MBA’s.
Fast forward to today’s United States, and we see the emergence of a far more virulent attachment to wealth formation by a relatively tiny handful of already very, very, very, very rich men. Most, if not all, are multi-billionaires who engage in some forms of political philanthropy. In 1982 the combined wealth of the 400 richest Americans was $92 billion; in 2025 it was $6.6 trillion, an enormous increase concentrated in a very small group of individuals who as nearly as we can tell, spend a large % of it buying politicians to help them make it even bigger.
At the present moment the Tweetster is selling our country bit by bit to our enemies, moving full speed ahead to accelerate global warming, selling the White House piece by piece, creating conditions for millions of deaths and vast suffering across the world, and of course littering the World with tasteless testaments to his bottomless vanity.
Global warming is the greatest threat to life on Earth in millions of years. It has been deliberately ignored by Energy CEO’s for 40 years, making climate change, habitat loss, storms, tornadoes, floods, sea level rise, droughts, and wildfires more frequent and deadly across the world. The living world is struggling to survive, and yet the carbon-mining oil execs keep lying and making it worse.
There are direct lines connecting Republicans to favors for oil execs and selling out the long-term survivability of our planet not just for human beings but for entire networks of interdependent life forms that keep it all functioning.
One is moved to ask, WTF are these silent Republicans in Congress thinking as they look down at their fingernails as the stupidest President and Cabinet the nation has ever seen continue their looting, lying, and lunacy? Is that some kind of “loyalty?” with some imagined “benefit?” Are they all on drugs? Under threat of violence to themselves or family?
As I have probably pointed out here at some point, in summer of 1980 I had a 10-week summer fellowship at Battelle Labs in Richland, WA. Their Economics lab had a major grant from Dept of Energy to look at the economic impacts of possible global warming from a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. My piece of that was to explore the potential economic impacts on global fisheries (my PhD major).
There had been several independent studies funded by DOE. They were very sophisticated, with carefully gathered data and analysis of likely effects on atmosphere, winds, rainfall, habitat, food supplies, ecosystem integrity. My paper was later published in Natural Resources Journal at the University of New Mexico a year or so later. At some point it was discovered by a radio station in Toronto (fisheries are a major element in the Canadian economy), which interviewed me online. At close of the interview, when asked about what I thought might happen, I remember musing that, giant energy producers being what they were, they would likely drag their feet. Skeptical, yes, but I never for a moment imagined that the industry would make excuses and do NOTHING for the next 40 years!
So yes, climate change is a Big, Real Deal, and the evidence even 50 years ago in those studies was careful, thorough, and convincing. It was important that action be taken quickly because habitat, food supply, spawning, reproduction, and survival of marine fish are dependent on particular ranges of temperature, salinity, food availability, and successful spawning, all of which would be threatened by global warming.
It is the Big Oil lobby that has kept lying all these years, downplaying the existential dangers of global warming even as fossil fuel production and use continued to grow, until we are so far into it there may be no return.
What kind of people DO s*#t like that??!!
2072 Granger Way