lummi island wine tasting nov 5-6 ’26
This weekend open Friday & Saturday 4-5:30 pm
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Pain au Levain – Made with a nice mix of bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat and rye flours. After building the sourdough and mixing the final dough it gets a long cool overnight ferment in the refrigerator. This really allows the flavor to develop in this bread. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
Dutch Speculaas Raisin – Aka cinnamon raisin but for this bake uses a poolish of bread and fresh milled rye flours fermented overnight before mixing with bread flour, whole wheat, & rolled oats, some honey for sweetness, a little milk for a tender crumb, and loaded with raisins and a healthy dose cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg anise, ginger, cardamom and a hint of pepper…a hearty rustic loaf, great for breakfast toast, even better for french toast – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Individual Cinnamon Rolls – Made with a rich sweet rolled dough that is full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar before rolling up and slicing into individual rolls for baking. And boy are they delicious!! – 2/$5.
This week’s wine tasting
Juggernaut Chardonnay ’22 Sonoma $17
Barrel fermented; aromas of apple, Asian pear and lemon meringue open to rich, lingering flavors of stone fruit, honeysuckle, and yellow plum, with finishing notes of vanilla, butter cream and hints of clove.
Idilico Tempranillo ’21 Washington $19
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.
Phelps Creek Pinot Noir ’19 WA $28
Polished acidity balances a rich nose of leather and tobacco; palette of bright red fruits, lush texture full of
earth and spice notes reflective of Gorge volcanic soils.
Economics of the Heart: MAGA Hits a Blue Wall
Tweetster takes a well-deserved early retirement
The Tweetster’s 24/7 dominance of national media has been going on nonstop, every minute of every day, for ten years since Putin set him up to walk down that staircase in 2015. He has spent a lifetime driven by spotlight addiction to the fawning attention of any audience. His never-ending spontaneous and pointless monologues have been an exhausting, irritating, and inescapable torture of self-aggrandizing claims and malicious ad hominem attacks on anyone and everyone who might be more famous, better liked, or actually respected by others.
At best over these years we have been occasionally hopeful, or fingers crossed, or in active opposition in our own ways, but emotionally worn down by the years of bizarre Vanity, law-breaking, and ever-unfolding nonsense-o-logues of self-aggrandizement and spontaneous insults to or against anyone else who receives media attention. That includes especially comedians who made fun of him and newscasters who dared to criticize or make fun of him. That has been the exhausting everyday script.
And now, suddenly, this week’s midterm election results have set Maga back on its heels (it has So Many!) with massive Democratic gains and voting majorities in both Houses of Congress for the next two years. It is an extraordinary, long overdue, and welcome accomplishment which opens the doors of Congressional investigation to the very long list of harms perpetrated on the American people over the past two years by this crooked, thieving, murdering, torturing administration and the silent, obeisant ‘look down silently at their fingernails‘ Republican Senators and Representatives who have enabled them.
Everybody knows about the extraordinary looting of the Federal government by the Trump family, the ongoing cruelty of ICE agents against innocent ordinary citizens, the arrest and torture of entire families sent illegally to prisons across America and the world with no due process, no appeal, and no representation where they are tortured, separated from each other, and brutally beaten, starved, and/or murdered. This isn’t a government; it’s coup by the organized criminals who wrote and have been executing Project 2025 behind the scenes.
Beginning with hateful-to-his-bones Tweetster hit man Stephen Miller, the current White House Cabinet consists entirely of unqualified appointees who know nothing about the agencies they control, but will do whatever dirty work is requested. As is so sadly exemplified by current AG Todd “yes-man” Blanche, there is no evidence that any of these people have the background, will, or skills to perform these functions according to the law.
Now, quite suddenly none of that is particularly important, because it will hopefully all change when the new Congress is seated in January. Substantial Democratic majorities in both House and Senate open the door to hearings, investigations, and penalties. Republicans in Congress and appointees in the White House will all be questioned by appropriate Congressional committees and appropriate actions taken. It will take some time and it should prove interesting.
But even while these inquiries unfold, the new Democratic majority in Congress will be passing legislation to restore Constitutional boundaries to Executive actions. So on the one hand it is good to feel these moments of euphoria because a door is open before us that we have longed for for years. It wasn’t there last week, and though we can expect resistance from the Administration’s battalions of ICE Thought Police to handing over the reins of power in January, we need to start claiming it and fighting for it immediately.
In a strange way at this moment we seem to be adrift in yet another ambiguous “Leonard Cohen moment,” as articulated in his meandering song Hallelujah. On the one hand, we suddenly find ourselves in a hopeful place after two years of nonstop on-air presence of an increasingly insane, sadistic, mean-spirited, and selfish old man who enjoys making people suffer and whose mind has become quite detached from reality. On the other, there have been a lot of hints that the current Project 2025 government has its own plan underway to loot federal assets and coffers, perhaps in cahoots with Putin, or China, or for their wet-dream Christian Nationalist state where a handful of ultra-wealthy white men will rule over a hard-right Christian Nation following the Seven Mountains Mandate in which women are the property of husbands, do not require higher education, and have multiple children. There are crazies in every direction, so despite this moment of euphoria, this war will go on for some time to come.
It will be a long two months till the new Congress is seated, and Republicans being what they are (i.e., only interested in increasing their own personal wealth), chances are they will be fine with ditching their leader if they can pull a profit out of the process. You can be sure the wheels are turning in all those Red Minds about how to transition away from the Tweetster without hurting their bottom lines.
While this weird situation feels a bit like that old curse: “May you live in interesting times,” we are all experiencing a birth of new hope since the horror of the 2024 election results (yes we do believe it was rigged). Also, while it is a bit off the subject of the moment, I for one think that Joe Biden was very possibly the best President of my lifetime despite what I now recognize in myself as the growing familiarity of forgetting what I was just saying if interrupted. Under his leadership the nation enjoyed relative prosperity in the global recession unleashed by Covid that set back much of the global economy.
lummi island wine tasting oct 30-31
This weekend open Friday & Saturday 4-6 pm
painting by Didi Lutz
No Friday Bread Pickup This Week 🙁
So sad….Baker taking this week off 🙁
This week’s wine tasting
Juggernaut Chardonnay ’22 Sonoma $17
Barrel fermented; aromas of apple, Asian pear and lemon meringue open to rich, lingering flavors of stone fruit, honeysuckle, and yellow plum, with finishing notes of vanilla, butter cream and hints of clove.
Idilico Tempranillo ’21 Washington $19
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.
Phelps Creek Pinot Noir ’19 WA $28
Polished acidity balances a rich nose of leather and tobacco; palette of bright red fruits, lush texture full of
earth and spice notes reflective of Gorge volcanic soils.
Economics of the Heart: Hey, let’s send the Tweetster, Musk, and Putin to Mars!!
Tweetster goes to Mars
The stakes for this week’s national elections could not be higher. Having spent the last 40 years wresting control of the entire federal government for the sole benefit of a handful of humorless and deeply self-absorbed billionaires, the so-called ‘Republican Party’ is finally showing vague signs of actual “life.” With a blink here, a periscope breaking the waves from time to time there, and perhaps the very occasional lifting of a Republican eyebrow after yet another international waters vessel is ambushed in international waters using some of the Navy’s most lethal weapons.
This administration has murdered hundreds of nameless people in boats on the open ocean who are ‘supposedly’ intending to smuggle drugs into the US black market. The targeted people are dead, and their nameless bodies are sunk to the bottom leaving no record of who they were or what they were really doing.
The recently formed “triumvirate” of the Tweetster, the Muskster, and the Putinzker and their common quest to crush Ukraine and make it part of Putin’s Russia represents a strange alliance of deeply egocentric rich guys with a common penchant for sadistic psychopathy (gaining pleasure from the suffering of others.) They have no obvious loyalties to anyone but themselves, and hold grudges for as long as it takes to get “payback” against anyone who crosses them or fails to show appropriate deference. As a group, they share not only a defining lack of empathy for the suffering of others, but also a continuing sense of pleasure and power from actually causing that suffering.
It is a curious coincidence that the abbreviation for delirium tremens, ‘having the DT’s,’ is the common nickname for an alcoholic’s delirious withdrawal symptoms after extended periods of heavy alcohol intake. The fact is that we’ve ALL been suffering from a chronic overdose of “DT” for a full decade, and every minute of every day more and more people are waking up to it yelling and shaking their fists, and shouting Enough already, Make it Stop!! And millions of us across the nation are all fully engaged toward that goal right now.
So yes, it would be poetic justice to give these three and their Maga followers their own entire planet very far from ours to terraform and bring to life and have to torture in endless cruelty. But let’s face it, Mars deserves better than that! Every living being deserves better than that!
We have big hopes for next week’s election; battle lines are drawn, and resistance is widening and strengthening around the country against the blatant excesses of this administration in violation of our laws, our Constitution, and our national identity.
This metaphor of Mars as the perfect retirement home for the 3 sadistic T-M-P meanies fits nicely with be the underlying sentiments of David Bowie’s 1971 song “Life on Mars,” written and recorded some fifty years ago. (see lyrics and story). It is strangely hopeful and satisfying to imagine positive outcomes to these last ten years of Maga lies, violence, and cruelty.
This election is just another point on an unfolding timeline of taking our country back to the Constitutional values to which millions of us have taken solemn oaths. We don’t know how these deep conflicts of national identity, values, and loyalty will manifest this week or in the coming months. But we can certainly take a great deal of hope from the many thousands of voices speaking out right now about a national rejection of all things Maga in favor of a renewed commitment to our Constitution, our national pride as Americans, and a renewal of the stability, humanity, and comfort that this nation has represented for the world for 250 years.
lummi island wine tasting oct 23-24 ’26
This weekend open Friday & Saturday 4-6 pm
morning light brings its own special message…
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Pain Meunier – aka miller’s bread; pre-fermented dough of wheat berry flour, whole wheat, cracked wheat, and wheat germ…Great toast! – $5/loaf
Sonnenblumenbrot – ‘Sunflower Seed; from an overnight pre-ferment with milled rye, toasted sunflower seeds, and malt syrup…a classic German seed bread- $5/loaf
and pastry this week...
Pumpkin Muffins- Made with pumpkin and all the familiar pumpkin pie spices. Topped with a streusel made with butter, brown sugar and pumpkin seeds not to mention then filled with a cream cheese filling. Yum! Caution: may be addictive! – 4/$5.
This week’s wine tasting
Maryhill Winemaker’s White ’22 Washington $16
Sauv blanc, viognier, semillon, albarino, pinot gris; careful early morning harvest, slow press cycle, limited oak, and blended to keep each varietal’s profile in both aromas and flavors– a complex, versatile, and tasty white blend!
Wolftrap Red ’24 South Africa $15
Consistently appealing aromas and flavors of ripe plum, red currant, violets, Italian herbs and exotic spices; vibrant flavors of dark berries, spicy plum and lingering hints of orange peel.
Zenato ‘Alanera’ Rosso Veronese ’23 Italy $17
Dark, inky color; rich, focused nose of ripe berries, dusty oak and waxy vanilla bean. On the palate delivers extracted flavors of cherries, strawberry, clay, and hints of crushed mint, soft tannins, and rounded finish.
Economics of the Heart: Some Things Really Are Sacred
Scholars generally agree that the quotation here was not from any known work of Dostoevsky. For our editorial purpose today, it should probably say “Intolerance,” because everything said by Republicans since 1987 has been part of an elaborate fantasy vocabulary deliberately perpetrated by always-angry, often yelling Republicans in both the House and Senate to denigrate, attack, and smear all things ‘Democrat.’
This policy officially kicked off in 1987 when Reagan’s FCC eliminated the long-standing policy that all published news stories must provide equal coverage of all sides of any disputed topic. That single action opened the floodgates across the nation for Fake News from Fox, rural radio stations, and a generation of angry radio and TV hosts. They were all angry, accusative, intolerant, and abusive about whatever Democrat they happened to be roasting on any particular day, and this apparatus was firmly in place before the Tweetster entered the scene 20 years ago.
As discussed in this interesting article, that elimination of the “equal time” rule opened the door to a vast array of Republican-bought broadcast loudmouths with daily shows to give the same messages over and over, and inventing an entire vocabulary of words like “woke,” calling the “Democratic Party” the “Democrat” party, and so on. We all know the drill. It’s not political discussion. It’s deliberate tampering with the election process with deliberate obfuscation. Republicans no longer (if ever!) describe their party’s guiding political philosophy ($?) nor its goals (more $?).
At the same time, as Red States across the country have moved to cement Republican hold on their own Congressional seats, they also began extraordinary gerrymandering of state legislative districts to guarantee them majorities there as well. In effect, the last thirty years of Republican politics have aimed to load the dice toward Republican majorities in both Congress and state legislatures, while at the same time limiting the freedom of women to control their own bodies.
Here we are in the midst of a mid-term Congressional election across the country where lots of signs suggest the results of those elections will be tampered with, lost, destroyed, or otherwise ‘disappeared by Republicans. Everybody knows that Donald Trump never tells the truth about anything, and that plans have been underway for years to rig this election for the Republicans. He never seems to tire of being angry, dissing people, or, you know, cheating in as many ways as possible. It’s what he does and how he has lived. Indeed there is little evidence that Anything he has ever said has been true.
Recall that Fox News was sued for publishing allegations that the two voting machine companies, Dominion and Smartmatic, were tampered with in the 2020 election which Trump lost. Fox lost the case and had to pay the companies $787 million in penalties. Wikipedia refers to Fox News as “rage baiting,” designed to provoke negative a q “the proportion of Fox News statements that are mostly false or worse is almost 50 percent higher than for MSNBC, and more than twice that of CNN.
The last twenty years of American federal elections have demonstrated a glaring shift away from political issues or challenges of the times and toward a carefully planned and executed overthrow of Constitutional government itself. We have come to place in history where economic sparring has morphed into a fundamental loss of the national cohesion and loyalty that has always gone with “being an American.”
Perhaps even more head-scratching is that this present crossroad seems largely engineered by a tiny handful of very rich, vaguely autistic men who want to be a lot richer and have few scruples about how that might be accomplished. Having less to do with national identity or pride than a more personal/primitive sense of comparative position in the herd/tribe, people like the Tweetster, with no political qualifications except boundless ego, vast ignorance, and life-long sadistic psychopathic personality disorder, characterized by impaired empathy and remorse responses, persistent antisocial behavior,[4] and bold, disinhibited, egocentric traits, often masked by superficial charm and immunity to stress,[5] which create an outward appearance of “normality.”
All of this is to emphasize that the election is close at hand and we all must vote. At the same time we must also take any and every opportunity to make an end to Maga (it’s never too late for the 25th Amendment!), restore our democracy and our historic alliances around the world, and reestablish our democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people.
lummi island wine tasting oct 16-17 ’26
This weekend open Friday & Saturday 4-6 pm
stunning fall colors at BC’s Chaberton Winery
fall colors at BC’s Chaberton winery
We enjoyed a lovely retirement dinner this week for BC/Lummi Island resident and long-time
friend of the wine shop Kelli Dale and Porsche-race-car-restorer-husband at the Chaberton winery a short distance north of the border. Their family has shared a vacation home in Isle Aire for at least as many years as we have been open and have been good friends for many years.
The occasion provided a stunning fall scene of richly colorful vineyards, background trees, stunning blue sky, accented with bright and expansive white clouds. In just the last several days our little region has showing off its Fall colors with bright fading greens, deepening reds and oranges, and this spectacularly Blue sky…!
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Dried Cherry and Pecan – A levain is mixed to start fermentation and gluten development, with bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat, dried cherries and toasted pecans added, for a nice rustic loaf that goes nicely 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.
and pastry this week...
Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls – Time for all things pumpkin! A rich sweet roll dough of eggs, butter, sugar, and pumpkin rolled out, sprinkled with toasted pecans, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and allspice, and sliced into rolls for baking and frosted with a maple cream cheese frosting. Yum, don’t miss out! – 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting
Alto Moncayo Zisnero Garnacha Spain $16
Ruby red; aromas of cherries and currants; pleasant freshness with notes of laurel and toast, balanced acidity, lingering palate.
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 palate showcases the reliable poise and piquancy of this winery.
Bodega Garzon Single Vineyard Tannat Reserve ’18 Uruguay $16
Opaque deep, dark red; opens with enticing, delicious aromas of very ripe, dark fruit and berries stewed in their own liqueur, with lingering notes of spice, herb, and licorice on the seamless finish.
Economics of the Heart: “Mutually Assured Destruction” Revisited
At any moment over the last 60 years or so, any of the nuclear powers could have launched devastating attacks across the world that might kill millions or even billions of people. Standard armament for many nuclear missile submarines on underwater patrol gives each one enough destructive power to destroy vast areas of the global economic infrastructure built up over the last several decades.
Back in the fifties when many of us old-timers were kids, we were shown numerous versions of what nuclear war might mean not just for the future of humanity, but for life itself on our planet. And yes, we did in fact do drills at at school that involved “taking shelter” in our elementary school classrooms by crouching under our desks on our hands and knees, taking “shelter” against forces that could vaporize us completely in an instant. Yes, it gave us bad dreams.
The brutal American atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 effectively showcased the awful destructive power of these weapons against human lives and infrastructure, generally making them effectively “Unusable.” The puzzling reality of their continued existence suggests that some global players can still imagine there is some workable balance between international capacities for “mutual assured destruction” and the possibility of better-defined and assured set of assurances that could actually build trust and eliminate them altogether.
But none of that tells us htf we got to this current point in international history where the whole concept of “nations” seems to have become meaningless, in particular to a handful of autocratic (and somewhat autistic…?) multi-billionaires whose only purpose seems to be acquiring personal wealth and power. They convey an inner world with very low emotional affect, as if they don’t actually have emotions in any physical “felt senses” of well-being, affection, warmth, hugs, kindness…you know, like actual human beings. But Republicans have lived for individual wealth and power since the New Deal.
You can go person by person through the ranks of Republican politicians at all levels of government, and not find a credible sense of humor, kindness, honesty, curiosity, or warmth. This also applies pretty much to every Republican cabinet official, $donor, and most elected Republican Representatives and Senators. It is incomprehensible that they can go through day by day by day of White House grift, graft, cruelty, incompetence, and lying without feeling something like shame, or outrage, or — wait for it — dishonor.
This is the nature of the pit our country is in. A nasty, self-centered, mean-spirited, angry, and cruel collection of human beings has drunk some kind of weird political Kool-Aid that has made them enjoy hurting other people. Indeed, the more pain they cause, the more praise they get from their insane leader. In effect, HIS insatiable delight in causing pain to other people– any other people– is all he lives for. He delights in it.
Fingers crossed, folks. Stay strong, vote, and fight every day until we have our country back.
2072 Granger Way