lummi island wine tasting March 6 ’26
Open Fridays 4-6 pm
Setting sun edges toward Spring Equinox near Orcas Island’s north end…
Friday Bread 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…
Rum Raisin Brioche: A delicious brioche dough of eggs, butter and sugar, filled with golden raisins, chunks of almond paste, and a chocolate glaze. – 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 Monastrell ’22 Washington $19
Known as Mourvèdre in France, Spanish monastrell typically has notes of dark cherry, pepper, and a bit of gaminess, bright acidity, and freshness and low alcohol levels. Fermented on the lees and aged in neutral barrels
Rocks of Bawn Cab Sauv ’20 WA $20
Blend from several WA vineyards delivers bright fruit flavors, silky tannins, nice balance and intensity.
Economics of the Heart: Return of the Psychopathic Sadists
…. every culture has its psychopathic sadists…
Human history is to a substantial degree an ongoing war between huge numbers of normal people and a comparatively small number of card-carrying psychopathic sadists. These are people (usually male) who not only lack empathy for the suffering of others, but indeed derive considerable pleasure from causing and witnessing their pain and humiliation.
In a sense it has been the basic working principle of the Heritage Foundation since about 1980 to get US public agencies out of the kindness, support, and compassion business completely– if some people can’t take care of themselves, fook’em. HF are the people who wrote essentially all of the laws and regulations passed by Republican Administrations since 1980, including the handbook for Project 2025.
No one should be surprised that the Republican plan all along has aimed to substantially reduce federal support for the most needy, modestly reduce it for the middle class, increase it generously for the very well-to-do, and increase it enormously for the wealthiest .01% — that small handful that already owns pretty much Everything on the Planet.
Every economic system ever devised periodically encounters some version of the psychopathic sadist leader who deliberately starts wars just to savor the enormous suffering they can cause with their invasion, bombing, destruction, concentration camps, torture, and murder.
We Americans have done it in many places and times, including right now- again! — in the Middle East. Dubya-and-the-Neocons killed thousands in their “shock and awe” bombardment of Iraq in 2003 and lots more over the next 20 years of occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. For what…?
At this moment in history, in front of the whole world, our fake President, together with the angriest, shallow-est, cruelest, fawning-est, mean-sprited-est (!), least-qualified-possible-est, groveling-est (we could go on and on) so-called “Cabinet of advisors” is trying a replay of Dubya’s ‘mission accomplished’ banner after bombing Iraq.
Our nation is expending $billions on what is obviously a “shiny object media distraction” to lure the cameras around the world away from the rapidly escalating likelihood that sometime soon he will face serious charges in the Epstein matter.
In that sense he is no different from his countless dictatorial predecessors across history. He is an old, increasingly disliked and disrespected man in visible physical and mental decline, each day looking increasingly unlikely to survive his term.
lummi island wine tasting Feb 27 ’26
Open Fridays thru February 4-6 pm
You’ve looked at clouds from both sides now…
Friday Bread This Week
Black Pepper Walnut- Nice mix of bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this bread great flavor with just a bit of peppery bite to it. Works well with all sorts of meats and cheese- $5/loaf
Four Seed Buttermilk – Includes cracked wheat and bran in the bread flour instead of milled whole wheat berries, plus buttermilk and oil for a tender bread and a little tang, honey, sunflower, pumpkin,, sesame seeds and toasted millet – $5/loaf
Gibassiers – Delicious sweet dough of milk, butter, eggs, olive oil, orange flower water, candied orange peel, and anise seed before brushing with melted butter and sugar. – 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 Monastrell ’22 Washington $19
Known as Mourvèdre in France, Spanish monastrell typically has notes of dark cherry, pepper, and a bit of gaminess, bright acidity, and freshness and low alcohol levels. Fermented on the lees and aged in neutral barrels
Rocks of Bawn Cab Sauv ’20 WA $20
Blend from several WA vineyards delivers bright fruit flavors, silky tannins, nice balance and intensity.
Economics of the Heart: Strawberry Fields of ICE?
Border Patrol union leader Paul Perez learning his lines…?
Some people just rub you the wrong way. Maybe it’s a look, or an attitude, or just a feeling. Like this guy on the news last night. If you have a few minutes click here and slide to the 31 minute mark for a PBS interview with Paul Perez, the head of the National Border Patrol Council, essentially the “union” that represents Border Patrol employees. And ICE is technically not the Border Patrol. Supposedly. Yet his spin sounds exactly like Noam, like ICE, like a leaky unsecured “cabinet meeting” with Hegseth.
For some reason, as in the song, ‘with each word, his Smarminess grows increasingly unbearable, as if he/they/it had just materialized in Star Trek transporter room, some weird and deeply disturbing simultaneous channeling of Bondi, Miller, Noem, Hegseth, and the Tweetster, all talking nonsense out of the same mouth without ever changing facial expression. Seriously creepy!
Like many of you we (along with numerous Congressional Democrats) deliberately tuned out what is being touted as the longest, stupidest, lyingest, exhaustingest, and embarrassingest SOTU in the nation’s history
Additional questions about BP and ICE arise from this article from 2022, when ICE was forced out of the Government Employees Union after numerous cases of having taken bribes from unscrupulous employers of undocumented workers to kick them out of the country before they were even paid. Those capitalist wheels just never stop turning, huh?
Anyway…in stark and shining contrast to the SOTU debacle, new Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger gave the blistering Democratic response to the Tweetster’s, um, performance. She sounds like a Real President ought to sound, knows what a Real President ought to know, and supports the Constitution, which every President swears to do.
We must urge our Senators and Representatives to pass legislation protecting the Constitutional rights of citizens, asylum seekers, and immigrants from the inhumane cruelty, detainment, disappearing, and sadistic treatment that looks a lot more like the American Gestapo than any kind of American “border security.”
lummi island wine tasting Feb 20, ’26
Open Fridays thru February 4-6 pm
Arrr, maties, we be waitin’ for ya so come on by…!
This week’s wine tasting
Valminor Albarino Rias Baixas ’22 Spain $23
Straw yellow-green; nose of mandarin orange, lime, apricot, and orange blossom, with fresh, lively, and full-bodied palate, good structure, well-integrated acidity, and a decadent, lingering unctuousness.
Chiarlo Le Orme Barbera d’Asti 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!
Greenwing Columbia Valley Cab Sauv ’21 WA $
Alluring aromas of Bing cherry, rooibos tea, loamy earth with hints of cinnamon, clove, and wild herbs; palate of red currant, raspberry and wild strawberry, fine-grained tannins and bright acidity.
Economics of the Heart: Religionification of Cruelty
Since 2017 many of us have been ranting more or less constantly about the (to coin a word) Religionification of Cruelty by the Republican Party. This has been going on, of course, for decades, with roots going back to the Civil War, plantation owners’ God-given entitlement to own, confine, punish, beat, and murder specific other human beings whom they considered Inferior. There’s a name for this: sadistic psychopathy.
My Catholic School experiences through second grade sometimes inspired horrific nightmares of burning endlessly in Hell or Purgatory if you happened to die between visits to the confessional. So that was pretty weird for a little kid.
Switching to public school in third grade was like being freed from some weird kind of dungeon. And although I had deep affection for the young and kindly nun who was my teacher in “subprimary” and 1st grade, the dimly lit stone corridors and black-robed nuns of that old school evoked lots of troubled dreams.
One positive part of the Catholic school experience was that as kids we had no exposure at all to the Old Testament, except as historical literature. Sermons were usually based on some phrase from the gospels or epistles, with emphasis on the value of kindness and good deeds. In contrast, the constant media presence of self-righteous, angry white men on both radio and TV more or less constantly since the 50’s was always baffling.
We now know pretty much for certain that those behaviors for all these decades are a particularly American kind of political theater with the single goal of creating personal wealth and public stature for its purveyors. That seems to include most current Republican politicians, the Maggits in particular, and Old Testament-toting purveyors of Project 2025 and its “Christian Nationalist” white supremacist underbelly. Their “Old Testament Jesus” they transformed away from the image of an enlightened being who recognizes the sacred nature of all sentient beings to a white, racist, slave-owning pragmatist who can easily be manipulated by and for the Very Rich.
Therefore it is with a mixture of baffled astonishment, hopeful excitement, and new possibilities for the future that we welcome the unlikely, sudden, and timely emergence of Wild Card Texas Candidate and state legislator James Talarico into national politics as a candidate for the same Senate seat being sought by wildly popular Texas Congressional Representative Jasmine Crockett.
The tremendously exciting thing about Talarico’s very recent interview with Stephen Colbert is that with his simple act of bringing public attention to the fact that though Jesus taught the way of kindness, compassion, love, patience, clarity, and forgiveness, he wasn’t a big fan of the mean-spirited money lenders.
That is, everything Maga is about cruelty, brutality, lying, stealing, and destruction. Talarico, a seminarian, has a gentle innocence and credibility when he calls out the sadistic cruelty, dishonesty, and selfishness of the Maga government. While he seems unlikely to beat Crockett in a primary, his simple message could still resonate enough with the public’s collective consciousness to make a difference in this year’s election.
Fingers crossed!
for the first in my recorded history a national political voice has said what I have been ranting about this entire Maga nightmare: that its entire mission is to take us all back to 1860.
lummi island wine tasting Feb 13, ’26
Open Fridays thru February 4-6 pm
And yup, it’ll still be wintah for all of ’em!
photo courtesy of dreamstime.com
This week’s wine tasting
Bodega Garzon Tannat Reserve ’18 Uruguay $15
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.
Decoy Red ’21 California $18
60% Cab, 40% Merlot, & splashes of Zin and Syrah; nose of blackberry, dark plum, spice and herbs; fresh, rich, and savory with rich,silky tannins, bright acidity and long, lush finish.
Antonio Sanguineti Passo Santo White Dessert Wine Italy $18
Passo Santo (“blessed moment”) light dessert wine with notes of toasted hazelnuts, caramel, honey, and dried apricot, great with rich biscotti or crème brûlée, and zingy enough to pair nicely with cheese at the end of a meal.
Economics of the Heart: The Other Approach to Climate Change
In summer of 1980 ( omg, 45 years ago!) I spent the summer at Battelle labs in Richland working on a project funded by DOE on the economic impact of carbon-induced climate change. That was very early in the climate game. I had a paper published on my piece of the work the following year (an early look at possible impacts on fisheries), which led about a year later to a call from CBC in Toronto for an on-air interview. ( fisheries have long been a Big part of the Canadian economy)
The last question in the interview was about what happens next, and my immediate guess was that given the $value of fossil fuels in the global economy, the fossil fuel producers would continue to make progress difficult. Well, that turned out to be the understatement of the century!
Fast forward to today, and the Tweetster’s cozy arrangements with BIG $Donors in the energy biz led to an article in today’s NYT announcing his unilateral sh*t-canning of the global scientific consensus that climate change endangers all life on Earth.
Roughly translated, such a policy would end, in the largest national economy in the world, all efforts to slow and reverse the carbon-caused destruction of environmental and ecosystems quality that we know with certainty has followed from massive increases in expansion of global population and industrial production, and which is killing our planet.
The graph above shows that the problem is not just that global population of human beings has been increasing rapidly since the end of WWII. It’s that energy production has been increasing along with it.
So…maybe increasing fossil fuel production is just the autistic billionaires’ logical notion of a better world for fewer people. So hey, instead of turning toward green energy and a better world for billions, if enough people just, um, “went away,” the surviving trillionaire-igarchs would have their perfect world. You know, with more energy left over to keep Bitcoin and AI growing.
2072 Granger Way