lummi island wine tasting April 24 ’26
Open Friday 4-6 pm
stahtin’ ta get crowded again ’round heah…!
Friday Bread This Week
Dried Cranberry Walnut – Made with a nice mix of bread flour and freshly milled buckwheat and whole wheat flours. Orange juice and olive oil are a unique combination in this bread that add flavor and keep a soft crumb, then loaded up with dried cranberries and toasted walnuts. Makes great toast– $5/loaf
Sesame Semolina – Uses a sponge pre-ferment made with semolina and bread flour and a soaker of cornmeal, millet .sesame seeds, and a little olive oil for lots of great flavors. $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Muffins – Two each Chocolate and Sesame Semolina muffins in every order – 4 muffins for $5. If you want a double order you will get 8 muffins. If you order one flavor, you will get both. 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting
MAN Chenin Blanc ’24 South Africa $14
Free-run juice preserves a crisp, clean, natural character; light, bright flavors of quince, pear, and pineapple, palate of fresh stonefruit and apple, and a round, soothing mouthfeel.
Wolftrap Red ’24 South Africa $14
Consistently appealing aromas and flavors of ripe plum, red currant, violets, Italian herbs and exotic spices; vibrant flavors of dark berries and spicy plum with hints of orange peel that linger on a juicy finish. (read more)
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!
Economics of the Heart: “Dress Rehearsal Rag”
Let’s start with the basics: how does a group select its leaders? What are the qualities that evoke enough trust and confidence in someone to give them power of life and death over yourself, your nation and all its rules, directions, policies, and outcomes. No doubt we each have our own lists, but to some degree, humans being what they are, and for most of the last 250 years, the criteria have overlapped to a substantial degree in the nation’s electoral base.
As we have discussed before, the two glaring exceptions were the Civil War, when the question of slavery bitterly divided our nation, and since 1987, when the Reagan administration adopted completely the playbook of the Heritage Foundation to take the country back to the pre-crash and pre-New Deal concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a small group of ultra-rich white men.
In a nutshell, that’s how we, the most powerful, wealthy, and democratic nation on Earth, has transferred control of our national government not to the “brightest and best,” as our Constitutional rules have generally insured, but to a tiny minority of ultra-wealthy white men who, like the Southern plantation owners, seem intent on making the rights of everyone else in the world completely subject to their whims of the moment.
Republican leaders at every level in our national and many state governments, from the White House down, have thrown away the Constitution completely. Despite losing countless lawsuits in every state, federal policies are ignoring laws, precedents, and the Constitutional rights of citizens, immigrants, visitors, nonwhites of every shade as their Gestapo rounds up, imprisons, tortures, and ‘disappears’ tens of thousands of people who have actual rights to protection from such abuse.
Our country has abandoned our long alliance with Europe, and turned its loyalties toward competing oligarchies, like Austria (oops!), China, North Korea, and Russia. Our present aggression against Iran in league with long-time sadist Netanyahu takes our international reputation down several more notches.
Indeed, our entire military structure has been systematically downgraded from a long history of being the best-led, best-trained, and best-equipped in the world to shameful, unethical, cruel, and heartless missions like murdering boatloads of “smugglers” in international waters; invading Venezuela, kidnapping its leader, and commandeering its resources; and systematically retiring our most experienced and most respected military leaders and replacing them with less qualified and less ethical subordinates.
In the song above by Leonard Cohen, it is easy to imagine the Tweetster as the intended listener, but really it is aimed at Maga supporters at every level. The sad part is that lots of them are incapable of the modest degree of critical thinking necessary to smack their foreheads and exclaim “this is CRAZY!”
The more positive part is that every day more and more people are seeing it’s ALL been a scam since the 2015 stairway…all of it…just a Dress Rehearsal Rag — and it’s time for it to stop!
lummi island wine tasting april 17 ’25
Open Friday 4-6 pm
Our old Douglas Maple getting tired… 🙁
(click link below to see photo ‘cuz I got no freakin’ idea how to move an image from Google to here!!)
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOL1KLe5TwPeGRGNzvWDpwJ1NWOGIDEdTwXhAZ3
Friday Bread This Week
Multi Grain Levain – Made with a sourdough culture and flavorful mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and rye, a nice mixture of flax, sesame sunflower and pumpkin seeds, some oatmeal and a little honey for some sweetness. $5/loaf
Polenta Levain – Another sourdough, with the sourdough starter is fed and built up over several days, then mixed with bread flour and polenta in the final dough mix… a nice rustic loaf with great corn flavor. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Brioche Almond Buns – From a delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled out and spread with an almond cream filling made with lots more butter, sugar and eggs as well as almond flour. 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.
Cannonball Cab Sauv ’22 California $16
Aromas of concentrated dark berries, cola, vanilla cream, mocha, and notes of dried fennel are pronounced on the nose. The flavors on the palate are juicy, lush red plum, cranberry, citrus zest, and savory herbs linger on the finish.
Garzon Single Vineyard Albarino ’20 Uruguay $34
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!
Economics of the Heart: We’re All ‘Rolling Stones’ Now
For no particular reason, while musing about our current grifty/grafty federal government, some lyrics from Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” came to mind. Way back in that summer of ’65, our group of USNA classmates rented a cottage on Balboa Island near Newport Beach, where we enjoyed a pleasant week of sunning, body surfing, and partying. Because the song was both a full six minutes long and a huge hit, it seemed to be on air so much of the time that we pretty much knew most of the words by heart…but didn’t think a lot about what it might mean.
The Wikipedia article linked above discusses in some detail various interpretations of the complex, nagging lyrics of the song, supposedly addressed to a young woman who has it all and step by step loses it all. So there is something here about immaturity or hubris or creating negative karma on her part (and a mocking lack of sympathy from the singer!)
But the song also gives a nod to the freedom of her reaching a state of “got nothing to lose, invisible now, you got no (more) secrets to conceal…” (not a lot of consolation!)
So there is something about the song that speaks of the upside down-ness of our current Federal “Government.” Everywhere we look in this “Administration” we see lying, cheating, lashing out, inflicting pain, stealing, and sadistic cruelty against the many by a comparative handful of mean-spirited, angry, lying, and sadistic sociopaths who genuinely seem to take satisfaction and pleasure from making others suffer.
These goals have been clear since the publication of Project 2025 way back in February of 2024 by the Heritage Foundation. The resulting 2025 Cabinet selections were not concerned with the intelligence or experience of the candidates as long as they were loyal, angry, loyal, selfish, reliably cruel. And did we mention loyal..?
Project 2025 requires only a will to do whatever it takes to crush and loot our 250-yr-old Constitutional democracy completely and replace it with an autocratic government completely in service to a small cadre of angry, white, extraordinarily wealthy, selfish, and cruel men. Their thirst for unbounded authority and hurting as many people as possible, as much as possible, for as long as possible, is insatiable. Take, for example, the abject cruelty of Maga’s Ice Police, or what Stephan Miller thinks of as “the taking that keeps on giving.”
Digging elsewhere in old song lyrics, we find a similar conflict of values in Leonard Cohen’s* “Bird on a Wire:”
Every day more and more Americans are rebelling against the cruelty, the lying, the stealing, and working together to take back our Constitution, our equality, our protections, and our way of life. At some very deep and basic level we all revere and are very pleasantly accustomed and committed to our freedoms, our reliable Constitutional protections under just laws and a national community of mutual respect and support.
lummi island wine tasting April 10 ’26
Open Friday 4-6 pm
ahhh… a touch of early morning sun!
Friday Bread This Week
Spelt Levain – Spelt is an ancient wheat w/ a nutty, slightly sweet flavor and is made with a levain before blending with bread flour, spelt flour, fresh milled whole spelt and whole rye. – $5/loaf
Semolina w/ Fennel & Raisins – A levain bread made with bread flour, semolina and some fresh milled whole wheat. A little butter for a tender crumb and fennel seeds and golden raisins round out the flavors that go really well with meats and cheese – $5/loaf
Morning Buns – Made popular by Tartine Bakery in San Francisco…mine are made with the same laminated dough as croissants. The 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
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.
Bodega Garzon 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.
Pollard Cab Franc ’20 Washington $35
Big wine with expressive nose of hibiscus and gooseberry; palate of dried strawberry and garrigue, well balanced tannic structure, and and long smooth finish.
Economics of the Heart: Religion + Politics = Powder Keg + Flame
Let’s just step back for a brief reflection on the toxic cruelty and idiocy of our government’s ongoing, undeclared War on the Iranian people. We have none of our traditional allies at our side except Israel, which under the guise of “defending its people,” continues to bomb Lebanon’s people and infrastructure mercilessly.
Those bombs, which deliver heartbreaking, widespread, and cruel destruction and death are justified “because they could possibly hit some Hezbollah bad guys hiding there.” At the same time Israel continues its genocidal decimation of now- homeless Palestinians in Gaza and within Israel.
Meanwhile our own United States continues to play a prominent role in Israel’s assertion of power by attacking Iran’s leadership, economic infrastructure, and trade with overwhelming force (Iran’s GDP is about 2% of ours).
Our destructive aggression against Iran marks the unveiling of Hawkish Christian Nationalism as the replacement for Constitutional government in our country. There will be no individual rights, no elections, no accountability, just the ongoing threat of brutality. In numerous Islamic autocracies, like Iran, Brunei, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, and the Maldives, politics and power would involve rigid application of Rules.
Well, as they say, fook dat! Authoritarianism and religion are a toxic combination in any proportions. Every religion has its teachings, rules, and rationales, and practices. Across the thousands of years of human existence, humans have come up with countless beliefs about life, death, meaning, and purpose, and religions to go with them.
Beginning sometime in the 1st or 2nd century AD, numerous and diverse Gnostic groups generally emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the authority, traditions, and proto-orthodox teachings of organized religious institutions. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism).
The picture that emerges from the Gnostic writings and musings from the Apostles to more recent historians is that Gnosticism was not a religion, but rather a reflective, meditative, inward-looking path to transcendence, which they believed “represented the inner truth revealed by Jesus.”
Buddhologist Edward Conze (1966) proposed that similarities existed between Buddhism and Gnosticism, a term deriving from the name Gnostics, which was given to a number of Christian sects. To the extent that Buddha taught the existence of evil inclinations that remain unconquered, or that require special spiritual knowledge to conquer, Buddhism has also qualified as Gnostic.
All of this points to the fundamental conclusion that religions are belief systems about existence itself. Those beliefs follow from stories or teachings, including rules and behaviors to be followed, rituals to be practiced, and so forth.
But gnosticism sounds less like a religion and more like a search for transcendence. If there is a takeaway here, it is that kindness, compassion, love, patience, clarity, and wisdom are better for the world than, you know, dropping bombs.
lummi island wine tasting April 3, ’26
Open Friday 4-6 pm
painting by Anne Gibert
Friday Bread This Week
Colomba di Pasqua (aka ‘Easter Dove’): A traditional Italian Easter cake similar to Christmas panettone. Made with a sweet Italian levain, known as a lievito madre, kept at a warm temperature for a sweet, cake-like dough rather than a sour one. Contains plenty of eggs, sugar and butter plus fresh and candied orange peel, topped with a crunchy almond/hazelnut glaze and pearl sugar before baking in a dove-shaped baking form as labor of love Easter dove! – $10/loaf
Italian Breakfast Bread – A delicious sweet 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 on Easter morning – $5/loaf
Hot Cross Buns – An enriched dough made with plenty of butter, sugar and eggs. Full of spices, including cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. And plenty of currants, and candied lemon and orange peel. Topped with a flavorful paste and glazed these are a delicious treat to celebrate spring. 2/$5
This week’s wine tasting
Willamette Valley Vineyards Oregon Blossom Sparkling Rose Oregon $18
88% Pinot Noir, 12% Muscat from Willamette Valley grapes, this slightly sweet sparkler bursts with notes of cherry, strawberry and melon; best with ham and cheese croissants, watermelon/ feta salad, goat cheese crostini, or …??
Tenuta Sant’Antonio Monti Garbi Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore ’21 Italy $21
Spicy and intense, with hints of crushed ash and smoky black cherries; silky texture and pure, with notes of sour wild berries and salty minerality; long, energetic, spicy finish of blackcurrant & mocha,
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: The War on Critical Thinking, pt 2
The section below was originally posted in September ’23 to support the case that the glue that held Maga together was at root a methodical War on Critical Thinking— you know, that actual measurable thing that we go to college to learn…? That war swung into action in the late 80’s as soon as Reagan’s FTC removed the long-standing news broadcast rule requiring fair representation of all points of view on any story.
That single change opened the door for a 24/7 barrage of angry, preachy, self-righteous talk show hosts aiming to make conservative white Christians believe that Democrats were lying, conniving sinners that were trying to take their stuff. The arguments were in all cases complete fabrications and deliberate ad hominem lies to make people angry, keep top Democrats on the defensive, and build a completely fictitious world where top Democrats secretly worshiped Satan and ate babies. (I’m not making this up!)
As promised in the Project 2025 manifesto made public in early 2025, Tweetster 2.0 is following a carefully drawn plan to replace Constitutional government in the U.S. with a white, Christian, male-dominated autocracy with no further need for elections, voting, or Congress. This time around from Day One federal laws, rules, chains of authority, security— everything– were to be replaced with an autocratic structure. Workers would have neither contractual rights nor protections; audit trails would disappear; Congressional Democrats would be ignored; and Heritage Foundation would determine and control a Cabinet of people chosen because they were neither capable of nor interested in Critical Thinking.
Think about it…(you know, if you can!)…is there even a single Cabinet member in this administration that is doing the sworn duties of their position? These people are, across the board, all people who think only in black and white, and are proud of it. All of this is richly and gut-wrenchingly illustrated in the hour by hour, day by day insanity of dumping our traditional allies, starting a shooting war in the Middle East with no clear strategic purpose, screwing up the entire global economy and our place in it. And we haven’t even mentioned ICE.
So…it is worth taking a look at what critical thinking is while wondering about where we would be today if our government were actually willing and able to apply it.
*****
Below is broader discussion of the developmental stages of critical thinking from our Sept 29/’23 post
Every creature has some form of sensory discrimination that allows it to survive. We are gifted with a unique nervous system that lets us tell this from that, one from two, gray from black, mine from yours, and right from wrong. Our ability to think, especially to think critically, depends entirely on our ability to observe and make meaning from differences in quantities and qualities of the world around us, and to communicate about them with each other through language.
The abilities to differentiate and reason are the primary characteristic of critical thinking. We all have the sensory ability to discriminate tastes (salty, sweet, sour), feelings (pleasant, unpleasant), and numbers (more, less), and the cognitive ability to tell truth from lies and fact from fiction. We can also form ideas, execute plans, and evaluate and learn from the results. These abilities constitute what is generally known as “critical thinking,” and is the whole point of maturation in general and education in particular.
The most detailed model for the development of intellectual maturity was put forth by William Perry from data gathered back around 1960. Perry’s research found that in general, a student’s college experience could be viewed as “an intellectual Pilgrim’s Progress” in which the student’s way of thinking evolved through four “stages” from a world of binary choices into a world of complex contexts with which to differentiate ever more nuanced distinctions.
Perry observed that beginning college students generally began at Level 1, Duality, a world of opposites: (right/wrong, good/bad). With study and reflection, that view gradually broadened over a couple of years to Multiplicity, which opened a space to hang out with the curious uncertainty of “don’t know for sure.” Over time these broaden to Mode 3, a relativistic layer of “it depends.” The evolution to Level 4, as it turns out, is then a major developmental step in critical thinking with “a fundamental transformation of one’s perspective from a vision of the world as essentially dualistic, to a world as essentially relativistic and context-bound with relatively few right/wrong exceptions.”
The Big Takeaway here is that human beings have been shown to hang out at Levels 1-2 until they learn otherwise from increasing age, education, and/or experience. Which brings us to Maga Republicans. Who are they? According to a study from UW, they have the following characteristics, and they are a mortal threat to our democracy.
- Demographics: MAGA supporters are older, Christian, retired men, the same base as the Capitol riots, with about half middle-class by income, and 1/3 by education.
- Geography: From every state, in proportion to population density from urban to rural;
- Affiliations: 85% support gun rights; 60% support both charities and pro-police groups; 50% support pro-life groups; 38% ‘stop the steal’ ; 23% pro-militia movement;
- Political Activism: Over 75% have signed a petition, contacted representatives, or boycotted, 60% donated $, 50% attended meetings or rallies; nearly 100% voted in every election; nearly all distrust 2020 election results, and believe that voting is too easy.
- Pandemic and Paranoia: 90% agree: COVID rules over-reactive, COVID a Chinese bioweapon, Trump honest about pandemic.
- Race: Large majority disagree that slavery made upward mobility or achieving their potential more difficult for blacks, while agreeing blacks would be doing as well as whites if they tried and should work their way up like other minorities.
- Gender: Large majority agree women interpret innocent remarks as sexist, seek special favors, make unreasonable demands of men, and seek more power than men.
- Immigration: majority believe immigrants change our culture for the worse and break more laws.
The UW analysis ends with this: “These findings are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We have much more to share. For us, the implications are clear: our country is in grave danger since one of the two major parties is essentially captured by the MAGA movement. We invite you to draw your own conclusions from these preliminary findings.”
2072 Granger Way