Picking the Malbec grapes

[Skip this post if you want politics, not agriculture.]

 

Monday we pick the Malbecs.

The starling pressure has gotten overwhelming. 

The grapes are netted, but the starlings come in swarms and they are doing what they can to get into the nets. 

I drive my tractor up and down the rows and ten or fifteen birds flush out and fly away in alarm. It works for the moment, but then they return. They are looking at the seams of the nets, trying to find a way in.

I set up a flopping man scarecrow on Sunday, but it won't work for long. 

Nets work, but imperfectly. What works to protect grape clusters is picking them, getting them into bins, and driving them to Valley View Vineyard's winery and out of harm's way. 

Picking involves cutting the grape clusters with hand clippers and placing clusters in a bucket.

Here is what they look like, freshly picked and still in the field. These are the Pinot Noirs we picked last week.

Then at the winery, fermentation started, a small pump recirculates the juice, pouring it back over the grape skins to extract color and grape-skin flavor notes.

My vineyard froze hard on Thursday and Friday nights. The vineyard is colder than most of the Rogue Valley because my place is along the Rogue River, i.e., the point of lowest elevation, where the coldest air settles. Here is one of the alarm notices I was texted every half hour from my electronic thermometer.

A freeze this hard doesn't ruin the grapes, but it finishes off the still-greenish living grape leaves that were delivering carbohydrates to the grapes. The Malbec and Cabernet grapes are as ripe as they will get, although as they dehydrate on the vines they will get sweeter.

The Valley View Vineyards owners and winemaker are attempting to make excellent wine, not just good wine, so their plan for now is to leave the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes on the vines for another few days. The crew is hand-picking the grapes, not machine-picking, because, again, the quality if better. Machine-picking shakes frosted grape leaves along with the grape clusters; the leaf fragments cannot be separated out and they change the taste of the wine. 

I share these posts about growing wine grapes because many people who drink wine have no clear idea about where those nicely finished bottles come from. Wine is an agricultural product. Every agricultural product in every region on Earth addresses problems getting stuff grown and marketed. Melons have their problems. Grapes have different ones. Farming is complicated.

I have a second purpose. Grape prices are down. Wine sales are down. We don't have a wine-glut problem; we have a drink-imported-wine problem. There is more wine consumed in Southern Oregon than is produced in Southern Oregon. The boycotts of American wines by foreigners retaliating to Trump tariffs are damaging the grape and wine markets, and wine exports are down.  That is part of the problem. Nationwide  domestic wine consumption is down because of the ebbs and flows in consumer tastes. (Maybe wine isn't health food after all.) Markets will settle out at some new equilibrium over the next few years. The U.S. is a net importer of wine. American wines, including ones grown here in Southern Oregon, do not need to apologize for their quality on world markets. Local wines are fully equal to imported wines and those from California. We are a high-quality wine region, recognized by wine experts, but less so by local residents. People who consciously "buy local" when buying other food forget that policy when shopping for wine. Local restaurants showcase foreign wines. What a shame. Southern Oregon is a superb wine-growing area, and I am trying to show how that is accomplished. 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Easy Sunday: That Ramaswamy ad

 Readers respond.

-- Some thought it impossible that the ad helped Ramaswamy.

-- Others complained that I was unfairly insulting Republicans to suggest that many of them liked the ad.

-- Others thought it insightful to have recognized the MAGA populist resentment of bureaucratic expertise.

Yesterday's post made a brief reference to Dr. Amy Acton's earlier job as director of the Ohio Department of Health. It is relevant. She was the Covid czar. 

Dr. Acton was the face of Covid-era school closures in Ohio. In those early weeks, when little was known about a new disease, she made public projections of how many Ohioans could be infected. Those fears and warnings were revised downward, in Ohio and nationally, and the impression that left became partisan. Republicans said Democrats lied and exaggerated the danger. Acton, like Dr. Anthony Fauci nationally, became associated with overreaching, controlling bureaucrats. The MAGA conclusion: Covid experts lied to us. The ad treated her Covid warnings as a character flaw, not as a mistake made while understanding of the disease was still evolving.

Again, I am disgusted by Ramaswamy’s ad. I think it probably hurts him more than it helps him in this year’s governor’s race. But Trump’s strong endorsement of the ad is a “tell.” The ad helps Ramaswamy with a decisive segment of the Republican base. A majority of Ohio voters chose Trump in 2024, knowing exactly who he is. They resent the smarty-pants experts who sent their jobs to China and shut down their schools unnecessarily over Covid.

Here is an example of the comments I received, edited for brevity. Joe Yetter is a retired physician and a former candidate for Congress.

Joe Yetter:

Peter, you really have the ability to see through others' eyes. It's not what I see, at all.

I see Ramaswamy and Trump as stone-cold liars willing to hurt anyone, any place, any time in service of their own aggrandizement. And who believe enough voters will side with them, seeing the world through those eyes.

It is stomach-churning for me to think there are any voters--let alone many voters--who will find this ad appealing. I hope you are wrong.

My response:

Joe, this speaks well of your character, but it is a political liability for you.Their stone-cold lying is the asset in this contest you if you start with a premise that the world is rigged in favor of everyone else. Trump is the anti-hero. He is Dirty Harry.  I am disgusted, not admiring, of the ad but I think I recognize Ramanswamy's strategy.

As with evolution, if something unintuitive exists it is a huge opportunity to consider what is really going on. The peacock's tail is such a thing. Ramaswamy's ad is the same thing.

Joe Yetter's response: 

What science teaches us is the triumph of cooperation. The way to win is to work for all to win.

We--and all multicellular life--exist because our single-celled ancestor ingested a bacterium and, instead of digesting it, provided it shelter, and so mitochondria were born. 

It's a story that can be retold in detail and in broad sweeps, like the co-evolution of insects and flowering plants. Wolves and grizzlies and beavers have the power to change geology and hydrology to the benefit of whole ecosystems.

The current rapacity of humans is putting us on track to destroy much of the beauty and diversity of the natural world, and its ability to sustain us.

It will profit us not at all to hire "Dirty Harry." But (as in War Games), the only winning move is not to play that game. I say this not merely because it's the kind thing to do, but because I think it really is the way to win. For everybody.

I often recommend books. Narrowing down, I'd recommend Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass; Richard Powers' The Overstory; Terry Tempest Williams' The Glorians; Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer; Zoë Schlanger's The Light Eaters.  And hat tip to the late Lynn Margulis, the evolutionary biologist who taught us the significance of symbiosis in evolution.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]

What is Ramaswamiy's thinking?

On the surface it is beyond stupid. It is suicidal. Is he trying to lose?

Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP candidate for governor in Ohio, made an ad that even some Republican officeholders objected to. He defended it. Then he announced he would spend $4 million to promote it.

What’s going on?

The ad features Donna Arthur, the mother of Dr. Amy Acton, Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponet. 

“My name is Donna Arthur and I am Amy Acton’s mother. It’s not easy for a mother to say this but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help and she can’t help you if she needs help herself. Don’t vote for people who lie. Don’t let her become your governor if you think she’ll make your life better.”

Here is what the record shows. When Amy Acton, a physician and later director of the Ohio Department of Health, was 12, her stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her. She and her younger brother were removed from their mother’s custody. Donna Arthur stayed married to the man. He was indicted, skipped a court hearing, and was never tried. Acton’s younger brother backs her story and says she took the worst of it to protect him.

At first glance the ad looks like it should backfire. The mother comes across as a woman who lived exactly the hard life Acton describes: a string of partners, a husband she believed over her daughter, children taken from her. And we are supposed to believe her, not her high-performing daughter?

But the ad is pure MAGA positioning. It hits every note for a successor to Donald Trump. It may win Ramaswamy the governor’s office, his best outcome. Win or lose, it positions him, not Marco Rubio or JD Vance, as Trump’s legitimate heir in 2028.

-- It shows Ramaswamy is willing to be the transgressive candidate, to say what “cannot be said.” A big part of Trump’s appeal is that he says things people know are crude and politically incorrect, and it reads as honest and forthright. Vance staked his claim to that ground in 2024 with the story about Haitian immigrants eating pets. Ramaswamy just called that bet and raised it.

-- It casts Ramaswamy as the champion of the common person against the manager and the expert. Trump identified and nurtured the revolt against experts. Dr. Acton, the physician-bureaucrat who was the face of Ohio’s Covid response, carries the worst possible positioning for a Democrat, a Covid czar. The ad plays the note of disbelieving experts.

-- It casts Acton as damaged and unstable. That the mother looks rough is an asset for Ramaswamy. The worse she looks, the stronger the case that Acton is scarred for life by a miserable childhood. Being a survivor cuts both ways. She was strong and showed character. But it also raises suspicion, especially among people already suspicious of experts. She must have spent time on a psychiatrist’s couch. She must carry deep trauma. Megyn Kelly voiced the suspicion on her podcast, saying there is something weird about the way Dr. Acton talks, that her voice is slurred like she is drunk; she said she had heard Acton cried on the job during Covid. 

-- “She lies.” Trump got traction as a politician by calling his opponents frauds, illegitimate. Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and the birth records are fake. Elizabeth Warren is Pocahontas, a fake Cherokee. Ted Cruz is “Lyin’ Ted.” Trump’s own flagrant corruption only strengthens the argument that the whole system is rigged and full of frauds. Ramaswamy’s ad is an expression of that idea. So is the way his side has handled the backlash: the outrage itself is fake. Vance said he was “disgusted” by the Republicans who criticized the ad and told them to stop whining and go win. Trump said Ramaswamy wasn’t to blame for the trouble between mother and daughter.

The Ramaswamy ad disgusts me, but it is not directed at me. The ad does not backfire on him. It reminds the solid majority of Ohio voters who chose Trump in 2024 that Ramaswamy is their guy.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Guest Post: In praise of college fraternities.

The Incident

In October 2024, a Cornell University student, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, was allegedly drugged and gang-raped by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at their house on campus. Her lawsuit says she was pressured to take ketamine and plied with more alcohol and marijuana. The men deny her account.

Two days later, she and one of the men exchanged text messages. He apologized for “how things went down.” He said his memory was “kinda fuzzy” and that he felt bad for being too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.” She replied that none of the sexual activity had been illegal and that her own memory was “super clouded, too.” Nearly two weeks later, she texted him that 90 percent of what happened that night was not consensual.

That night, members of the fraternity traded messages in a Snapchat group about the woman upstairs. At 1:42 a.m., one message suggested she was available for sex. Later came the question “Shop still open?” The answer: “Yea.”

That is the story circulating in the media. It is ugly and tawdry. Is it the hidden reality of fraternity life?

I asked my friend Jack Mullen, who belonged to a fraternity during a tumultuous era on campus, the late 1960s. He told me the story in the news isn’t the whole story. Fraternities, he said, serve a good purpose. He wanted to share fraternity life as he experienced it, and he has a suggestion for making fraternities better.

Theta Chi Class of 1969

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

Reporting on the recent rape allegations at a Cornell University fraternity party has cast a pall over fraternity houses and the entire Greek system.

Living in a fraternity enriched my college experience, so I am disturbed by the public perception that fraternities breed predatory behavior. Were there hints of such behavior during my years as a member of Theta Chi at the University of Oregon? Perhaps.

I entered the University of Oregon in 1965 as a timid freshman, unsure how I would fit in. Could I hack it academically? Could I muster the nerve to ask a coed out on a date? Joining Theta Chi helped me meet both challenges.

I’d be lying if I said I pledged Theta Chi because it was the highest-rated academic fraternity on campus. I decided to pledge when George Dames, a childhood friend from Medford, described in great detail the house’s upcoming dance, the Red Ox. “Count me in, George.”

Much has changed since the late 1960s, not least the dating apps today’s students use to meet one another. Much, however, remains the same. Alcohol is still readily available and, when consumed responsibly, can add a bit of zest to a date.

My fraternity had guardrails to limit drinking. Alcohol was prohibited in the house. For the Red Ox, we rented a bus to take us to a barn in Creswell, where we could drink whatever crazy concoction we had mixed up. The same bus brought us back to the house, which we had decorated top to bottom for a western party. That included the basement. Yes, the basement, which we turned into a dark mattress room.

Nothing heinous happened in the mattress room. As best I can recall, no one was ever dragged down those stairs against her will. College kids being college kids, I suspect our dates enjoyed their visits as much as my fraternity brothers did, though I never asked them. That I never persuaded a single date to go downstairs with me is a story for another time.

After I graduated, Oregon’s dorms went coed, with men and women on alternating floors. I wish they had been coed my freshman year; it might have cured my shyness around women. Until the early 1970s, Oregon freshmen lived in the dorms and could not join a fraternity or sorority until their sophomore year. A New York Times column by the president of Wesleyan University carries the title “Want to Address Sexual Assault? Make Fraternities Coed.” 

At first I didn’t want to read such nonsense. When I finally did, I realized that in this day and age it makes a ton of sense.

Fraternities once excluded Catholics, Jews and African Americans. Fortunately, they have changed for the better. This is, after all, America, and I hope we are now an inclusive society. I believe coed dorms at Oregon helped students stop seeing the opposite sex as objects. Just maybe, bringing men and women together under one roof in the Greek system can put a damper on the kind of sexual assault alleged at Cornell.

I wouldn’t change anything about my days at the U. of O., including my life as a Theta Chi. Those years shaped my life for the better. But times have changed, and the Greek system needs to meet today’s challenges. Make fraternities and sororities coed.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Don't be fooled.

Heads up to Democrats: It looks like a nasty hit piece by the Hicks campaign. 

That's only half right. 

It is bait, to trick Democrats into throwing away their vote and thereby elect Brad Hicks, the Republican candidate. 

Here is the two-sided hit piece sent to Democrats, shown as being paid for by the campaign committee of a Republican state senator who has been funneling big blocks of money to Hicks:

Here is what is going on: The front side brings up 20-year-old allegations, later dropped as not prosecutable, against a person working at a Colorado-based campaign consultancy firm that Denise Krause employed in the primary election. Why she hired an out-of-state firm is beyond me, but she did. No one claimed that Krause had anything to do with anything improper, but it was an attack point in the primary election in part because the firm she hired advises Republican candidates, too. Hicks brought it up again. That is the hit: You cannot trust Denise Krause. 

The trick to fool Democrats is the supposed "warning" about the third-party candidate Clay Bearnson. If it were a real warning, the Hicks campaign would have used a grainy, distorted photo of Bearnson the way it does in genuine negative ads. This "warning" is an invitation to leftist Democrats to support Bearnson. It tells them that he is a progressive who supports universal health care. The ad presents this as a negative -- and Republicans do in fact oppose it -- but it is signaling to Democratic voters that if, for some reason, you don't like Krause, then vote for Bearnson. And see his happy, smiling face. What a nice guy!  And pro-cannabis, too!

Hicks has abandoned the Mr. Nonpartisan, nice-guy message. His advertisements reposition him into a Republican streetfighter in his attacks on Krause. People who hate Democrats and relish liberal tears will be happy to see Hicks has taken off the gloves. He has solidified the Republican vote many times over, and he has given everyone else reason to be disgusted by him and his campaign. Krause is a retired healthcare executive, but he likens her to a sleazy lawyer from a TV show -- take that! Ka-pow! Associate her with someone else's sex crime -- another Ka-pow! 

I suspect that GOP polls show that Hicks' effort to get independent, non-affiliated votes failed. Democrats and non-affiliated voters aren't voting for Republicans this year. His only chance for Republican victory is to get Democratic-leaning voters not to vote for a Democrat. 

How? Put serious money into promoting a third-party spoiler by portraying him as someone Republicans dislike. The Democratic voter in favor of progressive policies who wants to say "NO" to MAGA and Hicks can do it by voting for an alternative candidate -- thereby electing Hicks!

The irony is that Krause is progressive herself and supports healthcare for all, and in Hicks' negative ads about Krause he calls her "extreme" for holding views like that.

The trick is to get Democratic voters to sabotage themselves. The ad reveals the purpose: The Bearnson option is bait, 

Clever. Diabolical. 

It will work if Democrats fall for it.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]

A Republican responds.

I wrote that I thought that most Republicans had better character than President Trump. 

I wrote that I presumed they were disgusted by his corruption, dishonesty, and wealth-seeking, as well as by many of his policies. Yet nearly all Republican officeholders and candidates say and do nothing to stop Trump's damage.

My post on Monday attributed the acquiescence of GOP officeholders to their calculation that public disagreement with Trump would be politically disadvantageous. They are choosing personal ambition over duty. Either they like what Trump is doing, which shows poor judgment, or they recognize its damage but do and say nothing, which shows poor character.

To be a member in good standing in the Republican Party one cannot denounce Trump's claim that he won the 2020 election in a landslide, nor his calling the January 6 rioters "patriots." One must accept Trump's argument that Oregon's vote by mail system is suspicious at best. In addition, one needs to ignore Trump's crypto grift, his conflicts of interest, his money-seeking, his lies, his social media rants, his tariffs and their damage to Oregon exporters, his insults to our allies, his damage to Medicaid and the Oregon Health Plan and local hospitals, and his choosing to back Putin and Russia in its war against Ukraine. Stay silent.

I called out two candidates by name: gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan and state senate candidate Brad Hicks. They aren't speaking up for Oregon or saying a peep about how Trump's policies hurt our state. They are on the Republican team, awash in Republican money. They made their choice.

Southern Oregon businessman and philanthropist Alan DeBoer makes the point that political choices in our mostly two-party system are binary. One might support Drazan not because she is so perfect, but because one thinks the alternative, Democratic governor Tina Kotek, is bad for Oregon and has done a poor job. Drazan's ad assert that she would be a better manager than Kotek.

Alan DeBoer is a former Ashland mayor, a former member of the Ashland School Board, a former state senator, and generally a civically-engaged person. Oregon secretary of state records show that he donates generously to Republican candidates. I have made no secret of the fact that I have contributed to the campaigns of Tina Kotek and Denise Krause.

A comment by Alan DeBoer

First of all I agree with your take on our current President, I do not on the vote on Christine Drazan and Brad Hicks. Oregon is in total failure and other than Workers Comp (SAIF) is failing on all counts. The super majority is dangerous and they are failing Oregon by not listening to the minority (later on I will give examples). Please vote for these two individuals and let’s fix Oregon, as they both say “ I hope that you love Oregon more than you hate Trump “.

Examples that I have witnessed are Then Speaker of the house Tina Kotek paused a vote on the house floor because she did not have the votes to pass a bill, she then went off the floor and had a conversation with one of her party members and reconvened the session with that woman crying as she changed her vote to pass the bill. The next example is the vote on the senate committee to pass the Transportation Bill out of committee. The Democrats did not have the majority vote due to a Democrat that would not vote for it, the president of the Senate then removed the person, replaced him and passed the bill on to the Senate floor. This bill then was then sent to the Ballot and was overturned by over 75% of the population.

To our Nurses, Doctors, Teachers, State Employees, and every Oregon Citizen the election of Christine and Brad is critical for the State. Closing of Hospitals, failing Education, and the list goes on!

I have spent most of my life helping non profits and hiring the right individuals to be CEO’s and am proud of the results in every case. Leadership is a funny thing, A great Leader you don’t notice, but when you see problems everywhere it is time for a change.

I wrote this without A I so excuse the writing and if you have questions give me a call 541-944-1600

Alan DeBoer 8 years on Ashland School Board, Former Mayor of Ashland, Oregon State Senator and on various Boards of Non profits (all of which were successful when I left)

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Picking Day: Pinot Noir

The Pinot Noir grapes got ripe when they got ripe. 

There is wisdom in patience, but I don't have it. The longer the grapes are on the vine, the more that can go wrong. Birds. Rain. Frost. Hail. Mildew.

I am thrilled to be picking today.

The parts of the vines that were still putting up new growth when we had the frosts a week ago turned brown and curled, which is why the top of the canopy looks different from the middle. The top is brown, the middle is green. The wind machines worked for three days last week trying to keep the temperature above 31 so that the leaves would stay alive and could keep sending carbohydrates to the grapes. It partially worked. The goal wasn’t just sweetness; it was ripeness.

A crew will start at 7 a.m. today.

The netting protected the grapes from starlings. I have seen swooping murmurations this year, but so far little damage. A neighbor used up a box of shotgun shells blasting away at the starlings this past weekend. They have discovered our side-by-side vineyards. He frightens them, and they fly away, but return. He said he fired one shot into the tall tree next to the vineyard and eight birds fell. In another context I would be sympathetic to the birds, but not now, not here. They want my crop and I want to protect it. We are in a competition. I would have an animal-lover’s live-and-let-live attitude if they were eating blackberries or anything else besides my crop. I don’t hate the starlings; it isn’t personal. I am in the most ancient and fundamental of struggle: a fight with another species over a resource. I have hardened my heart. The grapes are mine.

Today, amid the back-to-back-to-back commercials for candidates, I will likely see a heart-wrenching ad seeking donations for starving animals. I will feel sorry for them, which is the point of the ad. Meanwhile I am happy my nets are up and that my neighbor scares starlings with a credible threat of death. Some animals I want to feed; others I want not to feed. Irony is not dead.

We are in an era where my mixed-emotion sympathy for the birds may come across as lacking the testosterone-infused warrior spirit that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says is the proper way to approach battle. If I encounter a bird trapped in the net later this morning, and it is frantic, trying to escape, should I let it go? Should I wring its neck? Should I kill it and hang it on a T-post as a trophy and warning to its fellows in the flock? Hegseth would have the public display: It would be deterrence and a display of triumph. Achilles dragged the body of Hector behind his chariot. Achilles did not need a testosterone boost. But even the gods who favored the Greek side were offended by his disrespect to the vanquished Hector, and Achilles came to grief.

(I will let the bird escape. The nets did their work. I am trying to protect a crop, not get vengeance.)

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]