Easy Sunday: Baby grapes

 I scared people with this photo a week ago.

The photo wasn't staged or cherry-picked. It was me at 11:29 a.m. on a day that was already heating up. I had been working in the vineyard, putting floppy, unruly vines in between wires that shaped the plant into a narrow, vertical one. I had been out there for about five hours by then. I was quitting for the day.

People called and texted me and said I looked "terrible." One said I looked like "death warmed over," a phrase I hadn't heard for decades. Their point was that I needed to take it easier.  

Here I am five days ago, also at end-of-day, at 11:23 a.m. I am doing the same job, but going through the vineyard now on a second pass through. It is lighter work now that the job is dealing with only the previous week's growth. I think I look OK, i.e., not killing myself.

Yesterday I took photos of the grapes in progress, photos to create a record and for analysis by the vineyard operators at Valley View Vineyards, who have been supervising my vineyard from the beginning. 

Each variety of grape plant is different in the vigor of the plant, the natural shape of the vines, the shape of the leaves, the shape of the canes, and the size of the grapes and how big the harvest.

The varieties are on different clocks, too. Pinot Noirs bud out and blossom early; Cabernet Sauvignons are about three weeks later. Malbecs are in the middle. The frosts we had in April damaged the Pinots and Malbecs, because their buds were out and vulnerable. The Cabernets were still dormant and apparently unaffected.  Toward the season's end, I picked an exploratory crop of Pinots on October 6 -- enough for Valley View Vineyards to buy on spec to ferment, barrel, and age for a year to see whether 100 percent pumice-grown conditions are as good for grapes as they are for melons. These are Pinots:

There were negligible Cabernets to pick in that third year. But my Malbecs were advanced and they bear a heavy crop; it was going to be a giant harvest even this first harvest-year for the vineyard -- except the starlings which had not noticed my Pinots discovered my Malbecs and ate the entire crop in two days, just before we planned the harvest. I will put up nets this year, another expense and bother.

This is what Pinot Noir grapes looked like yesterday, June 27.

The Pinot Noir vines are vigorous -- if anything, too vigorous. I am avoiding watering my grapes to try to keep the vine growth manageable. The roots are finding the water and nutrients they need without my help.

My Malbec vines shown below are even more vigorous, again without fertilizer or water. The giant growth we see in the new floppy canes has all taken place in the last week. My nephew, Liam Flenniken, who is helping me all summer, is six feet, three inches. These canes have grown out of the top pair of wires at five feet off the ground, and need to be clipped so they don't flop over and shade the plant. It will be fast work, but there is a lot of it, because every plant in the two acres planted to Malbecs looks like these. 

Liam and I decided to take Sunday off. We will get to the Malbecs and Cabernets next week. Then back to the Pinots, which we just finished. The work continues all summer.

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Unreliable

"Call me irresponsible, call me unreliable
Throw in undependable too"
          Lyrics by Sammy Cahn, "Call Me Irresponsible" 1962. Winner of Academy Award for best original song, 1963

The U.S. is no longer considered trustworthy in matters of trade and national defense.

We are irresponsible, unreliable, and undependable. 

The rest of the world is making adjustments. 

American voters wanted change. We got conned.

Middle-class Americans had been falling behind for years — not all at once, but gradually, enough to feel it. I saw the discontent up close at Trump rallies in 2015 and 2016. The crowds were hearing a barely-coded economic and racial message they recognized. You are getting screwed, Trump told them. The system is rigged against you.

He punched down at Black Americans who he said had gotten ahead illegitimately. Obama was a fraud — born in Kenya, he claimed. Immigrants from Mexico and Muslim countries were criminals, terrorists, freeloaders. The elites had built a swamp. Trump alone knew how to drain it.

We bought it. And we bought it again in 2024.

Donald Trump is on us — the American electorate. We knew he stiffed vendors. We knew he lied to his wives, his banks, his bondholders, and to us. We knew he dealt in fantastic exaggerations and outright fabrications. But the man can sell. He seems so frank, so direct, so certain.

Donald Trump is a package. When you elect the man who shakes up America's immigration system, election system, and constitutional order, you also get the man who shakes up the international system. He flipped American support from Ukraine to Russia. He's walking away from NATO. He invented arbitrary tariffs on long-established trading partners, threatened Mexico and Canada, and declared he wants Greenland. He partnered with Israel to go to war against Iran, then abandoned the effort when it went badly.

Foolish Israel. It trusted us.

The Pew Research Center has put numbers on what the world now thinks of us.

                                          ------   ------

Trump successfully made the argument that being liked and respected by foreign governments was a negative, evidence that they took advantage of weak former presidents, including Republicans, but especially Obama. Foreigners liked us because they sponged off us in matters of trade and defense spending. George Bush went to war with Iraq for principle, not for plundered oil; what a wasted opportunity. China, Mexico, Canada -- heck, everybody -- got access to our markets for free and we got screwed. We were saps.

Our reputation with foreigners cannot be repaired by a successor to Trump, whether Democrat or Republican. The U.S. voters re-elected Trump, proving that he wasn't an aberration and mistake, but a democratic choice. The arbitrary and changing tariffs on everyone demonstrate that the U.S. has hostile intent and wants to keep all options open all the time. No alliance is secure. No trade relationship is fixed. Everything is subject to instant change for reasons of the personal pique or political advantage of a president. 

The Gordie Howe Bridge connecting Canada and Detroit is a physical symbol of the unreliable USA. 

Under an agreement with President Obama and Michigan officials, Canada paid six billion dollars to build the bridge. Now, at completion, Trump says he won't allow traffic to cross it. Prime Minister Mark Carney called it "a great example of cooperation between our two countries." Michigan's leaders praised it as "an incredibly important infrastructure project" for jobs and the state economy. Trump is unhappy with Canada and Carney, so he's holding the bridge hostage until Canada hands over half of it and compensates the U.S. for an ambiguous "everything we have given them."

There is a wrinkle. The bridge competes with another bridge — one that pays tolls to a major Trump donor.

The bridge will presumably open eventually, under some arrangement. But Trump has leverage, because Canada has already spent the money. The bridge is worthless if it can't be used. Canada made the classic mistake: doing the work first, then letting itself be exposed to Trump reneging. Trump built a career stiffing contractors who did exactly that on his real estate projects.

Foolish Canada. It trusted us.

The world is taking note.

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Are Democrats committing brand suicide?

"We are all outlaws in the eyes of America. . . 

We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent
And young"

        Jefferson Airplane, "We can be together," 1969

Democratic pundits are wetting their pants. I'm not.

I'm not a Democratic Socialist. But I feel pretty serene about what happened in New York's primary on Tuesday. Three Democratic Socialist candidates won Democratic nominations for Congress — two of them defeating incumbents. Democrats need a shakeup, and they're getting one.

The candidate drawing the most attention is Darializa Avila Chevalier, who wrote things on social media between a half dozen years ago that will sound extreme to a lot of voters, including me: Abolish all policing, abolish prisons, abolish all national borders, nationalize utilities and hospitals, seize property from landlords. Fox News will repeat this on a loop and call it Democratic Party policy.

She tried to delete those posts. The internet never forgets.

But I discount to approximately zero the things political activists write in graduate school. Universities are hothouses — incubators for brainstorms, new paradigms, ideas tried out free of the constraints of inertia, opposition, and how the ideas get paid for. That's their purpose. I take these candidates seriously, but not literally.

What we saw in New York wasn't a policy agenda. It was youth, impatience, and energy. Voters wanted the Pepsi Generation vibe — politics for "those who think young." The incumbent Chevalier defeated is 69. She is 32.

Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani is, whatever else, charismatic and good-looking. He smiles. He's bright, articulate, and energetic. Do I agree with everything he says? No. But his most ambitious proposals won't happen — the weight of opposition and inertia will see to that. What I'm ready for is politics that feels cool again. The establishment face of the Democratic Party is not cool.

Democratic voters want someone who makes politics feel like it can change the world. They want candidates who address unaffordable housing, the widening gap between new billionaires and shrinking middle-class incomes, naked corporate pay-to-play, and the feeling among young people that the generation in power has left them holding the bag.

I understand that impatience. Fifty-four years ago, I dropped out of graduate school because I decided historians wouldn't change the world — but good politicians might.

Sixty years ago, young people looked and sounded weird and offensive to those in power, as we pushed for disruptive change on race and the role of women. We frightened Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan. Jefferson Airplane sang about being transgressive, upsetting to the Establishment, and then the final insult: "young." 

The Beatles asked for a nonviolent revolution. "We all want to save the world," they sang. It was inspiring. I wanted to be inspired. JFK had inspired me. America could be a force for good. It is exciting to think that some great, good change is possible. 

I see the New York results as a crack in the wall. Will this destroy the Democratic brand? Not if Democrats absorb and co-opt the best of these ideas — diluted, moderated, made workable. Democratic Socialists will see them as watered down and moderated, and they will complain. This is a feature, not a bug, for Democrats. A Jon Ossoff, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, or someone not yet on our radar will be a stronger candidate in the battleground states if voters see this criticism from his left flank.

Edgy, cool candidates from bright-blue districts are how positive change starts. Change is hard. Change is slow. But it starts somewhere.

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Showdown: Tina Kotek vs. Christine Drazan.

Democratic incumbent Governor Tina Kotek is stuck with the gas tax and what it represents. 

Her Republican challenger, state Senator Christine Drazan, is stuck with Trump and what he represents.

Christine Drazan and Tina Kotek

Eighty-three percent of Oregonians voted "NO" on Measure 120, the gas tax, registration, and fee hikes referendum. Democrats passed the measure in a special session to keep the Oregon Department of Transportation from laying off snow plow drivers and closing DMV offices. Republicans quickly gathered petition signatures to put it on the May ballot, giving voters a chance to rescind the "Democratic tax." Democrats have large majorities in the legislature, and Democrats hold all the statewide offices. Tina Kotek is up for re-election this year.

The measure was a litmus test on how feel people about taxes, yes, but also about how they feel about Democrats. Oregonians were voting about the cost of living, homelessness and homeless encampments, Oregon's low rank in education, the hollowing out of Portland's downtown, the high cost of housing, job losses in Oregon, Oregon's 10 percent state income tax, and Oregon losing population because people are moving to other states. 

Tina Kotek has a problem. Drazan is a credible candidate, an establishment Republican. If the election is a referendum on Kotek, I predict Kotek will lose.

Kotek needs to change the frame and make the election about Trump and his Republican enablers and sycophants. Kotek is an incumbent, so it is inevitable it will be in part about her; she is stuck with that. But she isn't stuck with its being a referendum on her alone. It can be two referenda: on Kotek and Trump. Trump makes that possible; inevitable, even. He insists on being the center of attention, always making news, always shocking, always ferocious in his opposition to Democrats. The news is about him, him, him. That suits Kotek's frame perfectly. Trump has been open about targeting blue states, and his attempts to ban vote-by-mail put this attack front and center right at election time. 

Let the two faces in the voters' minds be Kotek's and Trump's. Let Trump be seen as the dangerous disrupter.

Shape the referenda with Kotek in the role of Oregon's embattled defender; Trump is the troublemaker.

--  Gasoline prices are high? Kotek didn't go to war with Iran; Trump did.

--  Tariffs raising prices and destroying the markets for wheat and wine? They are Trump's tariffs. Oregon led the states in filing objections to the tariffs.

--  Grocery prices are high? Blame Trump's ICE for targeting the wrong people: farm workers in stead of criminals. 

--  Home building is down? Trump's tariffs on Canadian softwood and steel raised the price of new construction.

--  Education is struggling? Trump cut the Department of Education.

--  Forest management is neglected? Trump's DOGE made disastrous cuts to the U.S. Forest Service, over Oregon's objections.

--  Taxes are high? Trump gave tax breaks to billionaire campaign contributors.

On Tuesday I wrote a controversial post saying that a Democrat running for Congress has a longshot chance of winning election in my bright-red congressional district. How? By avoiding making it a comparison election between a Democrat and a Republican. Instead, make it a referendum election on Trump and his GOP enablers.

Kotek has the same opportunity.  A comparison election with Drazan makes it about Oregon discontent, and voters want change. That positions Kotek as the villain. But a referendum on Trump makes Kotek a hero, Trump the villain, and Drazan a sidekick of the villain. Trump likes being the strong guy in charge of everything. Let him play that role. Be the guy who created this status quo.

Drazan will be talking about the gas tax, as the symbol of what is wrong with Kotek. That's her best play. Kotek will be talking about Trump, as the symbol of what is wrong with Drazan. That's Kotek's play.

Kotek is more popular than Trump.

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Artificial intelligence writes a sonnet about my vineyard

I write these posts myself.

My experiments asking an artificial intelligence program to write a post for me have been unsatisfactory, even as a first draft. 

They seem to me to be like Wonder Bread: empty calories. Experimental posts sound knowledgeable, but they don't make clear arguments that are persuasive to me. Or maybe the real problem for me is that they don't sound like me to my own ear, and I am vain. In any case, I write these blog posts the old-fashioned way.

I am going to keep experimenting. Ten years from now we may think that the most important life skill people need to learn is how to write a good prompt, a key, I think, to successful use of AI as a tool. I am doing what children do to find out about the world: play. I goof around, trying to learn what it can do. You can use several AI programs for free, up to a limited amount. I just subscribed to claude.ai for $20/month, so that I could have all the practice I have time for.

Today will be an untypical post, about AI, not politics. I want to be at my vineyard early today, by 6 a.m. if possible, to beat the heat, so I am dashing this off. My grandnephew, Liam, who is staying at the farmhouse this summer, will have started work at 6. I will join him working through the rows, doing the maintenance tasks of a vineyard in this part of the summer: tucking vines into the wires, clipping unruly vines, checking the plants for water, removing leaves from in front of the grapes on the east side of the row, and looking for the noxious puncture-vine weed. Here is what we looked like yesterday at noon.

So today's post is a quick report on my AI play. I first asked ChatGPT to write a sonnet. I wanted to challenge it on issues of tone so I described my own situation, I am the fourth generation on a farm, but like most landowners of rural land lacking heirs who want to farm. I am not surprised. Wanting to do professional work "in town" shows good judgment on their part. It is hard to make a living working on a farm, and much farmwork is hard, uncomfortable, dirty, sweaty, and tedious. I thought I would see if AI programs could communicate a nuanced emotion about my situation as well as I could. 

The answer is yes.

Note that I am polite in my prompt, saying "please" to a piece of software, which is silly. I anthropomorphize the AI program because it seems so human in its interactions.

My prompt:
Please write a sonnet in the classic Shakespearean form reflecting the thoughts of a 76 year old man planting a vineyard, knowing that the grapes, and eventually the wine, will be enjoyed by people he won't know, long after he is gone. He reflects that he has no heirs who would want to own or manage the vineyard. But the wine will be a legacy of a sort. The man is a bit somber, but ok with that outcome.

Here is how ChatGPT responded, within two seconds:

Upon this slope I set the tender vine,
Though I shall never taste its fullest grace;
The clusters yet unborn, the future wine,
Will ripen for another time and place.
No eager child stands waiting for this land,
No heir will walk these rows when I am gone;
No blood of mine will guide a weathered hand
To greet the dew and watch the coming dawn.
At seventy-six, I know the seasons' claim;
The frost, the sun, the harvest, and decline.
Yet still I bend to earth and stake each frame,
Entrusting years beyond the reach of mine. 

Though none may speak my name when corks are drawn,
My vintage shall endure when I am gone.

I doubt if I could have written that sonnet, but if I tried, it would have been a labor of many hours. Possibly a reader with well-developed taste in literature or poetry thinks the sonnet poor in quality, but to my mind it is quite good. Or at least for most purposes, good enough, and a better use of my time than laboring for days to try to duplicate it.

I wondered what the AI program Claude would do. I gave it the identical prompt. In two seconds this emerged:

These vines I press to earth with aging hands
Will never yield their fruit to eyes of mine;
The harvest waits for those in distant lands
Of time, who'll lift a glass of unknown wine.

No son stoops here beside me in the row,
No daughter asks the names of root and cane;
The ones I loved have other fields to sow,
And so I work this dark and patient plain.

Yet something in the soil will hold my name—
Not written, but pressed deep in root and stone,
In tannin, in the color of the flame
That warms a stranger's glass when I am gone.

    I plant not for myself, nor blood, nor kin—
    But for the joy that I was ever in.

I am amazed by this one, too. A sonnet in perfect form and rhyme pattern, done instantly! My criticism of the two poems is essentially criticism of my prompt. The two poems hit the issue of not having heirs who want to farm harder than I really feel, but that is on me, not AI. My prompt mentioned that issue, not how much I enjoy the farm, so, it gave me what I said I wanted.

It is 5:38 a.m. and I am going out the door, leaving a realm of ideas, information, and abstractions to enter another realm: real life. Vineyards are plants growing in dirt. Real dirt, not the idea of dirt. I am a real, live person, who will have clippers in my hand. The vines are alive, green, leafy, and there are very young grapes on them. The baby grapes are in a  process of becoming, but I will deal with them existing as they are right now, this morning, not as they might be at harvest. The vineyard is here, now, physical, and real. 

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Can a Demoocrat win in a bright red congressional district?

The question is on my mind because I live in one: Oregon's Second Congressional District.

Is there a strategy or issue-frame that might work to elect a Democrat? 

I think there is.

The second congressional district includes the reddest part of the state. Voters in rural Eastern Oregon wanted their own district where they could elect one of their own; Democrats gave it to them. The incumbent Republican U.S. Representative, Cliff Bentz, has been winning general elections by a two-to-one margin.

 

We have experience in what does not work for a Democrat to get elected. Good people have tried. They have been plausible candidates for winning swing districts. They visited the country fairs and talked easily with farmers and ranchers. They tried to sell themselves. [See? I'm a good person, a reasonable person, a Democrat you can like.] It didn't work. They still lost by 30 points.  

 

Democrats have good issues. Gasoline and grocery prices are up, the tariff wars hurt agricultural sales, the war with Iran is going poorly, and billionaires got tax cuts. The district has a significant skew toward people who use the Oregon Health Plan, Oregon's version of Medicaid. Republicans have tried to eliminate the ACA, and now, after the Big Beautiful Bill became law, people are learning that their insurance premiums will go up substantially, making coverage unaffordable for many people. Rep. Bentz is part of the caucus that fights the ACA and passed the Big Beautiful Bill. It should be a motivator for Republican voters to vote their interest on issues. They don’t. They vote their party.

 

Being well-known and having a reputation for hard work, moderation, and attentiveness to the district has been tried, and it fails. Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, has had town meetings in every county in the district, including the very small ones, every year, and has done so for decades. Wyden handily wins the state, but he failed to get a majority of the votes in this district in the 2022 election, losing to a Republican who didn't bother campaigning. 

 

Winning this district any year would be hard. The Democrat's task is made harder by the fact that animal rights advocates circulated an initiative petition and got onto this November's ballot a law to ban fishing and hunting in Oregon. Really. I expect a giant turnout from rural Oregon voters. 

 

There is another approach:

Make the election a referendum, an up-or-down vote on whether the country is on the right track under Trump and this Congress. Define the election as an opportunity to send a message. People are feeling ornery. Give them a clear, direct way to express that emotion. Strip away most of the salesmanship about what a great human being the Democrat is. Voters won't believe it. Sell something they believe: The status quo is bad and getting worse and any change is worth trying.

Such a campaign would take self-discipline for the candidate. Every candidate has an ego and a desire to please. But the more the campaign is about the fine, upstanding Democrat and his oh-so-reasonable Democratic positions on good issues, the more muddled the election would be as a referendum. Resist that temptation to make it about the good-guy Democrat, except insofar as it is about the candidate's good sense to be against an unsatisfactory status quo. The Democrat will have his views, of course, and Democrats and many non-affiliated voters will like them, but if the campaign is about selling the Democrat, then it is a comparison election. That is a loser. It is better that the election be about whether people are happy with the status quo, with Trump, and with a congressman who does nothing to put limits on Trump. Bentz-is-Trump-is-the-status-quo. Are you happy? Are you OK with a do-nothing congressman?

If you want change, vote NO on Bentz. Say no to the puppet Congress that lets Trump run up gasoline and grocery prices, no to high healthcare premiums, no to the White House ballroom, no to midnight tweets depicting Trump as Jesus, no to war with Iran.

Recognize that a lot of people like Trump. The strategy won't win every vote. But a majority of voters want change, so make that the slogan, theme, and brand for the campaign. Bentz is stuck trying to defend the status quo that Trump and Congress created. His is the harder job.

Democrats have work to do to return to being a party that wins majorities in rural America. A candidate who wins can begin doing that repair work in office by supporting good policies and messages. Good government is good politics.

Satisfied with how things are going: 21 percent. Dissatisfied: 76 percent.

Approve of this Congress 10 percent. Disapprove of this Congress 86 percent.

 

Will it work? When conditions are bad enough, it just might. People aren't happy, and the trends are getting worse. 

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Public ownership of the data we create

This is the Fox News headline that triggered my thinking:

This is socialism. 

But let's not call it that. Let's call it tax reduction. Or a dividend.

North Dakota claims an ownership interest in the income from the oil and gas found in that state. The result is lower taxes for residents. Fox cheers.

Alaskans also share in the income from oil and gas drilled in their state. They pay no state income tax or sales tax at all. In fact, Alaskans get paid annual dividends from the Permanent Fund accumulated from oil revenue just for staying alive and living there. Alaskans like it.

When I was a county commissioner in Jackson County, Oregon, the county was a beneficiary of this form of resource socialism. Jackson County government had general fund and road revenue from timber harvested in the county off U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management land. The income was so substantial that the county had 1000 employees when I was elected in 1980 and we had essentially no county tax. Timber revenue pretty much paid for county government.

Andrew Yang ran for U.S president in 2019 and 2020 with an idea that seemed fantastical. He said that the U.S. should pay an annual income of $1,000 per month to each and every American citizen. It would replace most public assistance programs, he said. It wasn't welfare. It was our dividend from an ownership interest in the data that Americans have given to our technology companies. That information is valuable -- perhaps as valuable as the revenue businesses get on the margin between what they sell and what it costs them to make what they sell. Businesses, especially tech companies, scraped the data from our libraries with information accumulated over centuries. They gather our universities' research. They collect data from our phone calls, our grocery purchases, the movement of our cars, our electric usage, our traffic cameras, our emails, our TV shows -- the entire wealth of American commerce and culture. 

Andrew Yang drew curious crowds trying to absorb the idea that there was value in that data and that it belonged to the people who created it.

 

A lot has changed in the past six years. Artificial intelligence has become a central issue in our lives and it is creating fortunes that are distorting the economy and our democracy. Companies that are involved in the industry have multitrillion-dollar valuations. The idea that there is value in the information that informs AI doesn't seem crazy at all. It seems obvious. AI is creating value, but it isn't creating information; it is organizing it and giving it back to us. We taught AI what it knows, and are doing so constantly. The raw material that AI processes comes from us. 

The political insight to absorb is that the original data is ours, and like the oil beneath the surface of North Dakota and Alaska, and the trees in the forests of O&C counties, the public has a right to a dividend from its extraction and use. We don't deserve all the income from AI, but we deserve some of it.

I don't know the fair amount of income we deserve from the AI Permanent Fund. Let's debate that. It may not be $1,000 per American. Not yet, anyway. But it should be something, and my purpose here is to assert its justice and fairness, and to put Andrew Yang's proposal back on the table.

I start this post with North Dakota and Alaska to make the point that even red-state legislators and Fox News think a certain amount of socialism is a good idea. They aren't calling it socialism, of course; they are calling it tax reduction. That's OK. Alaskans call it a dividend. That's OK, too. Its foundation is a premise that is moral and political: The public has a legitimate claim on raw material resources extracted from within its jurisdiction. 

This is an idea with bipartisan potential, so long as Democrats have the sense not to insist it be called "socialism."

The future has caught up with Yang's insight. We aren't supplicants. We are owners. If AI wants our data, and it does, then it needs to pay us for it.

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