bananas and so much more

Tropical Race Four is the name of the fungus threatening the world's supply of bananas. I just read about it in The New Yorker.

Tropical Race Four.

Good name for a band.

Or a horse.

Banana is such a deliciously reduplicative word. Should I say that again?

Around here bananas are typically around 47 cents a pound. I / we take that for granted. What if bananas were $4.47 per pound? Or $47.47 per pound?

Would we eat them at those higher prices? I love bananas. I am sorry, bananas, if I've taken you for granted.

I have heard stories that foreign visitors walk into Wegmans and burst into tears, overcome by abundance. Bananas. And more!

Cavendish is the typical kind we eat. Used to be Gros Michel, I'm told (by The New Yorker).

I like them almost green. Almost.

A strong memory of my youth is my mother rapidly, very rapidly, slicing pieces of banana with the lip of a spoon, pieces falling onto cereal.

Oh, and I almost forgot: for a snack, we would often have bananas and cream (sometimes milk) in a bowl with lots of sugar.

Yummy.

Some bananas, The New Yorker article taught me, taste like strawberries.

I'm intrigued by this question: when was that aha! moment when humans, or one single human, discovered that you don't eat the skin but inside is the delicious fruit of the banana? Or did they just watch some monkeys?

But whom did the monkeys watch?

Speaking of zen koans, is there a better zen riddle than "yes, we have no bananas"?

Tropical Race Four.

One of Dante's circles of Hell?

A political strategy?

A code name for war games?

An espionage message?

And of course Woody Allen's "Bananas" was funny, at least back in those days.