Get Belafonte on the Line

Usually when I start blogging, I come up with a topic to talk about. Today I think I’ll just wander around.

First of all, bananas. My plantain trees are producing bananas. Which makes them banana trees. I gave some away, and I have been informed that they make excellent chips, if you slice them thin and fry them. This doesn’t make them plantains. Some bananas stand up to cooking, and some plantains can be eaten raw. It’s confusing. I’m pretty sure these are bananas. They’re easy to peel, and they taste great raw.

I’m trying to understand bananas. If I am even close to getting it right, the first bananas humans ate had big hard seeds in them. We bred the seeds out, so bananas are now sterile and have to be propagated by shoots. Before about 1960, Americans used to buy a banana variety called Gros Michel. “Fat Mike.” The bananas we now buy are Cavendish bananas. They used to be considered junk, and they were not exported. But Gros Michel bananas succumbed to a blight.

I’ll tell you right away, some of this information may be wrong. I found a site for a company that sells little banana trees by mail, and they gave another name for the bananas we see at stores. The site says this type of banana is excellent, but only if you grow them yourself. Store bananas are picked green, and they’re not as good. Now maybe the other name means the same thing as “Cavendish.” I don’t know. But it’s hard to believe that the fairly tasty bananas we see in stores were ever considered junk.

Here is more news. A blight has hit the Cavendish banana. It’s a fungus. And because Cavendish banana trees are genetically identical, there is no hope that we’ll find a resistant cultivar. So if the blight ever gets to the Americas, we will have no bananas today, forever. Yes, that’s right. Scientists are claiming it’s the end of the banana world.

I find this hard to believe. First of all, plants mutate, so I doubt all Cavendish trees are the same. Second, predictions like this almost never come true. Third, it’s not clear to me that all edible bananas come from this line. There are hundreds of different types of bananas. Some are huge. Some are small. Some are purple. The taste varies. I can’t believe they’re all going to be hit by the blight. Surely they’re not that closely related. Fourth, if we bred tasty seedless bananas once, why can’t we do it again? You see what I’m saying.

Here in Miami, we have approximately nine billion varieties of banana and plantain (different plant, but similar). If you go to a fruit market, you may see some very odd bananas. And all of them are better than regular store bananas. Are they all going to become extinct? Can you buy into that?

Here’s the proposed solution to the banana blight: genetic modification. And of course, the greenies are scared that modified bananas will give us tumors or make us explode or something. So my best guess is, poor, backward countries will get modified bananas, and we’ll do without, just like we do without Corvairs and DDT.

I tried to identify my bananas online. It’s impossible. They’re about seven inches long and 2 1/2″ thick. The flesh is very white. They’re stubby. The closest match I can find is a Hawaiian cultivar called Hua Moa, but they’re smaller.

Whatever. I’ll still eat them.

Last night I felt I needed some Haagen-Dazs. And I noticed the twenty-plus pounds of bananas on the counter. I sliced one into chunks, added strawberry Haagen-Dazs, added chocolate syrup, and went to town. These bananas are excellent with ice cream. Store bananas tend to be mealy and flavorless, by yard-banana standards. These are firm and smooth-textured, and they have a lemony kind of taste. Very nice.

I still need a plantain tree. Maybe Home Depot has one.

If you’re worried about hard times, and you live in an area where these things will grow, get yourself a couple of banana and plantain trees. You’ll have an endless supply of starch and fiber, from a very small piece of land. And they’re good for you. And boy, are they versatile. You can even make flour out of them.

Without being gross, let me assure you that fiber from bananas or plantains has fine qualities you will appreciate. You will understand what I mean, if you’ve ever made the mistake of eating two bowls of All-Bran.

What else is happening? Let’s see. The Palin kerfuffle.

I can’t believe we’re still hearing about this. You would think liberal pundits would be smart enough to tread lightly, and some are, but last night, I saw a female comedian on Larry King, gloating about the pregnancy. She was openly thrilled that Sarah Palin’s daughter had made this devastating, humiliating mistake. She made fun of teaching abstinence, saying it was clearly a great success in Wasilla. I could not believe it. Imagine being a pregnant 17-year-old and watching adults make fun of you on national TV. What ever happened to decency and compassion? Aren’t conservatives supposed to be the mean ones? We’re pretty good about things like this. We may shoot you in the face from time to time, but we won’t humiliate your children.

I’m disgusted to see TV personalities harping on the story. They hide behind the claim that it’s legitimate news. It was legitimate news when a vice presidential candidate’s wife admitted she drank rubbing alcohol, but I don’t recall panels being convened to discuss it. For that matter, I don’t recall anyone seizing on Betty Ford’s addiction to belittle Gerald Ford. And Ford was a Republican. I suppose that if Ford were in office today, and Betty admitted her problem, we’d see the same kind of cruelty. After all, we saw a lot of Steve Irwin “humor” right after he died. You can’t sink much lower than that.

Is this how desperate McCain’s enemies are? Are they so scared of a lady from Wasilla that they’re willing to torment her child in front of tens of millions of people? Is it really that hard to stay on the issues? This is like skipping diplomacy and going straight for the H-bomb. If Obama is right on the issues, and he’s capable of being a good President, he shouldn’t need this kind of help. And it has to be counterproductive. He’s smart enough to know that. He discouraged these attacks.

People will say Republicans picked on Obama’s wife. Sorry, that won’t fly. She’s an adult. She chose to inject herself into the debate. No one forced a microphone into her hand. Notice how the pundits are less interested in Cindy McCain? That’s because she doesn’t make provocative remarks, the way Michelle Obama does. If she starts, the Democrats have every right to respond. Someone show me how Sarah Palin’s daughter provoked a response.

It makes me think about things I’ve written, which I should have kept to myself.

I wonder what the teen pregnancy rate in Wasilla is, compared to New York City, where teachers pass out condoms and probably hold counseling sessions for girls who have failed to get pregnant. The sky-high AIDS rate in New York ought to tell you all you need to know about the effectiveness of the liberal approach.

I still can’t believe educators hand out condoms to children. It’s one of those things that make you wonder if you’re living in a lucid dream. In a few years, they’ll be passing out beers and buying spray paint for vandals.

Let’s move on. To sea monsters. It looks like Sweden is competing with Loch Ness. Some Swedes in need of a hobby set up a camera, trying to catch their version of Nessie, which lives in a lake the name of which I can’t identify, because the website, Storsjöodjuret (“More state-subsidized vodka, please”), is in Swedish. They have footage of something that looks like a blob of mucus caught in turbulence. The site asks the compelling question: “Vad händer just nu?” To which I gamely reply, “Clap it up, my hammies.” That’s my stock response to everything.

It sure looks fake. Maybe it’s an angry lutefisk. Never get between a lutefisk and its cubs.

I predict that this will turn out to be just as genuine as the beer-cooler Sasquatch that turned up in Georgia. It’s too bad that was a fake. Think of the beer endorsements. “Hey, Bigfoot! WASSSUUPPPPPPP!”

I’m so glad people stopped saying that. I’m pretty sure there was a point where preachers were using it to start their sermons. “WASSSUUPPPPPPP, sinners! Open your Bibles to Exodus, chapter three, verse seven…”

I got a lot of responses to my last post on religion. I want to thank everyone. I feel a lot of relief, even though I have improved to a pretty limited extent. Sometimes I feel myself about to say or do something of the sort that used to weary me in the past, and something stops me, and it makes me very glad. It’s like rejecting delivery of a time bomb. I hope that in the future, I’ll be able to do it more consistently.

I got an email from a friend yesterday, asking about another friend, who has gotten a divorce. I managed to catch myself and provide only limited details, for fear of gossiping. I know the inquiry was well-intended. But I thought it was best not to start down that road. In the past, I would have blabbed whatever I knew. I know the divorced friend wouldn’t care, but still, it’s best not to function as a local version of TMZ.

Looks like Hurricane Gustav is all washed up, which is an answer to prayer. The storm caused a number of deaths, and it damaged a great deal of property, but it also highlighted the persistent vulnerability of New Orleans, without flooding the city again. I know people who were affected by the storm aren’t feeling grateful for that, but maybe it will move the government to speed up improvements.

The GOP needs to go ahead with the convention. The usual cranks will criticize them, but the streets are dry, the Superdome is empty, the winds are gone, and it’s okay to resume normal life.

I hope Hanna continues to disappoint. The projected path is promising, in that it takes the storm away from areas that have already been pounded, and it keeps it offshore and headed into cooler water for quite some time. The farther north it goes before it makes landfall, the better. Ike is disconcerting. I hope Haiti and the DR and Cuba don’t take any more blows. The historical data suggests it will go north and vanish. That would be nice.

I’m annoyed to see weather people calling the next wave “Josephine,” when it’s still nothing but a bunch of wobbly clouds. There are some kinds of optimism we really don’t need.

What tires me is the endless sensation that hurricanes are nearby. The weather has a certain feel to it when tropical activity is going on within a few hundred miles. It feels ominous. And we get a lot of drizzle and clouds. It’s like being held at gunpoint for weeks.

Supposedly, we’re in a period where sunspots are infrequent, and that may mean the planet will cool for a number of years. If cooling means fewer hurricanes, I’m all for it.

My coffee is cold. I better publish this.