An explanation of the title...

Bananas are the most consumed fruit in America. They don't drip juice onto your fingers and are highly portable so they fit nicely into our fast-paced, chronoholic lifestyles. Bananas are almost all grown in a monoculture of the Cavendish cultivar, meaning that this fruit is particularly susceptible to disease, as it would only take one rightly evolved strain to wipe out all of these genetically identical plants. Also, almost all bananas are imported: from Central and South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Because of all this, this ubiquitous yellow fruit represents the American condition quite nicely: the ease and thoughtlessness (on our part) of our global marketplace is actually based on a very fragile and complex system.

Mushy bananas on the other had mean food is about to be wasted. We can see the fruit flys buzzing around and we have to make a very important desicion: to toss or not to toss. Of course it could be composted, which is good, but there is something better. Banana bread. Delicious. Mushy bananas make us realize that maybe we are taking more than we need because "hey, we couldn't actually eat that whole bunch before it went bad," but they also offer us an opportunity to creatively use what we have to make something better.

But that really has nothing to do witht the title of this blog.

Actually, it is because of a story that my sister reminded me of last night when I called her for some advice (on what to call this blog).

Last year my sister and I were on an "adventure walk," during which we step outside our front door and just start walking in whichever direction "feels right," and see where we end up. On this occasion we ended up at our friends and neighbors', Dave and Kathleen. We were making small talk and telling them what we were going to do for Father's Day and my sister explained how our mom was going to make a banana cake since we had so many mushy bananas lying around. I corrected her and stated that mom was making the cake because she loved dad so much, not to get rid of bananas. Dave quickly quipped "Nothing says 'I love you' like 12 mushy bananas."

So I just want to say "I love you" to all of my friends and family who might be reading this and be interested in what is happening in my life. You are all very dear to me and I thank God daily for having blessed me with such splendid comrades for this journey.