The Apples and Trees

The intention here was something breezy along the lines of apples not falling far from the trees. If you have seen the film Borat, you may have noticed that his newspaper - a front page of which is briefly shown-is in Almaty. The city used to be called Alma Ata.

And in case you don't know ( and you don't), Alma Ata is the Garden of Eden of all Apples.

Almaty is where apples were created by God. It is the ancestral home of all apples. They grow some that are the size of basketballs.

Can you imagine the apple pies? The apple fritters? The apple pan dowdy?

The picture above is not taken anywhere near Kazakhstan's capital, Almaty. It is taken on the Amazon, somewhere west of Manaus.

This is where my goddaughter was travelling with her friend.

Since they are players on an Ultimate Frisbee team, they naturally thought that the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon Basin could not be more pleased by anything than by having frisbees tossed at them.

Thank goodness the boy is not wearing a top hat. That would have given the frisbos something too tempting to hit. There would have been an international incident. I would have been dragged into it. The headlines would have screamed, "Prominent Blogolite in Frisbie Bonking Scandal!"

My nephews- my grandnephews, actually, though they are anything but grand-are of her age. I asked them what they thought. They stared blankly in my direction, as if I were not there. Then they went back to whatever it was they were doing.

I asked again. Again the silent stares.

Finally, they said, "We will respond if you buy us lunch."

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