It becomes a march toward Halloween, and fall says it all, as there is much music and munching in which to indulge — in-between pumpkin carving. Oops, we should just say stickering. While we snicker.

We start with a pumping-up-your-knees-to-almost-thigh-high event hosted by the Hudson musicians, billed as rhythm on the “river,” broadly speaking, and brings together a dozen different marching bands under the stars, so to speak, starting at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28. (The music and more themes coulda, maybe shoulda, have come to the scenic backdrop of Lakefront Park. As it would feature an elaborate although simple-in-its-beauty concert stage, for the groups coming from over a two-state region.) As it is, name aside, the rhythm venue is not held riverside, but at the bevy of bleachers at Raider stadium adjacent to Hudson High School, two miles from any open water. But with a 100-yard football field thus afield. Or 120 as they’ll be needing use of the end zones. On the theme of 20s, that is the number of years for a prominent high school reunion this weekend, and I saw consecutive attendees on consecutive corners out celebrating downtown on Saturday night. Again, nearer the river.

Rather, in its place, taking by storm the band shell by the river and indeed lake and negotiating the small hill leading up to it, is at bookends for time the (Spirit of) St. Croix Music and Art Festival, all day on Saturday afternoon and also Sunday until 4 p.m. Now that’s the spirit of the (coming) season. A quick look at the event shows that it’s grown to a point where the juried show and its dozens of booths takes the form on the lawn of a big square not a rectangle. While the band played on with Domino, not dominos, by Van Morrison. And my favorite booth, on quick observation, was The Purple Seed, maybe having sprouted from the Purple Tree over on Second Street. A boutique with branches.

The next Saturday, a bit earlier in the day, there is an activity meant to go boo in the night, although really in the afternoon, slated for almost a month ahead of Halloween. The Golden Rule it prizes lives on, as people get together to share all sorts of booyah, that multifaceted food served with love, from 2-7 p.m. at Weitkamp Park.

Likewise, going back to Saturday the 28th, you can get your pumpkin groove and carve — but no knives please — going on in an annual event at all Fleet Farm stores. Not just those in the heart of farm country. And this will not be an official gouging. Because the stores will be providing free, of charge, not only the gourd-like bases, but also paint — and stickers. An official ad displays four of them on corners of a pumpkin, three spooky and one a piece of another kind of fruit that serves as a snack. The event gives you four hours to decorate your pumpkin, starting at 9 a.m. It is sponsored by Rust-oleum, as that is roughly the color of the pumpkins. No rouge. But you may find that at a pop-up fall sale near the Masonic Lodge on Locust Street until 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

It also was recently, this time at Kwik Trip stores, national chocolate milk day being celebrated. That event is past but hey, I’m sure you can splurge for a pint of milk in our dairy state. Chocolate milk could be from a brown swiss or even a black angus, or meet you halfway with a Holstein. Availability was said to vary, so your free milk might be left out in the cold — until next fall. You did have to buy a breakfast sandwich to get the cow, so to speak, and shown on again, an ad, was a three-meat kind. (Sunday is a giveaway at Kwik Trip for that other cream-based dark drink, as in coffee, but get there early as a happy national coffee day starts with a good breakfast.) This all is like a guy I met there who was buying a western omelet and cheese croissant that was marked at 9.00. I’m not sure if that was in dollars or an expiration date.

What happens when as far as logic and cohesiveness, two plus two seems to equal five?

My mom and I think we know. Firsthand and fivefold. This can be an ongoing rumble like a raging wildfire, first and foremost, (and not the cool in both temperature and function firestick kind), hence this run-on about what software and such can suck into its path and make everything jumble. Having the equivalent of that piece’s big impact. Gotta learn the “go” button.

However long, today’s rant has nothing to do with politics, which is unusual these days, rather we’ll get to that later. But maybe the wrath of Yahweh, and they could be related. Versus making Y actually Z.

Technology can be that terrible tack.

Finding a website plug-in — and especially actually installing it, or activating it, or implementing it, or whatever you call that term, so it seems — is not as easy as grabbing a cord and push, like the name implies. When updates that are supposed to be your computer savior for the somewhat less than savvy, do more than what you’d think, with unintended consequences.

But this all starts with mom and her early computer-solution-software history, now trailed off with far less triumph. Genetics at play here? And maybe thus to blame? At least frequent long-distance, as in the Old School method of actually talking to each other, conversation fodder.

So we went back and forth the other morning with tech disaster stories, until my phone was running out of juice. That great tale started while relying on only two percent! Here are my admittedly oddball observations, from a sheer layman’s perspective, used to using just bricks and mortar.

Thus I will insert my postponed trivia question at the end of this known-to-be long rant, and try to show how it all interweaves. As I had trouble posting it for publication into one of my website departments, and it got eaten like a spare sandwich. So you won’t see it under the category (synonym?) of Where Did You See It. I’ve got to recalibrate. My cursor easily slid sideways to select the existing body of copy, but that’s when the fun started.

Mom had to learn a computer program on her job, with little help as this was in an era before tech support, even before the days when computers such as they were, were old VDT machines the size of a fridge. (Learn as you go like me on a crazy new job, having taken a full morning to learn the crazy configurations to the program of the boss’s son, then just past the noon hour, thank you, it was time to start writing stories. And then there was the infamous “rotate” function to write a headline more than two columns wide.)

Back to mom, though, as she was a might-as-well-be executive secretary at a midsize district who had to keep straight the convolved files, and subfiles, on each person’s information, and be able to produce them with enough speed to satisfy any ADHDer. (Flash forward to these days, where she is challenged by cut-and-paste.) There were times when, we agree, you can type the same key or short strings of such, and get two different results. And a third version and a third result. And then make it officially take? And then educate the rest of your secs department on a soon-to-be archaic software, based solely on your own Blood, Sweat And Tears.

Cut to the chase, finally. With my own dear website. Now a newer version has been installed, and I went into the usual page to add to one of my departments, typed the brief and then … hit save?? The function I had always used was nowhere to be found, only what looked like a whole new style of page, minus the small margins such as seen at the bottom. There was no place to see a “publish” red key, or “update” or similar wording. Placed on top of it, overlapping it seems, was the screen to type in — hey that’s what I needed far earlier. The same adventure took place with doing plug-ins. And just what does “toggle” mean? And also the three dots or small bars if they are stacked up-and-down or sideways, like following my directions, or going forward in reverse. And what came first, the plug-in problem or the saving situation? At least with the plug-ins, I was eventually able to find my way back to Point A. But could not get back home to something as simple as “home.”

And on and on. My mom chimed in, saying there could be dozens of such pages and she is in an 8.5-by-11 mode, generating from a single template. And is there even a margin?

The reason for this tirade is that I looked at the varieties of plug-ins available, and they were in tens of thousands. My takeaway? The market is oversaturated with products that are basically minor duplications — Gimme Shelter from it, as how many different typefaces do you need? — to the point where they seem to clog up so much screen space it’s hard to find the old install function.

My mom echoed that “show available then switch” type of command, when using a newer version when you hit what seems to be the same prompt, as there are about 20 different widgets running across the top of the page. So not to fault just my owner company, people have had to be Einsteins for decades in all such activities. The command is still existing, if you use the site wrong, only underneath somewhere in a layer of sub-screens. Mom said she’s also seen such, hit A then try B then get C. And they all look strangely like a deformed Q housed in a box. Or a triangle set inside a square, to clearly guide you.

How did all this play out in typing up my Q and A post, now defunct, ransacked like many a referendum? The five paragraphs of where to find our super-sized political signs came easily, even when adding to it new phrases about where to go, north and south, to see them. But then it was time for the headline, and for me choosing where to place at the top of the page directions to a farm just past Boardman. Ooh, feeling like I timed out — I thought that was a thing of the past, like someone with a great point to make at a debate, and as with the old VDT terminals when saving a story could be an adventure. But out of necessity, this time, I found a way to retrieve, temporarily, before it was hit publish time.

So after traipsing through toggle, here is my full question and answer, that you dear reader have stuck with not only through the last quarter-hour, but day or so since first it got eaten:

Where is the area’s biggest (and baddest) presidential sign, and how to get there to see it? A tale of two cities for one 25 feet wide and that’s just the name. Drive halfway between Hudson and New Richmond and you will see one the size of a double-truck semi, at least in its east-west half, from either way you are driving, like home on your commute. Along County A and/or G. Damn the all caps, where’s that widget for auto-enforce? This truck in the ditch Trumps all comers, and drivers. The size of your car can’t compare.

Then commeth that driver’s version. From down south, as in past River Falls. He said there is not a semi-trailer truck, but a full-fledged storage unit that had its named message, in even bigger letters, stacked three floors high, as it is one of those facilities that needs dozens of steps to get to your assigned unit. As he said this, there was seen another set of messages on an overpass, with a flag atop a pole 20 feet high with its end dangling on the sidewalk. Back down the frontage road, we saw it from a different angle. Ouch. When Anoka came calling there were a bunch of teeny weenie flags on another overpass, as the Dems don’t do it as big as The Donald. At a juncture where above the freeway, there had earlier been only a single small flag, perched at a point where there are two lanes going north and three south.

This is the salt of the earth, and the sunshine of our more-than-global love, all laid out on a sidewalk to give the planets a solar system spin. Or sidewalks. Beginning outside the Hudson Public Library is a nine or ten orb if you’re counting, walk that goes a ways, starting with the sun and then progressing onward, complete with many planetary quips each, if you weave down enough sides of streets. But this is bigger than Texas, so no Pantera and “Walk” … only reverberating puns about Plant Caravan by Ozzy and friends in Black Sabbath. Although they have musically covered each other.

Anyway, welcome to the Planet Walk. An educational space-based odyssey that shrinks the almost-million-mile-across sun and the solar system it gave birth to — interesting fact — down to a half-mile. (And the sun, if you’re keeping score while deep Space Truckin, clocks in at eight inches rather than minutes in this replica. Although it might take you that long to complete the walk.)

— On the figure of eights, also in inches, Linus and I offer this endeavor. County Market has their clerks putting out dozens of what they call The Great Pumpkins, known because they all are more than that figure in diameter, maybe even by a measure of two-fold and are placed not in a row, though there’s that too along a fence between the entranceway and the store parking lot, but in a big bin. And at the shrub area of Associated Bank a couple of blocks away are three small spook-like signs on sticks that evoke the harvest and do not skip all the way ahead to Halloween. —

Interestingly, walking this way, the “earth” is not positioned next to the main flight of stairs leading up to the library, rather in turns Venus mostly, and Mars are thus there, and they are all right, thank you to The Beatles. And after Mars, as an asteroid belt of sorts, there is a waist-high so to speak gap in the chain of planets heading westward … until you get to the next sidewalk going south like the Southern Cross. But no Northern Lights. So it’s about a hundred yards up the next street that you again pick up the pace of your walk, with Jupiter and Saturn. And then again the rest, as you Head East. (We tend to think that Pluto is at the other end of the county.)

This season also brings yet more fall fests, like the themed one in the late-Saturday-in-September event in the town of St. Joseph where you can meet the firefighters of honor — then dunk them in a tank made for that reason. (Check their web site). There also will be such things as at the one on Sept. 28, the fall festival of St. Francis offering food and fun and friends, when you log it into your mileage book to Lakeland. Things start with a blessing of pets (no deer until after Thanksgiving and the annual hunt, thank you) at 1 p.m. as they frolic to the Assisi parish, then a bunch of other stuff to do with the kiddies, Mass at 4 p.m., a dinner that includes beer and wine for most attendees, as the tickets are $15 for adults and older children, and $8 for those 12 and under. Hey, not the bread, that wine isn’t as free as weenies on buns, though this being a church, they have a full stock. Then a bonfire to toast those weenies, while you listen to music.

It also is the time of year for … Halloween decor, sprouting up at a store near you. And maybe a yard next door? Better be a big one, speaking of the size of the monster and the monstrously big section of shelves where you found it. As at Fleet Farm, where just a few words into their small main ad-subhead, they hawk “inflatables,” you now already see them everywhere, like Frankie after quaffing a stein. But the one taller than a basketball hoop, also bent over at odd angles, that you tend to see around is of a giant skeleton! With no globs of flesh dangling!

Speaking of meat, Fleet Farm is also offering $20 off on a Biaggia Pizza snac … Plus, shop deals of other small kitch … And that’s where the adhead ends on my device, prematurely as it’s for bigger than that kitchen gear, not the free typically small- to medium-size food outlay for your NFL Sunday ticket party, if you are a fan favorite enough to have dozens of guests.

At Kwik Trip, online version, they are advertising a winner-take-all contest where you could get a pair of primo Packer-Viking football tickets in the fan zone, for you and your significant other who may be of the other persuasion, in what’s termed a suite cabin seat deal. But you gotta wait to redeem until Dec. 29. And even then there are only “standard” hotel accommodations. But there is a free $100 gift card, to their place only.

Or just go to that Smilin’ beast of a downtown Hudson venue that’s hawking as their MVP (munch various pickles) smash burger “Moose sauce” along with, of course, chopped pickles. Lord, or at least the football gods, knows you can’t have one without the other.

There will be many millions tuning in to watch not the Super Bowl, as this is not as superb, but it is Must See TV as The Donald — does anyone still call him that? — goes toe to toe with in some cases better style, Kamala Harris to see who runs this country and can make it great again (is that phrase a trademark?) Not that it matters, and just ask Jack White and Seven Nation Army, though there will be no one present in the audience. Unlike you getting upset and quaffing your cheap beer, the third one now, too fast at the sports bar.

So get ready to first settle in with some popcorn in front of your sofa, if it has not be repossessed, and then at some point throw it at the television screen. Bereft of the ref.

— On a lighter note. The mongo marquee at Agave Kitchen, celebrating their birthday soon and others with their accompanying jokes, via my family, may be coming, says thus: 343. Today for a few past days. 630.

Is there some major event I’m missing? 420 or such again? (Would HudsonWiNightlife do that? Or own up to it? I think I just did.) But note the first three digits sum up to a perfect 10. And the last three digits only a nine.

Also, this is the time of the season for fall fests, and leading the way only in this month are churches. To wit: a Catholic church in Stillwater is putting out the word and the plate for not one, but two fall festivals, a week or two apart. Hey, there are two such churches in the city, St. Mary’s and St. Michael’s two blocks apart near the downtown, so maybe that makes sense. Too, refer to their website(s) for more info, since right now I gotta go … —

But key points to watch, and back to the debate:

Can Trump find a way to negate the debate rules that say only the moderator can ask questions, and rant on with a bad-willed romp about Kamala’s hair? He says she needs bangs.

Can Kamala, better than Biden, counter Trump’s incessant and repeated and repeated lies? Mega, maga. And can you as a viewer sort them out from the very few bits of truth? Yes he wears a rug. Pick a Jeopardy-like topic to hone in on, such as crime, the economy, the border, but don’t prize actual facts.

Count the number of times Trump speaks in an absolute, with the only gray being hair and waffling on answers. This is the reason his rhetoric falls flat as his hair — and you can use this nugget to impress you guests — as he says everything has a fault like “the worst ever” on things like the treatment of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Top ten? Maybe. But Public Enemy No. 1? Not plausible.

Look for that occasional more-than-12-letter, not four-letter word, from Trump, other than antidisestablishmentarianism. He might pop one of his brain cells on that one, leaving him with even fewer than Biden. Both sides say they are for change, but every candidate going back to earlier than the Millennium has spouted that useless and pointless rhetoric. He is beholden.

Look up on Google the definition of delusional disorder and narcissistic disorder and see if you can diagnose either one of the candidates, (with more points given to you for one over the other.)

See if Harris can set herself apart from Biden as far as agendas on policy, since she has had only a couple of months to do so as the First Woman. That’s not much time. In our era of technology, new information comes to light constantly, so stances can change quickly, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but that needs to be articulated. So will she continue much longer to be fractious on fracking? And see if with Harris not like, say, The Supremes, her voice cracks as she describes the various points. (And certainly, some things would disappear from the plate, such as the border and its potential wall. Harris was said to have not addressed her positions on various issues, maybe true, but mainly because she was trying to be heard over Trump’s blather.)

Will Harris appeal to more sub and constituencies then her opponent, and his cast of characters consisting of cantankerous construction crews? And billionaires who want to be trillionaires? 

And those who have such a fraction as their attention spans. And the ability to stick to a point. (And allow a lack of need for constant one-minute clarifications, and the looks of cross-armed horror while correcting the misstatements, and shock during the frequent (dozens? hundreds?) of way-out-of-whack interruptions. Alleged animal butchering and eating by immigrants of our prized pets? Do such topics seem presidential? Tripling or quadrupling of gas prices here? Huh? Even locally, her alleged legal bailing out of jail of Minneapolis marching and torch-wielding thugs? Again huh, huh. And the best economy basically ever? Pluuuleeze.)

And how Harris of one singular dress sticks it to Trump with heels of five vs. three inchs. It all spikes at 8 p.m. CST.

(The following written as I watch this. Are we talking about a years-back return to the need of phones ringing for prez-government-psych doctors, and government-sponsored and door-to-door, Thorlike-warrior police for other non-white origins of immigrants as I make a pun, and opponents? Trump doesn’t deny these and so many other evils. Just bitches about them and rambles endlessly, and it’s getting worse, when Harris often sighs noticeably but doesn’t devest him. Tit for tat and she could even have been much, much harsher. She can’t shut him up, or can the moderator, and have him actually debate. Will we have to at some point physically muzzle him?)

Grade: Stick on topic and not have the volume of verbage set at a 70/30 percent ratio. Everyone sees it different ways. I see a more and more unhinged but sometimes maybe even purposeful maniac. Oddly, Trump’s ramblings did not seem to go on the attack about the economy. Key observation?

The Flixbus driver ruled the four-or-more lanes, like their German autobahn, duly noting all the four- or-five-year, some of them new, college students who were ready to board, and asked the crew increduously for a second time midweek if this is the final day for dorm move-in. I bellowed from mid-bus, “No it’s orientation time.”

For my various nieces and nephews, in transit by the smaller bus that is UHaul, from Madison to Milwaukee and back, or vice versa. One also drove from the Dallas area with a scared-enough-to-be-shaking kitty with an about-one-year-old, one bum leg. That limb’s not shaking.

The-same-day, I spied a couple of girls thus climbing on the big bus, the distance as between a set of sticked-yard-lines ahead of me, wearing Minnesota Gopher and their grid maroon sweatshirts. So I pulled up alongside their seat and asked if they knew this was Badgerland and that might get some good-natured, lineman-like pushback from other passengers who were also U bound on this might-a-well-be Uline, across company and country.

At a set of tennis courts near campus a couple of young men were seen tossing around instead a football on the side court a few feet away from both one of the fences and the doubles-court line running north and south. But with no crowds cheering, and not raising a big racquet, these football throws weren’t seen as one foot fault, much less a double fault. The distance between the men was about the same as when we’d run square-outs at a group of teens ourselves while playing two-on-two, passing-only touch football in the full-acre backyard.

After the first day of class, there was more fire and catch, this time between a pair of faux players who were straddling a to-get-a-first down pedestrian crossing set of stripes laid sideways in the parking lot of a church school. They were also wearing the colors …

As were a lone customer and groups of clerks in maroon shirts, T-shirts this time, at a local grocery store grabbing halftime grub, as in the forbidden form of cheese. They could of also purchased, out front, from among the dozens of flowers on the potted plants showing a big upper-case green G on their clay cases that would soon be falling to the ground, in the fall as the football season progresses, and be grounded semi-intentionally. Pick Packer peonies? And through a nearby park, concert-goers at a Lions Club fest, clad in pumpkin-piqued orange (blouse) and black (boots) to create tiger-like stripes? (Though Detroit has single-tone uniforms.)

But there would be a Vikes possibly-played-to-victory — it turned out to be a big one — on this Sunday as well, as was held in celebration at Dick’s Bar and Grill through the late afternoon and early evening and then until bartime, by a man who bore a Central Division Champions shirt circa 1994. He spoke of a full day of viewing. But then short-circuited after that. Perhaps by electrocution as Halloween gear has been sprouting up here and there at stores everywhere. Like at Walgreens, and I wouldn’t bet against Green- and Gold-colored themes.

And when was it last that Green Bay was a champ? A nextdoor light pole was spelling out its suggestion in its four digits, “2021.” 

Or don’t wager against Bucky. A wafting billboard boasted the badger doing push-ups, in tandem with a Madison-based credit union, saying he’d do one for every sponsored credit card swipe. Sans sit ups?