A bouquet of (white and otherwise bright) flowers on Halloween? Crap creeping up outside an outhouse, not in. Read all about it.

Halloween can be a mixed bag. Just see these next two paragraphs, as the situation is shown in two different ways. (Just like you can trick or treat on two different nights.) OK, and maybe the third graph, too. Boo.

My mom got a swath of sympathy flowers, for a death just prior to Halloween, and with nowhere else it place it, the bunch was placed right in front of one of her few pieces of decore for such a holiday, one that said BOO! Letters flanked in orange. And ghost tacked onto the end.

A black past, back to the scary future. I spied an outhouse with a line of pumpkins parallel to its front. This makes it easier to put some of the (flaming) crap literally, in a bag along with the guts of a carved out pumpkin and put it on the nearest (farmer’s?) doorstep.

(Nessie, as in the Loch Ness Monster, is again in the news. Freshly. Like Nestle on trick or treat night?)

Going closer to urban, on the way to my brother’s big house in a big subdivision, I saw on virtually every lamp post, and each house had one, a similar style of great pumpkin. Dozens and dozens of them. Does Linus, now elderly, live here? Or in that one place miles away that replicated this?

There are many houses decked out in large and small degree with Halloween decorations, but few in at I would call it at 60 percent clip. Seventy percent with lawn clippings included and fashioned in. As noted earlier, much earlier, inflatables are all the rage for big monsters, but even big monsters can deflate and lie flat in the yard. Boo if they’re more than dozen of them.

That even earlier rager, the skeleton of more than a dozen feet tall, has or had a preview of lying flat in disintegration. At its big feet was a smaller and obviously dethroned skeleton.  

While afoot at the home: Mom looked downward, where I had earlier broke my big toe and asked not which digit, but which foot? She specifically configured it about my fat toe. This reminded me, and I reminded her, about a quaint old Halloween record we listened to as young kids with the tag line, “that’s my skinny toe!” She didn’t quite remember. Maybe a good thing.

An even better thing, for this time, I think. Bodies or their pieces or just their hands have been seen sticking out, in solitary fashion, of the crabgrass, as that’s all that still grows this time of year, of various lawns.

At Mallory’s, on a crawl a short distance away from my apartment, I saw just inside its door an apparently dead bride and groom, in dress and tux, lying flat as in a coffin. One half of the story sung by Axl Rose in November Rain? Reminds me of a likewise very cryptically similar dream I had of an actual wedding that is acoming, since someone close who is very ill may be unable to attend. This one is no joke.

Halloween can be serious. Even if just in business, and in souls. Or both. My publisher at the Irish Gazette planned a big edition for October, since the Celts are big into the hallowed day when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest, but there were production problems. So see them in print just prior to another big one, Christmas.

Until then, happy holiday of Halloween. Joe.

One venue calls themselves and not just their endeavor the Halloween creepy crawl, and there are a proliferation of such prominent but prickly predicaments, in events or decorations, all over hill and dale. Sorry to say none include Creeping Death by Metallica, as this is not a recent political rally with growing star power.

A snapshot follows of the spooky and scary locally, and the imagery even delves into the realm as political as a truly scary Kamala Harris witch’s outfit.

The suddenly spooky flags that fly, or hug the ground, forever? They lie on a nearby lawn of a business, orange most all of them, by the hundreds. Also a few other odd colors, mixed with a bit of black, since what these really are bears a theme of massive construction, rather than destruction, in the form of utility markers the size of a black cat’s face. They just might be for digging for what (tricks or treats are found) underneath! About every foot of the small yard has at least one of them, as they spread like tiny craggily fingers.

— Another event you might enjoy is the World Series, which starts this weekend. But my cabbie friend will not make to road trip, this time, since it does not involve his beloved Oakland As — and he has been following them since they’ve known by this name and also others, so that’s a long time — who in a related matter have played their last game at the longtime stadium to which he’s gone cross-country. Maybe since Abacab. And now the driver baseball buff doesn’t even have the option of going to see that song played at a Phil Collins concert, since the artist is ailing.

The cabbie says he enjoys his occasional conversations with me, so I put the question to him: How would you fare if stuck with me sitting next to you all the way Going To California? Then maybe seated next to you, again, at the ballpark. He must not have minded the idea too much, since he didn’t really answer, just told me he lamented that his As days were done. —

They are not unlike those drapes of awnings seen at so many another place or patio, they music venues all, for the season now drooping down and bearing the image of ghosts as they cling to the poles heading north and southward, up to heaven and down to hell. 

Green Mill simply masters the use of spiders, via one of its go-getter worker bees, who got up on a ladder early-on in this holiday season and would not let-up. She got going with one solid stretch of thick black string, or call it rope, then adding up to a third, then a fifth … They strung all around so much you could not get over to the bathroom without brushing them along your brow. (I don’t want to be an HR head haughtily hired to head off the possible worker’s comp claim. If you reach those last few inches up to the decked out ceiling by the entrance booth. A co-worker who was watching nodded in agreement, then smirked again.)

Back to Saturday and such

In an otherwise dearth of the fearless, dreaded but deadly drone of the Halloween costume dregs, Dick’s Bar stood out in the last (main) weekend before Halloween, with the headgear of green devil horns and lengthy and horny Scroogelike noses, sometimes in combination. Combine that was an Abba dress-up party, with even more members than the original group, and you have … a party.

In a zig and zag down the street, around 8 p.m. in the next night, right before Monday, remnants of roadies pulled speakers up and down the parking lot at Hop N Barrel, parallel to the street, while a starting-as soloist guitarist shredded it. Welcome sight and sound, and not necessarily creepy.

Can you party, before this new year and even Halloween begin — the millennium is still here — like it’s 1920? And not at Hudson and Wisconsin’s oldest bar, like one of those referenced above, but down a couple of blocks further in an event held under and in the bluffline caves next to the Casanova Historic Liquor’s. Just before their adjacent venue, the Nova bar, wraps up its live music for the year.

On the other side, it will be called their speakeasy, and again not the one in lower-level Mallory’s, so kick your heels up and knock your drinks down, on Sept. 25, another party on that evening.

The music is by a band that may have name(s) you will recognize, perfect for these holidays, Deb O’Keefe and the Funk Zombies. Be there from 7-11 p.m. Dying off before the witching hour of midnight.

The song, and the parties, remain the same, when you dress up for Halloween costume contest parties. The night of choice is Oct. 26th, for most all, because it is the Saturday night all right before Halloween, which is on a Thursday.

But here is a kinder, gentler choice. What, at the Wild Badger in New Richmond? On Halloween itself. With a movie, and not a one about Naria and it’s minions like promoted by churches this time of year at their makeshift events that pledge to battle “evil,” that is Nightmare Before Christmas, from 4-7 p.m. And there will be candy and popcorn, like any good Halloween movie. It will even be outside on the patio, so unless there beckons another holiday blizzard, Tim Burton will be present, sorta.

DJ BDay, his stage name, over a year ago became the almost daily deejay at the Wild Badger in New Richmond, and elsewhere, pushing other entertainers of karaoke and more to the background with his huge selection that features dozens of songs from most relevant artists, across genres.

And on the rare occasion that he doesn’t possess a song, he’ll make sure he goes out and gets it for you. His treat, in this season, and he knows the tricks. So it doesn’t even have to be your birthday.

— It is that time, and maybe it’s before time began, that people are getting out their Halloween party publicity in a way that’s not the usual last minute before the veil is thinnest.

First out, and been there for a bit, is a one that’s vague partially due to its earliness. The bartender at Hudson Tap said so. On the front door, just past the enclave the size of a large coffin with a few extra cogs, is a pitch for official-photo-filled Halloween bar crawl on the 26th, which becomes the official day of said holiday, but is added to both have “six-plus venues” at the same time as being national.

Also recently added, via marquee, at the king (and moreso queen) of local Halloween costume contest parties the Smilin’ Moose, is the big-scale notation that on that one night only, this year, are a full $1K-plus in prizes.

The night before, on the 25th, starting early in the lunch hour and going through, as fitting an also rockin’ senior center, there is a twist of the Halloween food and other offerings theme at the Roberts Park Building, the Monster Mash Bingo Bash with mashed-in masks shown and (mongo-ish and sweet?) chili, too, not just candy, although I Love Candy. —

First thing, back beyond to BDay. He’s Got The Look, with body jewelry, and his look alike logo, and as rock star preparation has also been in a band, as I give background, thus as an opening act of sorts here I careen like many of the long guitar solos DJ BDay is kind enough to tolerate, for my benefit. I have had the pleasure of belting out dozens of different numbers into his mic, from a specialized genre. 

But second, he goes where few seek to go as far as karaoke deejays, and will volunteer, or even ‘peat and repeat, that if you ask for a song and DJ BDay does not have it in his very vast repertoire, (examples of that in a bit), he’ll willingly venture from his office and buy that particular single, or maybe even album side, for you to sample out the next time in. That means the history of rock n roll, and country and pop too, is at your fingertips. DJ BDay banters from stage that his song playbook is as thick or thicker as the yellow pages, (unless maybe you live in a place as big as NYC), since he is the seminal as Sabbath act for this, and is not reliant on pulling what he can off the internet, which can be fickle in the wicked windy weather of a Wisconsin winter, and with many DJs a particular song can be simply left out in the cold for plenty of time. No such lapse here.

— And just what is here? You can see and sing with him every Thursday night beginning at 9 p.m. for starters, at the Wild Badger in New Richmond, where he’s a DJ standard bearer and has also been a long time music bingo and trivia host beforehand on those nights and also often in the previous evening. The questions feature a following time buildup, his signature, before naming the answer that brings forth the beauty of a countdown, complete with quips. The final countdown yields prizes. —

I myself, in many months of singing regularly with him, while he burst onto the scene, so can come highly recommended, have virtually never seen him have a system go down.

Even if something is sucking the power like Slayer and Seasons In The Abyss, and yes he has that song.

DJ BDay is someone who says to me and family on the sly, during a power(ful) intro, “you are the only person I know who has the guts to sing Iron Maiden.” Although he’s now been around long enough to hear a few others doing that artist. Flight of Icarus? He has it. Hallowed be thy Name? Of course. And if you need a little liquid courage, he has available Priest’s Painkiller, to boot.

So you can see there is a song list that has grown into tens of thousands.

And DJ BDay will nod in appreciation at all the right times.

He also spins lots of country, and pop and all the classics, not just the obscure, and even delves into soul as a specialty and hip-hop, with on-screen visuals built to match the vast selection. Groupings of about a dozen clips (one new version is Halloween themed) have been spliced together, coherently, to form a signature-style, high-light real of what he has to offer. They can also be built along other themes, such as dance moves, and in that one just how does she spin into her male lead’s arms in those high heels?

There was some such footwear afoot the other night, as a large group of party people packed the house, singing songs that are classics but largely not those you’ll find overplayed. Code name in the title of one of them, a bit poppy, goes by Valerie, and various of these got a very loud and appreciative response. So bring in your own group and sing.

DJ BDay will also take his turn on the mic, if you request him to do so. Besides the standards, his frequently entertaining number that’s a specialty is a Weird Al Yankovic take on that prerequisite Carrie Underwood-style break-up song. A special, especially around midnight, ritual that’s deliciously twisted comedy.

Hey, he got into my going back to past karaoke deejays and singing Hocus Pocus by the band Focus, and staying focused on the spiraling, literally, upward vocal crescendo. DJ BDay also once sat through my many-a-minute Rime of the Ancient Mariner, cognizant of the fact that a well-placed although lengthy-and-plenty-of-accompanying-lyrics guitar solo can be enjoyed by the audience also, if it’s a well-done classic.

As far as look, the cartoony logo/head shot of DJ BDay is inviting and shows a mic-type collar on the bottom and a flipped up baseball hat on top. This calling card design boldly goes at the bottom corner of his videos.

It’s a term that is frequently referred to and thrown around — depression. But just what does this mean actually mean? Not medically the above mentioned Industrial Disease, as those are Dire Straits.

Other than that … what does a depressed person’s brain work like? What thoughts go through that person’s (Motor)head?

More and more, researchers and physicians, and also my own doctor — and especially nurses, since as caregivers at their core, they tend to be this way too — are recognizing that at the key is yes in humor, but also in the basic and very Biblical, if that’s for you, principle of having empathy. And in being an empath you are like Christ in a smaller form than the crucified one — rather than the evil one, Lutheranism over Lucifer — and how you deal with life and your own depression is strongly impacted by the fact that many around you are depressed.

Because they too are in pain, and you recognize this more than others, your pain becomes worse in a very real way. That’s no joke. And some of the best ways to cope are in religious teachings and extrapolations.

— Music is the universal language, and it is universally recognized as being good for depression, like humor. Especially, though many people might not think so, metal music, from Metallica to Iron Maiden. Especially listening to Tool is recognized for promoting mental health. —

This being the month where the importance of mental health in all its forms is recognized, it is underscored by the ways we relate to — and understand — those around us who suffer from depression.

As a kid, I would lie awake at night giving myself solace in the idea that even though this earth’s life was extremely difficult — insomnia to boot accompanies depression — there was a perfect Heaven that awaits us, so buck up, although the thinking in the here and now is on one central question: Though there are many ways to define quality of life, and there are various day-to-day little things to consider as well as the big picture, does anyone at all suffer from pain that is genuinely intolerable? (In bed for the hours prior to sleep, I also pictured in my mind and revisited over and over the baseball plays I’d made as strikeout pitches, even during practice on my makeshift homemade mound, and one reason I did my throwing drills so ceaselessly was to give myself fodder for such thought.)

But to back up my thoughts on the state of intolerable pain, I will refer to both science and scripture.

The worst death of all may have been suffered by Christ. But even He found the ability to not just forgive his oppressors, but especially the physical strength to speak a few words, so his pain could be painted as terrible but tolerable. Peter chose to make it one worse, being crucified upside-down, but at this point after seeing what happened to His master, he could be seen, with a dose of comfort, as knowing what he was getting into. But we are told, “the mind is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

And then there are those many martyrs and even the pious who practice self-flagellation, who still choose to go ahead, before and even while enduring pain.

Those at the hands of the Inquisition had an out they could have taken, by simply recanting their alleged heresy, if the pain became intolerable, and if they did not take such an out merely over an idea, how horrible could it truly be. It has been said, for worst case, that any torture can be endured, if you can mentally prepare for it, and even then nature gives us another out in the last-ditch measures of allowance to go into shock or insanity. Or Blackout.

But what if one cannot mentally prepare, like the simple-minded or children or simply those caught off-guard. I think the key here is that God throws much of his grace in the direction of people in such situations, to give them the extra help they need in times of particular trial, and we all can take solace in that, too.

Prescription drugs that make it easier to tolerate pain, or go into the last stages of life, have not been around for most of humankind’s history, but it seems certain that these have been present for use in some way for as long as we have been gatherers, since various herbs were the forerunners of modern-day pharmaceuticals, even if less effective unless taken in huge quantities. And of Cheech and Chong and The Who, and who else?

My younger brother Tom, a Missouri Synod Lutheran, they don’t laugh as much or smoke, but if holy, may have been on to something when as children in high school we haggled briefly, and he thus evoked medication advances, over my statement I quoted that, “because of the work of groups like The Peace Corps, human quality of life peaked in the 1970s and has been ebbing downhill since.” I don’t know if this is where he was going, but I had just gained some much needed relief from what I’d been taking for my newly diagnosed Tourette Syndrome, and he had seen the result. From the mouths of babes; OK Tom is only four years younger.

Lastly, we could also haggle over whether severe pain is something that hits a plateau at some point and it is pointless to argue whether it matters if someone ranks it as a 9 on the scale, or a 9.3, or 9.6, (but 99.99 would be the percent of diseases that aspirin aids. Sorry to reintroduce bad humor.) . This may all be relative, another reason to take some comfort. Although it is not relative if someone has a low pain tolerance or not, and that such tolerance decreases as one is ill too long. Is this, maybe why and by design, most children tend to have a few less diseases? Childhood cancer stands out as a non-example.

Music is the universal language, and it is universally recognized as being good for depression. Especially, though many people might not think so, metal music, from Metallica to Iron Maiden, (sorry Mozart and move over Beethovan, although heavy metal is largely derived from classical music. It does not nearly as much taken from, or give you the blues.) Especially listening to Tool is recognized for promoting mental health.

So many music reactors will cringe at some of the unflinching lyrics, but then be strangely uplifted by the catharsis by the (last) guitar solo, especially when its taken to its (bitter) end, like in Fade To Black and the crescendo shoots, one could say, Heavenward. I myself find few things in life as satisfying as crying to a poignant metal song.

Concerning some of the above spiritual language, some observers have said that the Lutheran doctrine of salvation melds very well with the soaring and beautiful riffs of an otherwise wailing guitar.

This is such a broad topic, so for another time. But I will publish, probably on Wednesday, a list of notable music reactors who are also therapists. (They often have that word listed in their channel title.)

After a bit more research, I have to especially mention Mental Amanda, a suicide survivor, and several of her pieces as one of the first working in this sub-sub-genre. Faves are Metallica heavy, and in Fade To Black, Mental Amanda initially is thrown into existential crisis over the seeming fact that the singer actually “did it,” although praising its honesty and insight into how a depressed person thinks. Also noteworthy is a song about an “unnamed feeling,” that although unnamed is the topic of unrelenting repetition for reinforcement in its lyricism.

Forget Big Ben-ny and the Jets, too. This Sunday football game played in London featured small town Minnesota squaring up against The Big Apple, and time zone change factors became crucial — just like during the far most prominent of those royal weddings. And don’t think that fact wasn’t referenced, just as much as eye-opener Bloody Mary specials.

So hence, sports bars were open earlier than usual for the 8:30 a.m. start time, that being CST, on top of this big-ticket game and making offerings, and not those at Sunday church services, that were planned on a more timely basis than many a bar Halloween party.

— As I got picked up at the park and ride due west of Milwaukee, and saw one of their (ouch as you will see “local” as in Badger Lines signs) emblazened at the front of the bus, at it spouted line No. 28, and you will see the reason for the reference a bit further down …

Then there is that Biblical, sorry, No. 40, as was played out during the pregame and half-time and post-game FB shows, as per their featured guest, that the killer Cowboys, hey I’ve also encountered their trademark cheerleaders, plural, even in Hudson, took on their arch-(overused term)-rival Pittsburg from Steelers (Wheel) country for the first-time encounter of any importance (playoff motive and this could be more prone to baseball?) in what. 40 years? Actually they played in 1982, so do the math, that was when Iron Maiden also from (England in the Black Country, as it is called) first got going. And hey, then The Man as in featured guest, said there was also that killer, too, upset in college of football of proportions such positioned and also Biblical, the first such in 40 years.

And how many four-year spans, in terms of decades, for things presidential? The Mets were waving their OMG banners, and I also happened to see en route to Milwaukee one that, mistakenly I hope, said not Vance Trump, but Favre Trump, in another duel of five-letter words. More on that below and in an earlier post or two.) —

The sign on the door at Hudson Tap, posted not long before the arrival of the weekend, announced that they would open at 8 a.m. rather than the usual 11 for a Sunday. The Tap does not reconvene on days such as those hosting Monday or Thursday night football, until just a few hours before, with a 2:30 p.m. opening.

Ziggy’s Hudson, well-known both locally and in the Gopher state as a largely Viking bar, a rarity here, also hit the ground running like the Viking ground game of yore, right around the same time. And yes, you could see Adrian Peterson jerseys being worn aplenty — despite that his recent financial woes meant no jet flights this time over for dozens of close friends– especially by the guy most prominently placed in his sofa seat next to the big front window, as seen from the sidewalk. RB Robert Smith’s No. 22 also has been plainly visible. The parking lot was full, despite no sign on the door announcing advanced plans, much less tickets. But as far as a draw, prominent weatherman Dave Dahl was said to be in this, the house Pudge’s built.

Put the two together, encompassing Peterson’s No. 18, and you have the number 40 … meaning a time of trial followed by redemption. Purple Jesus also invoked?

— Hey wait a minute. Wasn’t the aforementioned All Day numbered 28? Yes, but for a league where averages are everything. AP’s 28 with other teams including the Vikings is balanced out by his return-to-the-NFL Titans-worn No. 8, for an average of …18. And for more to the metaphor of 40, AP’s average time in that yardish dash is/was 4.4. —

But with a win over the Jets and the longtime adversary Aaron Rodgers, also around 40, as Minnesota jumped to an early lead then hung on to win as this man as cerebral as Smith could not quite bring his team back from the brink, extended the Vikes’ unbeaten season. You can be sure there is Super Bowl talk afloat, even as their former QB Kirk Cousins threw for 509 yards just days earlier. Georgia had for three days been on people’s minds, after that big fish with stronger arms than fins had gotten away.

There were notable exceptions to the early opening rule. Dick’s Bar and Grill, which has seen somewhat of a resurgence as serves up plenty of Bloody’s to the boater crowd, remained steady in this star-power showing, but up the side street at Agave Kitchen, the chairs were still up on the tables, at least in the lower level, and beer signs had not yet been flashing in the upstairs Bullpen Cantina — even though the front door was moveable via its open latch, next to their self-congratulation birthday drawing on the kitty-korner wall.

One only wonders about the Village Inn in North Hudson — scrapping its Back the Pack until later that day? — a bar and grill that used to sell off-sale as early as 7 or 8 a.m.

I first heard about the Vikes-Jets 8:30 a.m. start the night before, at Dick’s, and thought my friend from Hastings had it wrong and the clock would actually begin its official run at that time in the p.m. But this was London Calling, like another song by The Clash, one that I used to perform with Jeff Loven in the evening after all the two-minute warnings had expired.

So We All are what, less than 30 and ticking days away from the latest presidential election, and Hudson-based partisan shops are, what, trying to make a big last (do you believe it?) pledge to the faithful, and their hours open and active are again, what?

And lock in those undecided voters by laboring into the night … or morning? It turns out that afternoon is their main last bet. And yours too.
And that said, just what about letting your office hours be open well before a typical Wisconsin bar flips the sign on their door?

— Trump signs of triumphant size continue to Trump each other, as you venture out of one of his mainstay areas in Hudson and head on down the highway into the hinterlands of western Wisconsin. First the one on a semi-trailer side then another, bearing flags atop that initially numbered four, and closer to Roberts there was one for Kamala Harris upping the quota to a pick six. And back in the downtown, a homebuilder known for use of hickory added to the big Trump signs in both his right and left windows with, what, two smaller tyrant tokens as the windows folded into the front door. —

What if it is 10:55 a.m. and you are just dying, and it is down to that at times with abortion stances, to know where a candidate is standing on an issue? Can you get a listening ear or ears in your, this moment, time of crisis? Read on below if you think so.
Or go have a beer? You might get served faster. Forget a cob of corn, as you’ll get them sooner at a fall fest or feed.
“Going to the party, have a real good time,” thus sings the politically-tinged band System of a Down, which has drawn well over a billion — that’s the B word — online views for some of their videos. Those are Trump-like numbers.
So if you’re a pregnant woman in any one of those telltale nine or more months, what do they tell you …
It’s nearing 11 a.m. in mid-summer in the south-end-of-downtown, former strip mall, and where can you go for local office help if you are a Republican-leaning voter? The liquor store next-door has been promptly open for two hours. And you’ve been told by the powers that be, that to go have a beer is not an option for your stomach queasiness, even if from hormones, as they just may be watching you …
And the just-to-the-right GOP office has shut doors until that time. They that are claiming to be the bearers of all that be. And the very party that says, essentially, that workers be damned, and I know from experience that their ilk will transfer that to employees two minutes late for work because a child is sick. What if your volunteer hack is two minutes late to show??
You can get a brew of all types two hours ahead of political advice of this sort. I find this totally ironic, coming from the most arrogant party of all.

Back over with the Dems

Granted, it is the same kind of hours at the party situated across the way on Second Street, although their leader is not claiming to be basically god on Earth. So maybe they are just following suit. (And OK, they still do not open until an hour later than their opposition. And they close on most days at 5 p.m. rather than 7, as God works closer to overtime hours.) The Democratic party’s hours have them shut down, almost like the government, on Sundays and Mondays, but that bit of creative and critical thinking means they are always available the day after debates and elections.

Unlike the Republicans, open all year in this, one of its stronghold communities, the Dems office in Hudson was hard to find early in the election season, but did leave a sign to be seen around the time summer arrived, saying there would be an office “open soon.” Come late summer, it was there near a main intersection not far from both the old St. Croix County courthouse and its decades-old replacement.

In an evening occurring about two weeks before the recent vice-presidential debate, it was dinnertime and a volunteer was first then putting a placard away from outside its front door, shared with a barber shop, which may or may not have a much longer wait.

As far as being “open,” a glaring sign on the GOP office was flashing that during even off hours early in summer. That might as well have been the case during the early February holding of the Hudson Hot Air Affair. (More on that in a bit.)

But back to the GOP.

(And a disclaimer: They as of the last debate, apparently, having ended, now moved their time of opening up to 10 a.m.) Allegedly, if on time.

I fact-checked them, the Grand Old Party. I showed up in front of their office at 9:45 p.m. No one there. Yes, it was 15 minutes before opening, but then in a few ticks three women with relatively dark skin ventured by, younger to near-middle-age, for a while looking at the signs and pointed to them, then gazing at their phones. Are they independent voters?

I watched and then lingered myself, and eventually approached the window and them. “This is the party that claims to be all things to everyone and save the world, (at least their own ilk), and they are not being prompt.” So I asked one about this. Eternity requires timeliness, as you never know when the master, (or Trump), will arrive. “Yeah,” she noted, then seconded herself.

Then a version of that conversation repeated, as time elapsed. And a man then wandered by and said, hey you look like Biden? Ah, no way, the oldest woman said. To which I replied, hey who can not believe you are a decidedly white-haired and slightly balding man who is in his 80s. Laughter came back my way.

So now it is more than ten minutes past the hour. Maybe I could get a tattoo of a Trumpster inked or pierced on my brain, while I wait, at the shop that is at bookends with the liquor store. But not wanting to get fully sleeved, I went over to the store where you don’t have to be totally sober to be served. Their sign said 12 minutes, (coming toward Midnight), after the thusly appointed hour. After a quick purchase, I wandered away, like a wayward voter, then saw that the women were still waiting.

My mind reflected back to when I walked the street, gathering info and also shopping, during early February around the time of the first election of the year and during the Hudson Hot Air Affair, when various diverse groups were also walking along the way and both promoting their causes and the ballooning event itself. A small gaggle of Trump-lovers were seen along the main drag just over a block away from their office hawking their stuff, complete with baubles and of course signs.

A bit later, I wandered, again, past their office while carrying my just-purchased NA beer, and a vol ventured by and asked me if I wanted to volunteer myself. If you look at this post, you would think not. But maybe it was the fact that it was NA, not Mad Dog, that made him think I was a mark, as this is the party without vices??

You’ve heard it before, and from me: Local, local, local. Branching off into regional with their homemade goods from an assuredly deluxe display of diverse designers. And many times the more broad monicker Midwest is also referenced. 

This is the driving force and brainchild behind the Beloved Makers curated gift shop and boutique, which noteworthy is halfway up Second Street to Third, tucked cozily on the south side of Locust in downtown Hudson, but still with many hundreds of items to choose from.

— The Wild Badger in New Richmond is up to something new, which is not new for them. On Saturday, Oct. 5, wearing anything is said to be truly optional. As it is their party celebrating Anything But Clothing (ABC). It also could be known as American Beauty Collection, Attitude Belying Confidence, Altitude Before Clouds or Alliance of Bountiful Collectives, as we Assemble Bad Comedy. And you get to show up near naked starting at 9 p.m. but going until Almost Bar Closing. —

Their logo is lowkey but beautiful with its bounty, showing three flowery leaves just above the verbiage. You might see such, locally, in your own garden, even three-leaf clovers.

Online, with headshot photos, you get a chance to meet the makers of these wonders, 50-and-more of them in total and many recognized local artisans and some the accomplished up-and-coming, just starting with Hudson and the immediate surrounding communities and then branching out into Stillwater and beyond, to encompass virtually every berg in the St. Croix Valley. This shop is truly the sum of its parks.

Going on that theme of local, broadly, we invoke Windows 10.0 or even 11.0, on what is on their main window: On the right is a sign touting to be very (thankful) always for things like tasty beer and cheese and burgers and whatnot in our state(s), On its flipside is that cool, wide-brimmed brown hat, and a banner kid’s tee that is just doggone funny stating “nearly feral.”

On all sides are enough multi-tinted leaf prints to shake a stick at that could, wholly, with fall here, render a whole yard of what could be oaks or maples.  

Some of the other diversely-topiced items are like map-like pieces of inch-thick wooden art, portraying all kinds of things you can find across the two states and beyond, such as state and maybe even national parks shown in so many pieces, here and there and far beyond. Pro ballfield diamonds, shown housed in their stadiums, all around are also marked on some of the artistic maps.

“Hudson pride” is a slogan that keeps cropping up in the art. And even more topical are the items crafted like, again, brews that are called home “boo’d.”

There are more good vibes here, and the spiritual also is often referenced, and if you like slogans and quips about God and the divine and love, you will find them here. And if not, other themes too.

Do you love Taylor Swift, and her trademark red lipstick and blonde locks and such? There is a big set of matching baubles that dabble around things like the jewelry end of what she might wear, around her neck or ears or microphone stand or speaker stack. Swifties are swiftly shown. Necklaces and pendants for your neckline as it plunges.

On the other end of the age spectrum, hawked is the so-called hey, IM old (massive and with musk?) body spray. So there is help for us all. Like a silver edition to GQ.

And so much more along their long three-and-a-half walls, often stacked more than six feet high.

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.