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.