We hereby deliver:ROSES to the 35th Fall Festival last weekend, which was just about picture perfect.

Runner Susan Poole, 60, who has run in just about every Fall Festival fun run since 1979, said it best about Fall Festival: "It's just a rite of fall; it's just a wonderful community event. It's the herald of the OSU school year."

We love the music, the food, the dancing, the great stuff to buy and the way that the butterscotch light filters through the trees.

It's a festival that keeps the cycles of our seasons spinning. It also is a wonderful link to the harvest. We love buying local homemade goodies and bulbs for fall planting and the hanging baskets, at their most beautiful just as they are sold.

The summer seemed to pass all too quickly, and the Fall Festival is a reminder that the holidays really are a few weeks away. A winter closes in, it'll be nice to think about our Fall Festival bulbs, growing toward the spring.

• RASPBERRIES to the state Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division, for informing the Udink family of Merlin that their name is a racial slur against Vietnamese people, and therefore unsuitable to display in public.

The DMV didn't always feel that way. Starting seven years ago and through last year, it issued the Udink family three vanity plates, UDINK1, UDINK2 and UDINK3.

But Kawika Udink's application for a UDINK4 plate was rejected last summer,and the DMV ordered the other three plates returned. They told the Udinks that their name was offensive to some, and that the state could make that decision to revoke the plates because they belong to the state, and not to those who paid for and use them.

David House, a spokesman for the DMV, said "someone" pointed out to the agency that "dink" can be used as a derogatory ethnic slur against Vietnamese people, and that it has some sexual connotations.

The official word on this is mixed.

Both the online Historical Dictionary of American Slang and our Pocket Dictionary of American Slang have no such reference to "dink" as an insult or obscenity, but Merriam-Webster does list it as a derogatory reference to a person from Vietnam as well as an acronym for "Double-Income/No Kids."

We have to point out the obvious: The plates read "Udink," not "dink," and it takes more than a stretch of the imagination to figure why anyone would want to go around calling people "Udink." It takes true pretzel logic to interpret the plates this way, and that shouldn't be the Udink family's problem.

Applying the DMV's logic, we expect them to revoke any vanity plates that contain the word "hunk." After all, Hungarian and Bohemian immigrants were derisively referred to as "bo-hunks." Seeing "hunk" on a license plate could insult them.

We realize that we live in an age where people are all too ready to leap up, offended, at the slightest excuse. But at some point, the state has to stop indulging this lamentable trend.

• ROSES to those who are adopt any of the 26 hens that were seized in August after authorities broke up an illegal cockfighting operation near Alpine.

The hens, which were used for breeding the fighting birds, were held as feathered evidence against a man who may have raised thousands of dollars with each illegal battle between roosters that were bred and altered for fighting, sometimes to the death.

A "no contest" plea by Martin Ramos-Reyes, 36, settled the case, clearing the way for the mass hen adoption, although we wouldn't be surprised if most of the hens weren't gone by now. (They were adopted for $5 apiece). For anyone with a little place for a few nice egg-producers and a small chicken house, fresh eggs for breakfast can be on the menu every morning.

• ROSES to Crescent Valley High School freshman Alice Heinz and the other Oregon teenagers who designed cool new shoes for Nike and raised money for Doernbecher Children's Hospital at the same time.

Alice, who has been undergoing treatment at Doernbecher's since she was a baby for a genetic disorder that has caused brain tumors to grow, was one of six patients who contributed fresh designs for Nike's "Freestyle" sneaker design. The sneakers are sold online to raise money for Doernbecher's.

In addition to its vibrant royal blue-and-teal color, Alice's sneakers include subtle patterns that honor important people, pets and things in her life - including guinea pigs and cheese.

We hope that Alice one day can lend her talents to the haute couture scene, where hideous offerings such as a pair of capri's with a droopy middle debuted for spring, looking like cut-offs stolen from M.C. Hammer's summer closet.)

Alice, New York needs you!

ROSE (roz) n. One of the most beautiful of all flowers, a symbol of fragrance and loveliness. Often given as a sign of appreciation.

RASPBERRY (raz'ber'e) n. A sharp, scornful comment, criticism or rebuke; a derisive, splatting noise, often called the Bronx cheer.