I just completed a week of programs for kids on the solar system. I had to be fairly brutal when the discussion turned to Pluto.

“Sorry kids,” I said, “I think the astronomers did the right thing when they demoted Pluto.”

Yes, I know that schoolchildren all over America wrote impassioned, tear-stained letters to the International Astronomical Union asking those bad old scientists to keep Pluto the big number nine. I also know that our politically correct culture would prefer that all planets be equal.

Nevertheless, I forged ahead. “Knowledge marches forward. We know more now than in 1930 when dear Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. He could only have dreamed of today’s incredible telescopes. Astronomers have discovered many more Plutos (Kuiper Belt objects) beyond our little Pluto.”

The kids still looked bereft, so I had to bring out the best argument in favor of Pluto’s tumble to dwarf planet status. “O.K.”, I said, “if you want Pluto to remain a planet, then all those scores of other icy snowballs beyond it will have to be named planets, too, and you will have to learn all those names in order!

That did it. Those kids are grateful they only have to memorize, My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles. The nine pizzas are history.

In case anyone is interested, Pluto may have lost major planet status but has gained its own number in the catalog of minor planets. It is number 134340.

To know your place in the cosmos, check out Neil de Grasse Tyson’s 100th Essay, The Cosmic Perspective.

A big, bustling Farmers’ Market is a wonderful place to be. That’s why my husband and I headed to the Eastern Market, a historic 1873 landmark, when visiting Washington D.C. last weekend.

I became a market aficionado at an early age. As a child, I roller skated the short distance from my house to the huge West Allis Farmers’ Market. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, were market days and no sales could begin until the market bell rang promptly at 2:00 PM. Then the whole scene burst into a colorful flurry of activity.

I’ve traded in my roller skates, but visiting markets remains a dependable pleasure. The Dane County Farmers’ Market around our state capitol, the Pike Place Market in Seattle, the Farmers’ Market in Los Angeles, the “other” Eastern Market in Detroit, the Lexington Market in Baltimore and the Georgia State Farmers’ Market outside Atlanta… I love them all.

So it came as a shock when I picked up the New York Times this week and spotted the headline, “Lamenting the Loss of a Historic Washington Market”.

Two days after our D.C. visit, the Eastern Market building was gutted by a three-alarm blaze. The Capitol Hill community had lost their beloved landmark.

Fortunately, a market is far more than the building that houses it. Six days after the fire, the farmers, artists, craftspeople and flea market vendors will set up on the sidewalks and playground lots under the charred walls. And the 44th Annual Market Day Festival will be celebrated on Sunday. You can’t keep a good market down.

Last week I stopped at my favorite local coffee shop, The Culture Cafe. Rich, the owner, is also the barista, coffee roaster, waiter and purveyor of fascinating opinions.

He greeted me with, “I think this town needs a giant chicken. People could climb to an observation tower on the beak, and T-shirts could be sold below.”

Of course, I immediately grasped the brilliance of this big-bird, tourist attracting idea. Rich and I both know that our town’s number one tourist attraction is a submarine. “But it’s half under water”, Rich observed.

Our number two attraction is an oversize, fiberglass cow in front of the dairy. It’s more of a lawn ornament on steroids than a genuine tourist destination. Big, plastic cows are a dime a dozen in Wisconsin. The town of Neillsville has our cow trumped. Their cow, Chatty Belle, TALKS to her visitors.

Rich is not fixated on giant chickens. He feels that “anything that is obscenely big and makes people laugh” will do. I would add that the giant whatever-it-is also should be interactive.

My three favorite wacko buildings in a similar vein are:

• Randy’s Big Donut on Melrose Ave next to the Los Angeles airport
• The Owl Cafe in Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Lucy, The Elephant Building, in Margate, New Jersey

Architectural historians call these buildings roadside vernacular architecture. Rich and I just call them fun.

I doubt if there is a man in America who doesn’t bow down to the god of frequent oil changes. If your guy isn’t constantly inquiring about the age of the oil in your car, get his testosterone checked!

Getting my car’s oil changed every 3 weeks is not on the top of my to do list. For that matter I easily could go for three months and never even think about the condition of the oil in my vehicle.

Guys apparently experience real empathy for mistreated cars. The sound of the car’s tortured parts scraping together sans oil must reverberate in their heads. Perhaps their feeling is akin to my sympathy for our coffeemaker after a family member accidentally boiled all the water out, effectively gluing the enamel pot to the stove.

I don’t want to be a traitor to my fellow oil-challenged women friends, but I know in my heart the guys are probably right. Cars do need oil. It’s hard to refute empirical evidence; my husband’s Ford Probe ran for 276,000 trouble-free miles. Naturally, he attributed this longevity to those frequent oil changes.

Nevertheless, the last time I treated my car to oil was a dismal experience. The workers sold the poor woman ahead of me so many filters and “safety checks” that her oil change cost over $100. Here she was, being good, and she gets totally scammed. It’s enough to make a woman change her own oil.

Never undervalue the salutary effects of comfort food is my motto. There’s nothing wrong with heading for cozy foods when the world is being hard and cold.

My list of A#1 comfort foods would be:

• Homemade macaroni & cheese
• Big baked potatoes
• Grilled cheese sandwiches
• Lasagna
• Anything on the menu of La Creperie on Clark Street in Chicago
• Mashed potatoes, butter, no gravy
• Good soup
• Lavishly buttered toast

A pattern emerges from my list of comfort foods. Most are hot, starchy and buttery. Anyone who eliminates carbs and butter from their diet will probably feel extremely unloved. They probably won’t be much fun to be around, either.

Another characteristic of my comfort foods is simplicity. In gourmet cooking, complex seasonings, tastes and textures are artfully combined. The diner must bring full attention and concentration to this food; it deserves appreciation. A grilled cheese sandwich, on the other hand, requires no mental effort. It is not a food of subtleties. When I need comfort, I am definitely not in a mood to put out.

Compiling a list of consoling foods is, naturally, a personal thing. Your cold pizza might be my grilled cheese. Roasted turkey smothered with gravy may give you hope for the future. My mother-in-law understood the power of homemade potato salad to overcome sorrow. The important point is knowing what to have for dinner when life gets trying.