Local Events

Stop By For Gregorian Chants, Friday at 8pm

For the holiday season, there’s more than just the typical Christmas carols in Montclair.  Stop by the Montclair Presbyterian Church for some nice and peaceful Gregorian chants, too.

The Women’s Antique Vocal Ensemble (WAVE) will be the featured group tomorrow night.  WAVE consists of 14 singers who perform authentic music from the medieval, baroque and renaissance periods.  They first met nine years ago, after discovering their mutual love of this music through the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS).

On Friday, WAVE will also join forces with Catholic seminarians from St. Albert’s Priory in Rockridge.  This priory is a Dominican training ground, with students living at the school.  Since they participate in active prayers, Gregorian chants are quite familiar to the students – and their Schola Cantorum group will appear in Montclair.

Shepherds Arise

During this concert, both women and men will sing or chant plenty of traditional music.  WAVE says they plan to “perform Gregorian chant from the 9th century and music by Plummer, Monteverdi, Costeley, Hassler, Menotti, Ramirez, Niles, and Rutter as well as traditional Christmas carols.”  Whoever they are.

To me, choral music ushers in the holiday season, whether you celebrate Christmas or not.  You don’t have to be an ancient music aficionado to bask in the glow of nice a cappella voices.  I’m sure you will recognize a few tunes along the way, anyway.

To recap:   The Shepherds Arise! concert takes place on Friday at 8pm, at the Montclair Presbyterian Church (5701 Thornhill Drive, map).   While admission runs $15 per adult and $5 per student/senior, this is a special Christmas concert that should be very relaxing.

Join The Oakland Bloggers Live, On Wed Night

Lately, Oaklanders have been coming out of the woodwork and doing an excellent job blogging about their specific neighborhoods, interests or points of view.  At some point there might be more amateur bloggers than journalists, though it’s hard to say.

Though the magic of online links, the local bloggers have formed their own virtual community.  Now we are about to actually meet each other, and anyone who blogs or even enjoys commenting on blogs is welcome to Blog This! on Wednesday night.  We will gather at The Washington Inn (495 10th Street, map), anytime from 7:30pm to 10:00pm.

Oakland Blogger Gathering

As part of the local blogging crew, Today in Montclair tries to be a friendly observer of this one-of-a-kind place, and finds inspiration from neighbors online and off-line.  Our blog ends up covering an eclectic mix of village doings, city politics, real estate, culture, history, mother nature…you name it.

Without even knowing it, this kind of hyper-local blogging has become quite the rage in Oakland and beyond.  It’s sort of like writing an old-fashioned diary, except the entries are meant for public consumption.  Of course, there are many blogs that come and go, because they take steady time and attention to nurture.

In Oakland alone, there are more than two dozen active blogs.  To take a quick look at what they cover, check out A Better Oakland and its recent love for local bloggers.  Whatever their individual passions, our bloggers share that hella love for Oakland.

So you’re welcome to schmooze with this motley crew, who are coming out of the woodwork to meet in person.  As an added benefit, no one will be tapping away at their keyboards this Wednesday night, either.

Get Your Toys Tested For Toxicity

Get your gift toys tested for toxic chemicals, and rest easier this holiday season.  Chemicals that have been found in some toys include lead, bromine, cadmium, chlorine, arsenic and mercury.  Isn’t that lovely?

Many well-known toys have been tested by Healthy Toys, and you can check this bad toys list.  For example, the Ballerina Barbie doll seems to have mercury problems, while other Barbies are fine.

Ballerina Barbie Testing

But what about toys that haven’t made this list?  The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) will come to your rescue and offer testing at the Montclair Rec Center (map) this Thursday, from 4pm-6pm.

Their team will bring along an “x-ray fluorescence analyzer” to gauge lead as well as other chemical levels.  The CEH says they will limit each person to two toys, if things are busy.

If you can’t make it to the Montclair Rec Center but are interested in testing toys, then drive down to the CEH office at 2201 Broadway, Suite 302 (map).  The office will be open Monday-Thursday, from noon-6pm daily, through December 23rd.

Visit The Fungus Among Us

2009 Fair Update:  This year’s 40th Annual Fungus Fair will be held at the Lawrence Hall of Science, in Berkeley (map).  This great event takes place on December 5th-6th, from 10am-5pm on each day.

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Just picked up the buzz about the Fungus Fair!

This weekend, the Oakland Museum and Mycological Society of San Francisco are hosting the 39th Annual Fungus Fair.  Local mycologists collect specimens throughout the Bay Area, and this is the “go-to” event to put your hands on some specimens  – and otherwise revel in nature’s oddities.

Take a break from the more mundane, and visit the fungus among us.  The Oakland Museum’s (map) hours are:   Saturday from 10am-6pm; and Sunday from 12pm-5pm.  Daily admission is $8/general and $5/students, and kids under 5 are free.

Annual Fungus Fair

The fair schedule is packed with lectures, demonstrations and even entertainment along with exhibits.  Kids can make mushroom ice cream (ugh), create jewelry, play with clay models and take home a fungus-growing kit.

The lecture line-up also sounds great, covering everything from reproduction to magic medicine.  Various cooking and mushroom-dying demos will take place both days.  For pure entertainment, there’s a topical movie called  Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People.

Fungus Fair 2007

Anyway, it’s worth a quick trip to see the ‘shrooms alone, like Maryjane’s picks from last year.  Some of the specimens look like cousins of what we buy at the farmer’s market, while others seem sort of disgusting to me.  Do you see the “hairy” looking ones above?  Or the one that resembles a cow pie?

I’ll never be a mycologist (!) but love the edibles and look forward to the weekend festivities.  However if you can’t make the Fungus Fair, then pay a virtual visit to MykoWeb – it’s an amazing resource, put together by a former president of San Francisco’s Mycological Society.

Where Montclarions Buy Xmas Trees, Wreaths

You could travel far and wide, venturing to actual Christmas Tree farms in the hinterlands.  But the Piedmont Boy Scouts and local nurseries make holiday decorations much easier.

For traditional cut trees, head over to the Boy Scout lot on 890 Moraga Avenue (map).  The scouts will be at your service on Monday-Thursday, 4:00-8:00pm; Friday, 1:30-9:00pm; and weekends, 9:00am-9:00pm through December 23rd.

The Piedmont scouts have organized this tree lot for the past 40 years, and it’s become a local tradition for both scouts and their neighbors.  Even KCBS News Reporter Mark Seelig reported on the action, just a few days ago (listen to MP3).

Wreaths

Maybe a cut tree isn’t your thing?  No worries, as our local nurseries have other options available for holiday decorations.  Make a quick visit to Thornhill Nursery (map, site, reviews) or Broadway Terrace Nursery (map, reviews) instead.  I reached both places today and they are stocked with plenty of wreaths, garlands and swags now.

In addition, Thornhill Nursery can provide live Christmas trees for an eco-friendly twist.  They offer a nice selection of redwood trees for you to decorate and appreciate all year round, in five, seven and 15 gallon containers – which roughly equate to five, six and eight-nine footers.

The Broadway Terrace folks mentioned their supply of beautiful flowering plants, including poinsettias, cyclamens, amaryllis and even hand-selected orchids that won’t bankrupt you.  This nursery sells interior decorations, too.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, our hillside homes look good with extra dose of greenery this time of year.  It’s worth sprucing up, if you pardon the pun.