NEIGHBORS : No Fanfare : An anniversary in the arts passes unnoticed, and a high school student learns respect.

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the opening of the Ventura Theatre, originally a movie house, and now, of course, a concert hall.

We asked Bill Detko, the theater’s publicist, if there will be a celebration of some sort. “Probably not,” he said. “We haven’t in the past. I didn’t even think about it.”

Enthusiasm is so low, in fact, that there isn’t even a performance scheduled for tonight.

This is in contrast to the first evening show in 1928, which featured an organist, an Our Gang film and several vaudeville acts. It sold out by 4 p.m.

Speaking of signs, there’s a “Now Open” one hanging from the outside wall of the Ventura Hose-Man operation in Oxnard.

What does the Hose-Man do?

“Well, we make hoses,” said manager Walt Russ. They repair all kinds of hoses too--fire hoses, gas hoses, steam hoses, even garden hoses.

But more important, the Hose-Man joins an already impressive family of Ventura County businesses including Mr. Carpet Fresh, Mr. Forklift, Miss Secretary, Mr. Concrete and Ms. Wood Railing.

Nathalie Gardner-Hamlat, who this year graduated from Rio Mesa High School, got some real hands-on (actually hands-off) experience this summer at the National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia.

She had the opportunity to dissect a human hand.

“We had to learn to respect the hand. We were told not to play with it. We had to dehumanize it,” the aspiring pediatrician said. “You don’t want to get emotionally attached to your hand.”

Is dissection something that Gardner-Hamlat enjoys doing?

“Yeah, every night,” she said.

It seems there has been a lot of educational traveling this summer. . . . A group of 36 students from Ventura College recently returned from a 2 1/2-week stay in Costa Rica.

While they were there they improved their Spanish and learned a lot about international business.

Oh, and they also discovered that the country’s president, Rafael Calderon, is kind of a gnarly dude.

“The students got to come into his private conference room and meet him,” said Yvonne Gallegos Bodle, one of the two professors who made the trip.

“One of the boys, Billy, proceeded to give him the surfers’ handshake--I died a thousand deaths--and President Calderon proceeded to give it back to him.”