A CHRONICLE OF THE PASSING SCENE

Dial a Teacher

Jerry Chien of Van Nuys left his job as a bank administrator to work for children--and their parents.

A couple of years ago he began developing a voice mail system called QuickNet, where parents can call their children’s school to get homework assignments.

Chien’s system is not the first, nor is it particularly innovative. But it is cheap, at least to the parents and school. About 15 schools in the San Fernando Valley and surrounding areas use the system, Chien says.

“Some schools buy voice mail systems so their teachers can give the parents homework assignments, but it is tremendously expensive,” Chien says. (He says he sank about $150,000 of his money into his own system.)

“What I do is go to schools where they don’t have the money to buy such a system, and I plug them into mine at no cost. Then the parents pay between $1 and $2 a month to receive the service,” Chien says.

“It’s a godsend,” says Rosalie Castillo, a parent whose child attended Santa Rosa School in San Fernando, where she works as a clerk.

“It’s very inexpensive and convenient. Even though I saw my child’s teachers all the time, I wouldn’t want to bother them for his assignments every day.

“This way you just call a special number, dial in your code and listen to the assignments. Sometimes the teachers will praise particular students for their improvement. She will put it on the message everyone listens to,” she said. “But, when the teacher has a not-so-happy message for a parent, she puts it into a private message that only the child’s parents can get.”

Ghostly Party Idea

The Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society is trying to scare up 25 adults for an All Hallow’s Eve slumber party fund-raiser.

“We had one last year, but only about 12 people came,” says member Paul Kreutzer, adding that the $100 price might have frightened a lot of people away.

Then again, maybe the reason for the no-shows had something to do with the party site, the Newhall Ranch House, which is said to be haunted.

A famous psychic and a dozen other local citizens say it’s so. Many people have told society members that they have seen a woman in a blue party frock standing at the upstairs window of the ranch house.

The house is one of eight structures the society has identified as historically significant, structures they had plucked from their foundations and had trucked to the society’s preservation site in William S. Hart park.

Last Halloween, members of the society thought it would be fun to invite a psychic to their first sleep-over.

Rena Elliott-Chiu, who does numerology, psychometry and reads auras at the Wellness Institute in Newhall, was invited to preside at the overnight stay. Beds were borrowed from the local Red Cross blood bank, and costumed cast members of the Santa Clarita Theater production of “Dracula” dropped by to say hello.

Elliott-Chiu opened the evening by going upstairs to see if the eerie creature was receiving visitors. When she returned, she said there were ghosts--not just one ghost--as some people had suspected all along.

There was the blue-dressed woman named Martha, her son Timothy and a man who declined to be named, all from the 1800s. She said all three liked the Hart Ranch location much better than where the house used to be, near the noisy Magic Mountain roller coaster.

Martha didn’t have much to say about who she was or why she was stuck in this nether dimension. She did wonder what those shiny, loud, fast boxes were in the street where the horses used to be.

None of the spirits visited the downstairs slumber party last year. But the party-goers have decided to take another stab at ghost-watching this year.

Some of the details have to be worked out, according to Newhall Ranch House curator Kreutzer. This year non-members will be encouraged to join the group for ghosts, grub and ghoulish goings-on.

For more information, call Kreutzer.

Hold It, We’ll Get Right Back to You

By card, letter and fax, readers send “Overheard” and column item suggestions.

Some are really good.

Some are too (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) good to be true.

Recently a phone tip came from a Bill who said he lives in West Hills and remembers me from Canoga Park High School.

I think his name was Bill Cooper, but his voice wasn’t clear. If he remembers me from Canoga Park High School, maybe his teeth are going (along with his hearing and hair).

My new old friend called to remind me of a great holiday on Sept. 5--Be Late for Something Day, a day to spike your stress and put your Type-A Angst on hold.

He said he wanted to mount a Valleywide celebration, a charitable event benefiting children, dogs and cats.

He pointed out that since many of the target group would procrastinate or miss the event entirely, they could shine the function and just send the bucks.

He said the holiday was sanctioned by the National Procrastinators’ Club, headquartered in Bryn Athyn, Pa.

Chase’s Annual Events shows there is such an occasion, but I pointed out that Bill was calling on Sept. 5, the day of the event.

It didn’t leave a lot of time for planning.

There was dead silence on the phone.

Finally, he said that in the spirit of the occasion he would put off the event until sometime later.

“When?” I asked.

He responded, “I’ll get back to you on that.”

Indoor Mountain Climbing

Should you want to test the boots or some other climbing equipment at the REI sporting goods store in Northridge, just go up the wall--the first thing you see when you walk into the store. It’s sort of a 35-foot-high art object.

A lot of people come into the store for a free climb. The wall is two stories high and has a lot of holes in it.

It goes straight up 35 feet. But the store’s climbing expert, Paul Anderson, says no one gets hurt because everyone has to wear a harness to climb.

He says that hundreds of people between the ages of 4 and 60 have scaled the wall since the store opened two years ago.

Overheard

“I’m trying to buy the lens they used to shoot the wrinkle-free pictures of Mary Tyler Moore’s face in the old days. I’m going to take it to the Toronto Film Festival for when I shoot Bob.”

--North Hollywood celebrity photographer to friend after seeing Robert Redford’s wrinkled face on the cover of Esquire