NEIGHBORS / SHORT TAKES : Couple Keeps Traditional Form of Irish Music Alive : Pair revives old songs. A frame-shop owner is honored; the insectary expands, and everything’s coming up trophies for garden club.

Dan Auerbach is stuck between the future and the past.

By day he works on fiber-optic laser-guidance systems, his Trekkie profession as an engineer at Litton Guidance and Control in Canoga Park. In his off hours, however, the Thousand Oaks resident goes retro by a few hundred years. He takes mandolin or bodhran in hand to dedicate himself to the music of Turlough O’Carolan, a blind Irish harper who wrote hybrid songs melding classical themes and traditional Irish music in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Auerbach’s wife, Cassandra, who has her own crafts business, joins in on pennywhistle or guitar, not to mention vocals.

The pair have become so involved musically that they were featured in concert recently at Moorpark College. Now, they look forward to singing up a storm at the upcoming Summer Solstice Folk Music and Dance Festival at Soka University in Calabasas, June 25 to 27. The Auerbachs, who also perform country, folk and bluegrass, have been seen with some frequency in Ventura coffeehouses and art centers.

Cassandra says their interest in O’Carolan stems from a style of music with “very long” themes, in which O’Carolan’s “thoughts go on and on.” Put another way, the music, which has a richly melodic base owing to classical influences from the continent during O’Carolan’s writing, holds its interest in listeners. That is, if listeners can sit still--the Irish element puts the bounce in it.

“We love this kind of playing and love to show it,” says Cassandra. “I mean, you either have to play it and pick up a pennywhistle or dance to it. It’s hard to just listen to.”

The proof: The couple’s 8-year-old son, Kent. “All he does is dance to it,” says Cassandra.

In addition to reviving O’Carolan’s considerable body of work--his surviving tunes passed down through generations number more than 270--Dan Auerbach constructs instruments as a hobby, the drum-like bodhran among them. (However, Dan’s also adept on guitar, mandolin, banjo and bass while Cassandra has facility on hammered dulcimer, guitar and pennywhistle.)

If you’ve never heard traditional Irish music, or wish to know more about it and myriad folk forms, consider the festival. It is billed by its sponsors, the California Traditional Music Society, as a celebration of traditional music and dance. In any event, the Auerbachs will be there, and Dan will be conducting guitar workshops for beginners.

For more information, contact the society at 4401 Trancas Place, Tarzana.

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Mary Claire Slais can spot somebody being framed in the blink of an eye.

That’s why she’s known to go out of her way at her Thousand Oaks framing shop to advise customers on frame selection and frame-building techniques. It’s a do-it-yourself kind of place, but Slais is always there to coach for a good result.

For this, and her numerous civic dedications in Thousand Oaks, the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce recently named her “Business Person of the Year.”

Slais is philosophical about making good at her shop, Frames By You, and in the larger community. She says it stems from her adherence to a Greek Proverb: “When you take something of value from a person or place, you must replace it with something of equal or greater value or evil will fill the gap.”

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Monte Carpenter greets visitors to the Fillmore Insectary by saying, “Welcome to the bug house.”

He’s kidding, of course. There are two cardinal rules at the Fillmore Insectary: Close the screen door and don’t refer to the denizens as bugs.

The insectary, operated by the Fillmore Citrus Protective District, grows insects to destroy pests that would otherwise damage citrus crops. Last year, the insectary produced nearly a quarter of a billion bugs.

In a big way, the insectary and all its bugs are legacies of the late citrus rancher Howard Lorbeer, who, in managing the place from 1926 to 1974, devised the rather earthy technology still in place today. The principal raw materials are oleander stalks and banana squash--tons of it--which serve as fodder for insect production. “Bad” insects are allowed to feed away on the oleander and squash, while “good” ones are encouraged to breed by preying upon them. The good ones, multiplying in number, are then collected and released into orchards.

Lorbeer, who died in 1987, would be happy that things are going strong. Last week, the insectary dedicated its new laboratory as the Howard Lorbeer Research Facility. It’s only fitting. Lorbeer had gained national renown for his work and helped Fillmore become the only district in California to depend solely upon insects to control pests.

Just don’t call them bugs.