ARTIFACTS 06.06.13 - From yarn-buying and bird-counting to cycling and lecturing, Monterey County is alive with activity

• “Huge yarn sale in Pacific Grove,” the announcement reads. Noon-4pm June 8 at St. Mary’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, 146 12th St., 373-4441. Do with that what you will.

• The Gentrain Society, operating out of MPC, puts on a lecture series for its lifelong learning students. But the lectures are free to all, and interesting to many. Check out some of the titles: “The Secret Lives of Prickly Sharks” on June 19, “Film as the Medium for Empathy” on July 3, “Health Reform and the Affordable Care Act: Programs in Place, Accomplishments So Far, Future Plans.” Legit, no? They take place 1:30pm Wednesdays at Lecture Forum 103.

• This Friday’s (sold out) 7:30pm preview of the play Love, Loss and What I Wore at Carl Cherry Center starts with the opening of the What I Wore art show 5-6pm. 624-7491, www.CarlCherryCenter.org.

• Two hours after Magnus Toren confirmed it, he picked up the phone and called to say that the 8th Annual Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series will show at Osio Cinemas every Wednesday 8pm, starting June 12 ($9.75). The Big Sur mountain comes to us townies.

• If you didn’t see piano phenom Robert Turner’s solo show last Saturday, go to YouTube, find “Robert Turner at the Safari Club, Monterey CA,” watch and weep, suckas.

• Return of the Natives’ (and countless volunteers’) habitat restoration efforts seem to be working at Upper Carr Lake in Salinas. Here are some numbers RON is reporting: The spring nesting bird count tallied 60 different species; 2 new bird species never counted before; the 8-year cumulative now is 147 species. Here are some interesting genus RON found: grasshopper sparrow, Lazuli bunting, cedar waxwings. And just from momentum, they picked up 102.5 pounds of trash.

• Steve Baker and Vincent Randazzo, aka The Sauce Pocket, teamed up to write, produce and release nine songs in nine days. Find them on Facebook or Soundcloud.com. Or hear them live at Artisana Gallery (612 Lighthouse Ave., 655-9775) during P.G.’s First Friday, 5-8pm. “Kinda Blessed” is kinda fun psych-prog-folk.

• The Monterey Peninsula Gospel Community Choir asks: “Want to learn more about gospel? Love singing in a choir?” If you answer yes, go to their next rehearsal (2nd and 4th Saturdays) noon-3pm June 8 at MPC’s Choral Room. They are multi-ethnic-faith-generational-regional-awesome.

• Dennis Copeland, Monterey author and historian, wants you to be able to tour Ed Rickett’s preserved Pacific Biological Laboratories on June 15. So he exhorts you to make reservations (include your name, phone number and email) early at 646-3741 or copeland@monterey.org.