NEIGHBORS / SHORT TAKES : Smoking Them Out : Students photograph cigarette advertising in the community. Their pictures will be displayed.

The American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout is still a week off. But this Saturday, folks visiting the Holiday House Crafts Festival in the Thousand Oaks Community Center can get a preview whiff of things to come.

Fourth- and fifth-graders from Newbury Park’s Banyan School participated in a summer photography program for gifted students called “Through Children’s Eyes.” One of their assignments was to look for the promotion of tobacco in their neighboring community. The photos they took of the promotional items will be on exhibit at the festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

From all accounts, it didn’t take long for the kids to find what they were looking for.

“(Tobacco ads) are everywhere you look--on the ‘Pull’ signs on doors, on clocks . . . “ said course instructor Eric Goodman. “It’s kind of at a subconscious level when you’re not looking for it, but it’s everywhere when you are looking for it.”

The children found hints of tobacco on signs, products, candy cigarettes, shredded bubble in a pouch and even on clothing.

“When you drive up to a gas station, there are all kinds of advertisements,” said “Through Children’s Eyes” founder Winifred Meiser. “When you go up to pay, they are right in your line of vision on the inside--directly in view of the customer coming up to the window.”

Meiser said the photo lesson was intended to increase the students’ awareness of the prevalence of tobacco. “To let the children know,” she said, “that the pressures are out there.”

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Have you seen the anti-cruising T-shirts in Oxnard?

On the front they read, “It’s a bust after midnight.” On the back: “Come on vacation, leave on probation.”

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Friday the 13th should prove pretty lucky for Fillmore’s Helen Caldwell.

Actually, luck had little to do with the Volunteer of the Year award she will be receiving tomorrow night at a National Philanthropy Day celebration.

The Santa Barbara/Ventura Counties Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives will be honoring Caldwell for her extensive work with Camarillo’s Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children.

Caldwell, president of Casa Pacifica’s board of directors, has been involved with the organization since 1985. But her days of volunteerism began long before that.

“I started when I was at Occidental College, with a group of college women who were service-oriented,” said the 65-year-old Caldwell. “When I moved to Ventura County in 1948, in very short order I was a volunteer for the March of Dimes. I joined the Assistance Assn. of Santa Paula, and from that point on just always was involved in church work, community work, the symphony association, the grand jury, Planned Parenthood (and) I was a charter member of the Santa Clara Hospice.”

So where did she find the time, let alone the energy, to do all this--not to mention raising five children? “I belonged to that wonderful generation of women who were privileged to stay home and raise children,” she said. “I found time while they were in school.”

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Rumors have been going around lately.

The S.A.V.E. (Stage and Video Educational) Theatre Company in Simi Valley and the Ojai Players are both performing Neil Simon’s play “Rumors” through Nov. 28.

Question: Can anyone stop this spreading of . . . ah, forget it.