I was thinking that the Tea Party could rename itself after the volcano in Iceland, the way it suddenly grew angry and blew hot air, dominating the news because it was such a weird scary phenom and no one knew how far and wide its damage would be.

That would be Eyjafjallajokull, which is kind of a mouthful. We could just call it the Volcano Party. There are a few differences. A volcano has a certain beauty. And it’s a natural function of a volcanic mountain to build up a head and just go off, not caring who gets hurt.

But I don’t get the reason for a bunch of Americans to erupt into just plain nastiness and try to obscure the truth with their gray muck. You know what I mean? The stuff about the country going socialist. Obama favoring black people over white people. And my favorite Tea Party delirium: that big business is a friend of the little people.

I know this tea party is named for the colonial protesters, but calling a violence-inciting mob a tea party is like naming a battleship Darling Nell.

I don’t think of them as a party at all. They’re about as joyful as a tantrum.

When the Tea Party got started a lot of people assumed it was primarily a goon squad for the Republican right. Paid thugs looking for a fight. But a recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed Tea Party types are largely white, older, educated Americans. I know a lot of white older Americans with half a brain and they’re not having tea tantrums, although they too have done their share of protesting in the streets. Mostly for civil rights and against war, for which they were called un-patriotic.

One thing I don’t get is how you get old and consider yourself educated and still not understand paying taxes. Of course, nobody likes taxes. The first time you get a paycheck you wonder where it all went and then someone like your dad explains that this is how the system works. You give money to the government and it provides roads and police and firefighters and schools. If you lose your job it will give you some help while you look for another. And provide a cushion when you want to quit work after 45 years.

The Tea Party says it worries about the economy and people losing jobs. And who doesn’t? But its leaders direct their rants toward the current Congress and the guy in the White House, the poor saps who inherited the mess made by the ones who did us in. And this wise older educated flock believes them.

Early on I expected some clear-thinking fair-minded Republicans to step forward and say you’re embarrassing us. Instead the Tea Party started telling Republican leaders what to do.

I had a chance to ask NPR’s European correspondent Sylvia Poggioli a few questions when she was visiting the public radio station in Santa Rosa (Ca.) I asked what gives her the most hope, considering all the world turmoil and unpleasantness she has covered.

She said she takes her hope from “here.” Here? I asked. You mean this country? And she said yes. Ooh, I groaned, along with others in the room. We are in trouble. She explained that France and Germany are torn up by racism and hostility over immigrants. Italy suffers from basic corruption. She said it was getting pretty ugly.

But how pretty are we? Tea Party people accuse members of Congress of being domestic enemies, paint Hitler mustaches on Obama and rev up the trigger-happy. Now, Arizona wants to run roughshod over illegal immigrants or anyone who might look like one. And what billious hot gas will that unleash?

Many years ago a friend, who was also a journalist, and I attended a fiction writing class taught by novelist Anne Lamott. Annie was funny and wise and among the ideas she shared was to “write it down.”

She said that writers should always carry a notebook or have some piece of paper at the ready for whenever inspiration strikes. She suggested 3×5 note cards because they’re easy to slip into a jeans pocket or the front flap of a purse. She said you never know when you’ll want to record an idea or observation. It’s also particularly helpful to have paper on hand when eavesdropping. Down the road you may need that perfectly appropriate line uttered by a teenager or a three year old or a couple arguing in a restaurant.

This is not like reporting and taking notes. This is more like keeping an ear open for good one-liners.

I keep paper with me so that I can record what my kids, friends and ordinary strangers pop out with. Here is something I recently discovered in my pocketsize green Moleskin notebook that I keep in my purse. The notebook came from my friend in the fiction writing class. Neither of us have advanced to writing a novel but we still remind each other to “write it down.”

I’d written, “Narcissists don’t age gracefully.” That came from a friend who said it at lunch one day and I immediately pounced and asked if I could have it. She agreed as long as if it ever appeared in print I keep her name out and the stepmother she was referring to.

I was writing in that tiny notebook while waiting for an appointment when a little boy sitting across from me with his mother asked, “What is that lady doing?” I told him I was writing. Maybe he thought it didn’t look like writing because I was holding a pen and paper instead of a keyboard.

In that same little notebook I came across another line delivered by a different friend. Considering a new romance with a man from a cold region of the country, she said… and I wrote down…“I believe that shoveling snow builds character in a man.”

I don’t yet have a Blackberry or an iPhone and am told that you can take notes on them, but hard-core scribblers say they prefer actual paper for jotting down the sudden epiphany.

Some day there may be a digital device that can handily substitute for a 3×5 card or a tiny notebook for any occasion. Maybe it will be waterproof so that you can record ideas dreamed up in the shower to be zapped automatically to your laptop and filed under “deep thoughts while exfoliating.”

For the time being, I stash a notebook in the side pocket of my car and a couple of them beside the bed. Plus a pile of 3×5 note cards at the ready. Sometimes that’s as far as my words get. Occasionally they find themselves in an essay. Or I might play with them when trying to be clever at a party.

I can’t remember what Anne Lamott told us to do with all these pieces of paper. Maybe put them in an old shoe box to plow through when a character is begging for a great line. Now that she’s a famous writer she likely has someone deciphering her random thoughts and storing them for her efficiently online.

I still prefer to be part of that endangered tribe of paper people, slow of thumb, ink stained, addicted to writing, often in full sentences.

As healthy debate is replaced by screaming matches and goons run amok, it is refreshing to observe that a passionate people can still engage in civilized protest, like the one over a local movie theater.
If you live here in Wine Country and go to movies you know what I’m talking about. The demise of the arty little Rialto theater in Santa Rosa, Ca. A theater with a name larger than itself, like that landmark bridge in Venice.

The theater is a plain, squat building that could morph into a pizza house or a new age church or back to its beginning as a skating rink faster than you could say “pass the popcorn.” There’s nothing fancy inside, nothing like those long-ago theaters people have fought through history to save. No velvet curtains or private balconies. No art deco nymphs in the ladies room.

Physically, the space is as boring as any movie complex in any town. But it has an elegant soul, a grand mission, a high-minded approach to the art of film and community dialogue. It’s an art movie house, a cut above mainstream theaters, which appeals to varied types, progressives and traditionalists both. People seeking foreign and independent films, movies they just read about in the New Yorker. Opera lovers spending an afternoon watching full screen productions from the New York Metropolitan and the likes of Helen Mirren from the National Theatre.

The Rialto even shows movies in the morning, puts real butter on its popcorn and serves fresh brewed coffee.

When news came last month that the current operator and creator of the thriving beloved venue was losing his lease to an entertainment group with a number of Bay Area theaters, fans began to mourn. They started a Facebook objection. They wrote letters to the editor. They delivered love notes to the theater which are posted on a big board in the main lobby like many multi colored Valentines. This was their neighborhood theater – too little, too charming, too essential to fail. Yet, it looks like a done deal.

But the protesters have kept to the high road. Some harrumphed about what they fear will replace the top drawer offerings – loud, shoot-em-up blockbuster pap appealing only to young men of arrested development – but more focus on what the Rialto has given them and what they will miss.
The Rialto engaged with the community. It worked with teachers to let school classes see important movies for free. It introduced opera to some people who before didn’t know a coloratura from a corndog. When it featured films on AIDS, homelessness or hunger it had advocates in the lobby dispensing information on how to deal with the issues right here in Sonoma County.

It opened up for fund-raisers, like one for the library where you get to eat chocolate from local patisseries and see an old movie like “The Philadelphia Story.”

The new owner states he won’t change things and protests he’s no Starbucks, referring to that famous goliath versus little guy scenario. But people continue to be upset and sad and vocal although no one’s going Tea Party over it. The objection has been more a wake than a fight. We are peaceful movie-goers, as you might expect of people willing to watch movies in subtitles, including the latest Swedish mystery thriller. We have manners. We don’t talk during the show and we don’t leave candy boxes under the seat.

If the honorable Ky Boyd and his crew take the Rialto to another spot we will take off our black arm bands, get our money out and cross that bridge when he comes to it.