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.

Hollywood award shows are my guilty pleasure, a dip into the world of gossip and glitz, like reading People magazine at the hair salon.

I know much of the real world is suffering while we sit there celebrating people who have no worry keeping their homes (plural) and likely have good health care. And I know that those gorgeous dresses and stunning baubles are likely borrowed for the evening. And a lot of these perfect bodies include fake parts and are enhanced by hair extensions and spray-on tans plus a Botox booster for the night. But I still like looking at them.

The man in my house avoids Hollywood award shows. He likes movies, fine, and pays some attention to who is nominated for what. And it’s not like he didn’t notice when Al Pacino started dying his hair.

But he really can’t stand the hoopla. He calls them cringers - garish and embarrassing. He’d rather watch a ball game or “The Pianist” on DVD for the fifth time. I point out that the Oscars are a healthy diversion from the news shows we watch every night and I’d rather hear Alec Baldwin tell dumb jokes than some of those actors in Washington who keep mouthing the same rehearsed rant. I bet even Rachel Maddow sneaks a peek at the Oscars.

But you don’t want to sit alone and feel guilty about indulging in three hours of Hollywood jabber, which is why someone invented Oscar parties. Restaurants and bars throw Academy Award events, encouraging participants to dress like their favorite star. I prefer the at-home parties at a friend’s house which is kind of a combination Super Bowl party and book club meeting. Food, drink, people talking over each other and yelling back at the television.

You can count on someone to have done her research and to intelligently debate, with references, the artistic relevance of “Avatar” versus “The Hurt Locker.” I’m not as intellectual. To me, the choice is simple. I’d much rather mingle with blue people than watch soldiers explode.

And can we talk about which guy over 50 in a hit film - Alec or Jeff -showed the bigger bare beer belly?

Movie award shows bring America together. Liberals and conservatives. Old and young. We all have different tastes, but we all watch movies. For one night MSNBC and Fox News types tune into the same channel. We might never agree on off-shore oil drilling but we might find common ground in Meryl Streep.

Another reason I like film award shows is because I know the players. I feel like I’m part of the culture. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t happen with music award shows which make me ask “who are these people?”

Plus you never know when actors are going to depart from the teleprompter and say something political or roll their eyes over the competition or forget to thank their mothers. And act like, you know, real folk.

The guy who doesn’t like the Oscars objects to the crude jokes, the silly talk about fashion, the extravagant display of wealth and celebrity.

I could remind him that George Clooney helps raise money for Darfur.

Why do we have to keep dredging up women’s history? Why do we need all of March to talk about it? I mean, that was then, this is now. Can’t we just move on? After all, we’ve got Hillary. We’ve got Nancy. We win Olympic medals. Women make history all the time.

Yes, but we still have a couple of thousand years of male-dominated history to balance.

Thirty years ago a group of women in Sonoma County (Ca.) started doing the research on “where were the women?” and strove to do no less than rewrite, edit and fill in the blanks in history books. The Sonoma County Women’s History Project blossomed into the national women’s history project and March became women’s history month, recognized in all states.

One founder of the Women’s History Project was the late Mary Ruthsdotter of Sebastopol. Mary died this winter and her memorial was fittingly postponed until March. Mary sure knew her history. She would talk about the gutsy women of the past like old friends she’d just had over for coffee.

One she described as “totally cool” was Jeannette Rankin from Montana, the first woman elected to Congress and who dared to vote against America entering World War I. “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake,” said Rankin – suffragist, peace activist and Republican.

Bay Area filmmaker Louise Vance claims Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the women’s right philosopher and organizer, for her favorite. She tells the story of Stanton growing up and hearing her father, a judge, tell women that they couldn’t leave abusive husbands. Even if they were beaten and ran away, the law said they should be recaptured and returned to the husband. And so, said Vance, “She vowed to tear out all the pages in her father’s law books that made women cry.”
(Stanton also edited out the “obey” part in her own wedding vows in 1840.)

Vance has made a film called “Seneca Falls” that will launch on PBS television stations across the country in March. It’s about America’s first women’s rights convention in 1848, a huge public protest by Stanton and other radicals demanding that women be freed from their social, political and legal slavery. It’s barely mentioned in history books.

When Vance field-tested the film last year she showed it to junior high and high school girls in Ohio. They were angered by it, said Vance. “They said they had never spent one minute on women’s history.” Same thing happened when she showed it to a group of high school girls in San Francisco.

It’s because what women were doing then wasn’t valued enough to be written down. Getting the vote was a huge story but there was a lot more going on in terms of women’s rights. “How about the fact that it was once legal in some states to whip your wife,” said Vance.

What about women not being able to inherit property? And not being allowed to go to college?
Mary Ruthsdotter’s grandmother told her, “Some men used to think women belonged to them like their cows and pigs.”

So, yeah we have to keep acknowledging our history. And writing it down.

Vance has another idea. She wants to find a legislator who will push for a national bill mandating that women’s history be taught in all public schools. Imagine the squeals and growls over that idea from those who still haven’t learned how to share.

Photo of Jeannette Rankin