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?

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

The proposed ban on covering abortion, part of the House health care reform bill, has drawn predictable reaction. But one of the most dismaying responses is from those who think it won’t really happen. I understand hoping and wishing that that is the case but that’s not how the anti-choice people work. They think they have conquered the House of Representatives. Now, on to the Senate.

Each restriction on abortion, and this would be a big one, is one step closer to making abortion illegal. And then it’s Tijuana, here we come. Right back to where we started from.

“You never know when unintended pregnancy will strike. Be prepared. Buy our abortion plan today.”

Were Congress to somehow boot the Stupak anti-abortion amendment from a final health care delivery plan, which would be a great relief, do we really think the anti-choice crowd will shrug and slink away? Look how much they’ve already won. They managed to hijack the health care debate and turn it into an abortion battle. They interrupted a complicated national conversation on how to provide health care to all Americans including the millions without health insurance and put the focus on their single cause.

Opponents of abortion said, “You want choice? Here’s your choice.” And then they had their way with a Democrat-controlled House over the objection of its Speaker, who also happens to be a pro-choice mother and grandmother.

The Stupak amendment will apply to only those women who buy health insurance in a government subsidized insurance plan, but why are these women expendable? Plus, their numbers are just going to grow as people change or lose jobs and employers dump their group coverage. Some day there might be no insurance coverage at all for abortion and what would that mean to the hospitals, clinics and doctors who provide them? Would they disappear too? And then?

We know that one. The rich would find a way to get abortions, and low and middle income women would be stuck. And on their way to Tijuana.

You call that health care reform? No, it sounds more like a triumph for the Catholic bishops, the radical religious right, the good old boys in Washington and your basic patriarchal rule.

Of course there is a provision that a woman could buy a separate insurance rider to cover abortion, like you can add earthquake coverage to your basic home and property insurance. And how might that advertisement be written? “You never know when unintended pregnancy will strike. Be prepared. Buy our abortion plan today.”

Maybe the anti-abortion amendment was a ruse to temporarily placate abortion foes. Maybe fair and equitable thinking will prevail.

Then again, people said California would never vote against gay marriage.