4 snouts up for Everlasting Moments

(:)(:)(:)(:) snouts up for Everlasting Moments now playing at the Tower Theater in Sacramento.

We really only went to this film tonight because it was the only non Hollywood hell film with decent review playing at a normal time. (10:15pm for the only evening showing of The Class? C'mon Tower!)

It defied my nonexistent expectations. Billed as an "epic Swedish melodrama" one could really be in for it. What a reviewer might say is that this is a truly unique story clearly told from the perspective of the girl growing up in this turn of the (previous) century family with a philandering alcoholic tempermental father and a beautiful long suffering, artistic and industrious mother. The film is as much about the mother's limited choices as a mother of 4, no 5, no 6, no 7 children in that time as it is anything else.

Nonetheless, it held both our attention for the 2 plus hours with its closely observed story, beautiful cinematography and strong performances (beautiful yet credible actors too--very 3 dimensional characters and well-written, although admittedly my Swedish is not strong--the father while drunk and boorish is also charming and handsome and passionate, one can see how the mother might stay with him despite all; the mother while exploring her secret passion for photography and a particular photographer is also sensible and focussed)

See it while it lasts.

Snicholsblog takes to the Street!

It's been a long dry spell for Snicholblog. What with our son still recovering from his long term illness and me entering ministerial school in January, I haven't had a lot of extra time. But the Sacramento Bee's editor and columnist Dan Weintraub has coaxed me out of bloggerial retirement and into a new blog he's created at the Sac Bee called "Street Talk" which is meant to cover the word on the street in Sacramento. For technical reasons, I'm just blogging now on a regular Bee log-in but soon it'll be picked up by Street Talk. I'll keep you posted. Hope the link above works. Here's my first post:

Sutter Middle School at Risk?

As the mother of two students at Sutter Middle School (one in 7th, one in 8th grade), I am concerned at the School Board's proposal to split several hundred students and some teachers off and send them to Kit Carson Middle School.

Republicans in the state legislature have forced local school districts to make these kind of insane proposals because they put their insane taxation pledges and policies ahead of the needs of California's children. So school districts' budgets have been slashed, and everything is up for consideration.

Sutter Middle School is rare oasis of success and creativity in California/Sacramento public education. Several years back, a new principal took over a Sutter Middle School with a dwindling central city population and breathed new life into it by attracting top teachers from all over the city, mandating daily physical education and setting high standards for schoolwork, attendance and discipline.

The model worked. Today Sutter is over-enrolled and is top of the wish list for students all over the area who pray for the lottery to pick them through the "Open Enrollment" process.

Fortunately for us, our children are among the precious few who are actually in district for Sutter, a situation so rare the school registrar actually does a double-take when she sees such addresses.

So why mess with success? Kit Carson Middle School nearby apparently has way fewer students than it needs and might have to close. So Sacramento Unified thinks the obvious solution is to break up this successful school to try to infuse Carson with new students and teachers.

Seems pretty crazy to me. Why not bring in a new principal and a new model and re-do Carson from the ground up? Or, if it's not serving the population, maybe it should be closed.