All the Rage

The other night Mama D asked me if I was a Raging Granny after I inquired as to whether she was one (she was with a woman who I know is a Raging Granny).  She said:  "Yes, Are you?"

As a 45 year old woman with a child just graduated high school my cultural conditioning told me to be offended.  Inside, my thought immediately was:  "Do I look that old?"  But I merely mumbled, um, no, and our conversation took off from there.

She is a fascinating individual:  edgy and intensely humourous. After talking with her awhile, I felt like I was allowed entrance to her widely extended clan.  This woman emanates a sense of clan felt only rarely in my life.  My high school drama teacher also had this type of aura about her and I believe today that this is why all of us former drama geeks still feel a connection beyond the facebook poking and posting.  I envision Mama D going around and gathering fellow clan members into her fold...a long trail of other gathered clan members behind her and myself being the latest in her trailblazing harvest.  Me:  the newbie with cotton wool in my ears that is ready to be yanked out and replaced with vaults of unknown wisdom that will enrich and disrupt my current life paradigms. That is what meeting Mama D felt like to me and I look forward to her teachings.

Of course, the first lesson she has taught me is that despite my knee jerk response to her question, there is no doubt in my mind that I'm a Raging Granny.  So I guess I'm Toronto's newest and possibly youngest Raging Granny.  Biologically I am definitely of an age where I could be one.  And these women are seriously cool so you're darn right that I want to be one.

As a group, the Raging Grannies are known to be a tricky bunch.  You never know what these women will be up to next.  Ever since their debut as an activist movement in the wild west of British Columbia in the late 1980s they make news using delightful songs and public performances that tend to really shake up things. Check out the Florida Raging Grannies parody on the republican uterus controversary (done in 2011 but we could update it and use the word vagina after the recent Lisa Brown abortion debate in Michigan fiasco). But they are not only about song. For example, check out the Montreal Raging Grannies calendar to raise funds to make a film of the groups 25 year long 'herstory'.  Their formula for success seems to be take an issue, create something to mock it, dress appropriately, gather together and perform.


I leave you with a performance by Mama D that removed whatever doubt I had about my declaration of being Toronto's newsest Raging Granny.  If Raging Grannies get to do cool stuff like this, you're darn right I wanna be in on it.  You can buy her CD here.

Time is an invention

The concept of daylight savings time has always hurt my head.  The fact that only some locales observe it, even within countries, makes it especially ache.  As a child I noted the difference since sometimes Mom and Dad came home from work in the daylight.  I also noted that at times, I would have to go to bed in the daylight (no fair!).  We are told that the spring forward time change leads to an increase in accidents due to people being tired.  We are also told that the extra hour in the fall soon wears off and people go back to their sleep deprived ways, pronto.  These factoids, and the knowledge that most of the world no longer observes daylight savings time, do little to alleviate my head hurting.

I took off my wristwatch in 1996.  I was 29 years old and there were no pocket sized consumer cell phones back then that would allow you to tell the time immediately.  The circumstances under which I made this decision was a total frustration at the lack of time keeping by my Irish family whom I was staying with whilst on a summer vacation.  Time seemed to have no meaning in Ireland back then.  I have not been back to Ireland in awhile so I do not know if the digital age has changed this cultural norm.

Later that same year, when I was back for a second trip to help bury my grandfather, I recall this same uncle pointing to a train pulling into the Cork city train station and saying "That'd be the 10 a.m. train pulling in from Dublin."  My other uncle, long before deviated from his Irish roots by emmigrating to another country, looked at his wrist watch and pointed at it to my mum and I.  It was past 11 a.m..  I knew right then and there that I had made a good decision.  The man was seriously stressed by the lack of respect given to his wrist watch by the Cork train company.  To me, it was a moment that vindicated my decision.

Humans need structure.  But we must balance that with spontaneity in order for our creative bursts to see daylight.  I wonder if by taking off that wrist watch, long ago, I was publicly declaring my allegiance to the creative spontaneity I am continuously drawn to.  

Today, having 25 hours with which to ponder these thoughts, I wonder how I may nurture that creative spark a little more without disturbing the minimal structure I have imposed on my life.  The shortening daylight hours make me want to throw structure to the wind and hibernate till spring equinox.  But perhaps this year I might find the balance that has eluded me for years.