…and speaking of crazy old ladies…
Today on the bus I saw a member of the Red Hat Society. She was…unmissable, in a bright purple suit, a eye-achingly red hat with purple flowers, and an equally bright red-hat brooch pinned to the suit declaring her allegiance. A glorious sight on a Saturday morning.

The Red Hat Society is a group of women, mostly over fifty, who have taken to heart Jenny Joseph’s famous poem “Warning,” which begins with the lines: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/ With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.” The poem is a complaint about the dullness of the socially approved ways to live our life, and a playful threat that when you are old, you can do what you want, and the poet intends to. The Red Hat Society sprang up in approval of this, and the members are a cheerful alternative to the typical, depressing vision of an old lady: the one with watered-down purple hair.

The poem also contains some words of wisdom for those of us several decades from being considered old. “But maybe I ought to practice a little now?/ So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised/ When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.” Ah-hah! Now, with a line or two of literary context, I can feel a social rebel in my purple rain boots…