In the film To Kill a Mockingbird Gregory Peck explains the legacy of pocket watches passed on from father to son, and I thought how unlikely it will ever be that someone inherits a smart phone  inscribed, “with love to my darling Atticus.”

Watches are not the essentials they used to be. The cell phone generation considers them relics from another time, quaint but unnecessary. I disagree.

I’d been without a watch for weeks after my latest timepiece pooped out. The face tarnished, the strap fell apart. It was a souvenir watch of a famous pretty picture, bought in a gift shop in a Paris museum that allowed me to look at it and say, “half past a water lily.”

Without my watch I could still function, but I missed it.  It goes with my left wrist. Like my wedding ring belongs on my left hand. Sure, I could look at my cell phone and tell the time. But it’s not the same thing.

I pulled up my sleeve and looked at my naked wrist in the same way I automatically checked the carved antique clock on the bookshelf long after its pendulum stopped.  I did find a German clockmaker who got the pendulum swinging again. And now I also have a new watch.

Get, this. It’s a good old Timex, which has gone sexy. Mine is shiny black with multicolored roman numerals and a second hand that goes tick-tick-tick.

My timepieces and I are throwbacks for sure. The clocks and the watch had to be advanced one hour for daylight savings time but unlike my cell phone clock I was in charge.  The cell phone clock sets itself. Springs forward and falls back without my telling it which way to go. Crosses into mountain time before I even know we’re in Colorado. There’s something spooky about a clock with its own mind. I prefer one that will work with me.

When I met my friend Terry for happy hour and showed off my new watch she said, “Some say that wearing a watch dates you.” I pointed out that there are plenty of clues to my vintage before you get to the Timex, but I did notice that she was wearing only silver bracelets on her ageless wrists.

How ironic that a watch could be guilty of making a person look old as if it spoke in terms of years and not in simple hours and minutes,  as in 30 minutes to cocktails.

Actually, my watch, which is the analog variety, with a clock face and numbers – not digital which is so precise, so lockstep – would  indicate it was more like 30-ish minutes.  Time passes more gently, there’s more give and take, when you don’t do digital.  I like knowing that it’s a bit after 4:30, not a stern 4:33 and 17 seconds.

Having said that I will add that I also strive for punctuality. I hate being late.  I certainly beat Terry to happy hour. And one reason is that I set my timepieces a few minutes fast.  To give myself a few extra wiggle minutes. You don’t get wiggle minutes on a cell phone clock.

There are other things you don’t get if you are not a watch wearer.  People are not going to spot you in a crowd and come up and ask, “Do you have the time?”  By asking this it is pretty clear that they are probably one of you, checking the wrist first. It’s a good way to start a conversation and pretty soon you’re talking like old friends. Really old.

When Gabby Giffords took on the NRA she challenged her former colleagues in Congress to do the same, saying, “Be bold. Be courageous.” Only Giffords and those closest to her know how much guts it take for someone whose body, speech and career were forever altered by a bullet to the brain to throw herself into the  nasty debate on gun control and dare her old political pals to be brave like her.

We do not lack for examples of courageous women. And March is a good time to remember a few of them, it being National Women’s History Month and March 8 being International Women’s Day.

Writer philosopher phenomenal woman Maya Angelou holds that, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage,” she said, “you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”

I think of brave women as those who don’t just go along, who take the tougher route when the easy way  is so well paved.  And these days we need courageous women as much as we ever did, there still being a faction who prefer their women sit down and be quiet.

Here are some recent entries to my Be Brave file:

Eve Ensler – I want to give more kudos to Eve Ensler, the playwright and activist, not just for getting us up and dancing around the world on Valentine’s Day to protest gender violence. But because so much of her hard work has been done while she’s been dealing with stage four cervical cancer. In the middle of chemo and exhaustion and all the dread that goes with cancer she kept bravely fighting the bullies of the world.

Marie Colvin – Called the “uncrowned queen of intrepid journalists,” American reporter Colvin, who wrote for the Sunday Times in London, was killed a year ago while covering the conflict in Syria.  Colvin wore a black eye patch, the result of a grenade injury in Sri Lanka, and often a string of pearls.

Her death and that of other journalists covering the Arab Spring uprisings have sparked an online campaign, A Day Without News, put together by journalists to educate the public on how reporters have become a target of war.

Then there are the topless women in Italy – To protest the notorious misogynist ways of Sylvio Berlesconi, a group of women took off their shirts and scrawled “basta”.. enough.. on their bare skin. The same group, called Femen bared their breasts in Kiev to protest the sex tourist trade, explaining that if they wave banners and march no one notices. But people always pay attention when a bunch of women rip off their tops.

There was some of that bra-shedding nostalgia in Makers, the three hour PBS special about  women’s historic changes the last 50 years, a good reminder of what can be gained when women don’t lose their courage.

Back to today’s bold ones, there should be a special combat award for the military women who are finally calling rape on the officers who routinely sexually abused and humiliated them with impunity. The women’s courage in speaking up, at risk to their career and reputation, may finally force changes in a military justice system which will one day be read as a nasty part of history that took some fearless  women to fix.

When their oppressors fled, the people of Mali danced, The African women wrapped themselves in bright colors, some even bared their bellies, and they got out into the street and shimmied. How sweet, freedom. It makes you want to dance.

We don’t normally count dancing as a defiant act in this country. There are no pleasure police peeking inside my window to arrest me the next time I dig out some old Brown Sugar and hop around the living room.

But dancing is a threat and a sin in some places. Mali is only the latest place where religious extremists forced women to stay inside, covered them in veils, banned all music and dance, , and brutalized those who offended the new morality laws.

Then French soldiers came in, liberated the people from al Qaida and dancing became a celebration of independence.

And so it will be on February 14, next Thursday, Valentine’s Day, when the world is invited to dance on behalf of all women and girls and defy those who would oppress them.  It’s an easy way to show our solidarity. No special training required.

In this world-wide protest no bullets will be fired. No cars set ablaze. No angry mobs. Just a world full  of people moving their hips and waving their arms.

The global event called Rise Up Dancing, is part of an organization called One Billion Rising. No surprise, the idea came from the playwright and activist Eve Ensler.  Her gutsy play The Vagina Monologues has been in production some place around the world since she wrote it in 1996. She’s not afraid of taking on those who subjugate women be they Congo rebels using rape as a weapon of war or American politicians arguing the definition of rape.  Last year when Michigan lawmakers banned a woman legislator from the House for using the word vagina in arguing an anti-abortion bill, Eve was there saying, oh, boys, grow up.

For 15 years she’s been putting together events on Valentine’s Day to both celebrate women and decry the violence against them. This year she called for an “outrageous disruptive dance action” by women and the men who love them.

With all the horrible things done to women –  the gang rape in a bus in New Delhi, the gang rape by football players in Steubenville, Ohio – you would think that we might be more moved to get together and weep.

But crying feels awful and dancing feels so good. It makes your body happy.

It takes confidence and courage to dance. Which is just the opposite of what it takes to hurt a woman. There’s no courage in attacking a woman if you’re bigger and stronger and you have a bunch of goons including the law, your tribe and your church backing you up.

Men who beat up women are all cowards.  All rapists are cowards.  So are military men who cause military women to fear them more than the enemy.

Those who would manage women with their rules, be it forcing them to wear a burqua or refusing them birth control are cowards. So too are members of Congress who run away from the Violence Against Women Act .

So we will dance against all the big dumb brutes who try to control women with their fists and their laws. We’ll dance for equality and power and strength and we’ll move our bodies just how the music tells us to, and no one else.  And maybe we’ll wear short skirts, too.

In the Bay Area there are Rise Up Dancing events popping up all over, including one in Santa Rosa at 3 p.m. at Monroe Hall and Courthouse Square at 5 p.m. Also in Petaluma, Sonoma, Mendocino and throughout San Francisco. To find an event and to let them know you’re coming, go to www.onebillionrising.org.