No Crying in Baseball--Farewell Penny Marshall

Last night I got home in the early evening, and my spouse had already started a fire--how cozy!  I read a bit while my spouse came to a stopping place in his grading.  We ate lasagne left from a Sunday gathering at our friends' house.  We watched a bit of TV--mostly old reruns from the 90's.

It would have been great to see some reruns of Laverne and Shirley, given the news of the death of Penny Marshall.  I loved that show when it aired originally, but I'm not as crazy about it now.  Parts of the show don't age well--Lenny and Squiggy were always creepy to me, but more so now.

Maybe it would have been better to spend the evening watching the movies of Penny Marshall.  I did enjoy many of them, like Jumping Jack Flash and Big.  I never got around to watching A League of Their Own, but I was glad she made it.

What's more sobering is to think about how much time has gone by since she first burst on the scene in the mid 1970's.  In my mind, she was about 45 years old.  But she wasn't.

Many of my favorite artists are similarly old, but I'm aware of that.  Each year I hope that Margaret Atwood gets the Nobel prize for literature because time is running out for her.  She has the kind of vibrant older age that I hope to experience.

Penny Marshall reportedly didn't like to be labeled a feminist, but she did open doors for women.  Big was the first film directed by a woman to earn over 100 million dollars.  We could see that as the victory that it was.  We could also ask why we still have so few female directors.

But for today, let us be happy that we did have her.