Edna

"Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle." Edna Ferber (1885-1968)

I wanted to share, too, that in the course of my gallivant, I spent a bit of time in Appleton, Wisconsin, childhood home of writer Edna Ferber. Sure, she was a journalist who knew just about every big shot + many a colorful bit player in the 1st half of the 20th Century and she'd be worth knowing if only for having been a member of the Algonquin Round Table. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/the-algonquin-round-table/about-the-algonquin/527/

Stage Door, made into a classic film w/Ginger Rogers & Katherine Hepburn ( "The calla lilies are in bloom again..." ) was just one of the plays Edna wrote with Geo. S. Kaufman. She won the Pulitzer Prize for So Big, her fine little novel. I confess I'm not that much of a fan of her others, such as Giant, Saratoga Trunk, Cimarron, & Show Boat, but of the films born from them? Oh baybee.

No, the reason Miss Edna will always resonate with me is her wonderful memoir, A Peculiar Treasure. Read it and find out what it was like to be a hard-working, celebrated writer, living in a glorious, hellish time in the world.