Like a siren’s song, they call to us.  By day, we are compelled to climb to the very top to gaze out to sea, hoping to see we know not what. In the pitch black of night the unique rhythmic cadence of their flashing beacon signaling out into the unknown is at once haunting and comforting.   

The oldest known lighthouse, the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was constructed by the ancient Greeks in the third century B.C. on the islet of Pharos marking the entrance to the major Medierranean port of Alexandria on the western tip of the Nile delta.  Rising 383-440 feet above the delta, it was one of the tallest man-made structures on earth for centuries.  Originally a daytime marker, the Romans later added fire and reflective mirrors for nighttime use.  As commerce and trade in Europe grew throughout the Middle Ages, lighthouses were built along the coasts of France and Italy.  During the competitive European maritime commerce of the 17th and 18th centuries, the number of lighthouses dotting the coastline of Europe increased dramatically.

The lifeblood of colonial America was dependent on maritime commerce.  As colonies grew, 11 lighthouses cropped up to safely guide vessels around dangerous rocks and shoals into the harbors of colonial towns.   

Boston Lighthouse

The first of these was a tower at the entrance to Boston Harbor on Little Brewster Island, built in 1716 and lit by tallow candles.  Accessible today by boat only, tours of this National Historic Landmark are offered June through October.  

Remarkably, the massive masonry stone light tower of the original 1764 Sandy Hook Light in New Jersey is still intact.  While an offshore light has lessened its importance, it still greets vessels entering New York’s busy harbor.      

Colonial lighthouses not ravished by nature were destroyed by the Civil War.  However, their role was so important that new ones were rebuilt on the same sites and many more added in the late 1800s.  To the delight of lighthouse lovers, many picturesque 19th century structures – some operational; others not - remain along America’s coastline and around the Great Lakes.  Made of brick, stone and masonry, distinctively painted in stark white, pitch-black, bright red, or painted in black and white stripes or diamonds, each holds a certain mystique.  We can only imagine what their eye has seen!

Florida’s extensive wrap-around coastline is dotted with historic lighthouses.  The oldest known structure in America, a Spanish watchtower in St. Augustine, appeared on a 1589 map belonging to Sir Francis Drake!  This precise location was so important for protection and navigation that subsequent towers were built on the same site by the English between 1763 and 1784, and the Americans after 1821, only to be washed away by coastal erosion.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

The current St. Augustine Lighthouse was built in 1876, about ¼ mile away from the original Spanish watchtower on more stable land, and is open to the public.  This distinctive black and white spiral banded lighthouse on Anastasia Island is said to be haunted, with good reason. The spirits of the keeper’s young daughters who perished there have been seen by some; the smell of cigar smoke from a keeper who fell to his death while painting the tower is detectable by others.   

While the history of the St. Augustine Lighthouse site is certainly older, the oldest existing lighthouse in Florida is the Cape Florida Lighthouse at the tip of upscale Key Biscayne in bustling Miami.  It, too, is open to the public. 

Cape Florida Lighthouse

Established in 1825, this little lighthouse, peacefully nestled among the sea oats on a sandy beach at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Recreaton Area, has seen its share of violence and tragedy.  During the second Seminole War in 1836, it was under siege by the Indians who murdered the keeper’s family and left the assistant keeper for dead.  His account of his horrifying experience is told in the lighthouse museum.

Sombrero Key Light

Perched atop the submerged coral reefs paralleling the Florida Keys are a series of pile tower lighthouses, skeleton-like structures built in the late 1800s to keep mariners traveling the busy Gulf Stream shipping lanes from straying into the jagged reefs.

Prior to their existence, Spanish galleons traveling northward on the Gulf Stream, heavy with gold and jewels, where blown off course and torn apart by reefs, scattering their bounty along the path of destruction.  Some of their treasure, recovered buried under the sand by legendary Mel Fisher, is on display in the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum.  Similarly, later merchant schooners lost cargo and lives on the reef, leading to the lucrative salvage or wrecking industry in early Key West.

Since their construction, the skeletal arms of these lighthouses – Fowey, Carysfort, Alligator, Sombrero, American Shoal, Sand Key – have sustained ferocious hurricane winds, seen their keepers and their families perish, embraced Cuban and Haitian migrants trying to reach America, alerted against illegal drug boats speeding ashore for secret rendezvous, and mark some of the best snorkeling and recreational dive spots in the world.

Key West Lighthouse

 

The historic Key West Lighthouse is landlocked and open to the public.  The view of quaint Key West from the top is 360° wonderful!  The first lighthouse was built in 1825, only to be destroyed by the violent hurricane of 1848, which killed 14 people sheltering inside. The present tower was built in 1848, but over time the sea built up land around it, rendering it ineffective.

Garden Key Light atop Fort Jefferson

Seventy miles off Key West, perched on top of the brick walls of the remarkable Civil War-era Fort Jefferson is Garden Key Light.  The fascinating fort, appearing out of nowhere, a sliver of red brick appearing where blue sky meets turquoise sea, is a sight to behold on the day-long trip aboard the Yankee Freedom .  The isolated fort, 70 miles from land, is an engineering feat - visually incongruous, eerily isolated, extremely historic.   

Picturesque lighthouses dotting the outer banks of North Carolina belie the navigational challenges that lie offshore.  The lighthouses of Cape Hatteras, Cape Lookout, Cape Fear, Ocracoke Island, Bodie Island – all witnesses to the tragedies of this treacherous navigational hook of perilous shoals wicked currents, fierce winds, and dense, disorienting fog.  Besides the perils of nature encountered along this heavily traveled sea lane, mariners also contended with pirates, most nortorious among them, Blackbeard, who lurked among the coastal inlets, ready to pounce on passing merchant ships. 

During Civil War, the lighthouses of the Outer Banks were caught in a blockade/blockade-running tug of war between the Union and the Confederacy.  As recently as World War II, German U-boats prowled the Carolina coast in search a way to stage a submarine attack on the U.S.  In their efforts they sank so many merchant ships and Navy vessels the waters off the Outer Banks were known as Torpedo Junction. 

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

Marking the easternmost tip of the elbow of the Outer Banks is one of the best known of U. S. lighthouses, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.  Jutting out into the Altantic where the warmer Gulf Stream collides with the cold Labrador Current, the area is so treacherous it’s called the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

 One of the most interesting lighthouses, Tybee Island Lighthouse, sits at the mouth of the Savannah River, leading to the port of Savannah, the fourth busiest and fastest growing container port in the U.S.  Some form of a tower has sat on this very spot since 1736, guiding mariners safely into the Savannah River. 

Tybee Island Lighthouse

The present-day 1867 structure sits on the foundation of a brick tower built in 1773, which was built as on the site of the original wooden tower of 1736 , the third of the colonial lighthouses!

The venerable Old Charleston Lighthouse on Morris Island at the entrance to the port of Charleston is the eighth of the colonial lighthouses.  Ancient-looking, with the sea lapping at its edges, it was retired in 1962, but it’s a great photo op. 

America’s historic coastal guardians - Visit them, climb them, photograph them, paint them, collect miniatures as souvenirs.  Picturesque and charming, they command attention.

Washington National Cathedral Gargoyle

Walking down the streets of older American cities, where spired, turreted Gothic Revival buildings tower overhead, have you ever felt the presence of someone watching you?

Well, they are.

Look up.

You’ll be amazed at what’s looking down at you! 

Gargoyles – those weird, usually grotesque, sometimes comic, often outrageous, always fantastic, fanciful caricatures with distinct personalities hanging all over older buildings - are intricate, amazingly detailed architectural carvings of hybrid monsters with both human and animal characteristics, often with mouths agape.  Cleverly blended into their architectural surroundings by master sculptors, they are out there in abundance, whole gatherings of them.  Lurking and leering from perches high overhead, hunched in outcroppings, clinging to outer walls, or poised to pounce from nooks and crannies of religious, educational and governmental buildings, and even from grand mansions, they are more often than not, noticed only through a double-take.  

While their presence in architecture dates back to ancient times and crosses all cultures, their purpose has no universally accepted explanation.  Originally the term used for the fanciful stone carved gutter spouts used to direct rainwater away from building foundations, a gargoyle generically has come to mean any decorative architectural carving of a grotesque nature, and cities are filled with them. 

To find them, just look up. In New York City on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, gargoyles found a welcome home in the arches and flying buttresses rising up to the Neo-Gothic cathedral-like tower of the Woolworth Building. Legions of them are on Wall Street, surely showing their displeasure with recent events.  On the Upper West Side, in the massive, yet unfinished St. John the Divine Cathedral, all manner of fanciful, grotesque creatures fiercely stand guard over niches filled with saints and angels.  On busy Lexington Avenue in Midtown, look up at the iconic Chrysler Building.  Jutting way out from the corners of the 61^st Floor of this spectacular Art Deco building are huge, shiny gargoyles – eagle heads- replicas of the 1929 Chrysler hood ornaments.   

In Chicago, the decorative top of the Gothic Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue is loaded with gargoyle bats! On elegant Nob Hill in San Francisco, those perpendicular protrusions sticking out just below the main spire of magnificent Grace Cathedral are actually eight identical gargoyles, winged dragons perched to take flight in case the forces of evil get too close.  Once sighted, they are obvious, but, without knowing they’re there, they are easily missed.  Such is a gargoyle…there, but not there.  

University of Chicago Gargoyle

Gargoyles are particularly fond of the collegial culture of universities over a century old. Throughout the campus of Princeton University, gargoyles pay homage to the disciplines studied in the buildings they haunt. There are so many there that they star in an online Grotesque Tour.  Click your way, too, for gargoyle sightings at Duke University.  The Quadrangle Building at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia is crawling with them.  Likewise, at the exquisite Gothic University of Chicago, their antics begin at the main entrance gate, where a series of them usher in newbies with warnings of perilous things to come on their climb through academia.   

These fanciful spirits also live in historic mansions throughout the country. In Savannah, many homes in the historic district have downspouts ending in stylized cast iron dolphin heads, gargoyles well suited to this colonial-era seaport city.  The Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina has an amazingly diverse gargoyle collection. While best viewed from below, a special rooftop tour gets them within pouncing range. 

A treasure trove of gargoyles with a 20^th century attitude reside throughout the Washington National Cathedral.  This spectacular Gothic building, completed in 1990, literally crawls with them.  Their unique humor and style comes through a collaborative effort between the private donors who commissioned them and the sculptors who created them.  Fantastically creative, they are wonderful caricatures of the times, the 1960s, 70s and 80s: hippies and yuppies; crooked politicians and greedy thieves; and countless other mischievous and appealing modern spirits in stone who bring a smile…to those who notice.  

Wherever your travels take you, get in the habit of looking up!

Biltmore Estate Gargoyle

They are always watching.

She-crab soup, shrimp and grits, Hoppin’ John, Frogmore Stew, red rice, perlau, Hoe Cakes - all Lowcountry signature favorites. Or, innovative Lowcountry with a modern twist that brings Savannah’s culinary riches to new heights – black-eyed pea cakes, cream of butternut squash soup with curry cream, sweet potato puree, Carolina crab cakes, wild Georgia shrimp and grits, pecan encrusted sea scallops.  It’s a way of cooking that is truly regional as well as mouth-watering delicious.

Traditional, hip, gullah or soul, the genesis of Lowcountry cooking lies in the mysterious coastal salt water marshes, which stretch from Savannah to Charleston.  From this beautiful gold-tinged land laced with estuaries and inlets, come crab, oysters, shrimp, fish, and ”Carolina Gold,” the rice which has been the staple of the region since antibellum times.  What gives these Lowcountry staples their distinctive taste are the aromatic flavors from the culinary traditions of the early settlers, English, Scotch, French, Sephardic Jews, and from the Gullah traditions of the slaves from West Africa, a culture that developed in the wake of the Civil War as former slaves were left to their own resources in the isolated marshes and Sea Islands.

Many restaurants in Savannah serve some version of Lowcountry cuisine, but the seven below are either really famous or really, really good:

FAMOUS.  Popular with locals early on, but catapulted into fame by the Food Network, Paula Deen’s restaurants have put Savannah on the culinary map.  Paula Deen fans come from around the country taken in by her personality, her storybook success, and her succulent buffets.  If you don’t mind lines and crowded places, these are Savannah must sees:

1. The Lady & Sons.  You’ll get Hoe Cakes and Paula’s famous Cheddar Biscuits for starters.  Then, pile up your plate with a wide range of buffet choices: Paulas’ crispy fried chicken, sweet creamed corn, pork chops, and turnip greens.  If a buffet line sampler is not for you, order Savannah Crab cakes, fried green tomatoes, and much more from the menu.
2. Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House.  At Paula’s brother’s place, a casual seafood restaurant nestled in the marshes of Whitmarsh Island, experience a Lowcountry Boil (aka Frogmore Stew -shrimp, crab, corn, and smoked sausage all boiled together), or char-grilled oysters smothered in garlic and parmesan cheese.  A great tour with lunch combo is the Old Town Trolley Tours of Savannah’s Paula Deen Tour, which includes a buffet lunch at Uncle Bubba’s.  You’ll see the sights, hear the stories, and have a Lowcountry buffet experience all in one.  Plus, included in this is a ”Preferred Seating” (i.e. skip the lines) pass to The Lady & Sons or back to Uncle Bubba’s.

DOWN HOME & COMFORTABLE. Good home-cooking, just like Mama’s.

1. Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room.  Tasty comfort food like Paula’s, but with shorter lines and a more homey, congenial atmosphere.  Here lunch only is served family-style around communal tables. The vegetable sides are wonderful.
2. Mom & Nikki’s.  Soul food at its best – the shrimp are smothered, the mac and cheese, cheesy, the biscuits, extraordinary.

GENTEEL & GRACIOUS. The venues, elegant historic mansions, create the astmosphere; the menus are adventures into that mysterious realm of wonderful, subtle Lowcountry flavors.

1. Elizabeth on 37th.   In the rooms of a 1900 mansion in the Victorian district, Lowcountry with a creative twist is called ”Coastal Cuisine.”  However sophisticated the nomenclature, the basic regional ingredients are all there.  The results are spectacular.
2. The Olde Pink House.  The 18th century mansion on historic Reynolds Square creates a delightful fine dining ambience.   Although the menu is characterized as  ”Elegant Southern,” the tantalizing Lowcountry roots come through: Black Grouper Stuffed with Blue Crab with Vidalia Onion Sauce; Pan-seared Crab Cakes with Vegetable Slaw.

UPSCALE LOWCOUNTRY. Lowcountry down-home cooking with a nouveau, gourmet twist.

1. The New South Cafe. If there is such a thing as a hip, southern bistro, this is it!  Located just on the outskirts of historic downtown Savannah, it serves wonderfully tasty lunch and dinner creations.  Visualize this:  Pecan Crusted Sea Scallops and Honey-Ruby Red Grapefruit Butter Sauce served with Corn Pudding!

MORE WAYS TO SAVOR SAVANNAH. For true foodies, here’s a great idea for an interactive travel experience – take a Lowcountry cooking class!  Fun and delicious 3-hour events, they can easily be fit into a Savannah visit.  Check out the what, the when and the where at the time of your visit.  Even the reluctant cook will have a great time.

• 700 Kitchen Cooking School at the Mansion at Forsyth Park. 3-hour classes, as well as culinary packages for two at the Mansion.
• Chef Joe Randall’s Cooking School.  In 3 hours learn how to cook savory Savannah Rice or Sea Island Smothered Shrimp.

“Eenjy da’ bet’ bittle.”  (Gullah for “Enjoy the best food!”)

Walk on the unusual side – take a tour of a historic cemetery, graveyard or burying ground. Macabre, moving, or appealing, these silent cities have fascinating stories to tell.  Beneath fieldstone, granite, marble and bronze, lie superstition and belief, tragedy and triumph, romance and scandal, humor and sadness, politics and war.

Burying ground, graveyard or cemetery - all are time frozen, part history, part folklore.  There is a certain stillness about them - reverence mixed with intrigue.  In them, gravestones, simple or ornate, provide clues that fuel the imagination.  Through artistic symbolism and fascinating phraseology, gravestones tell the stories of a generations, one person at a time.  They reflect the historic quirks, artistic taste and architecture of a moment in time. They lay bare prejudices and honor heroes.  They tell of prince and pauper; the known and unknown.

Some silent cities, moss-covered, ancient-feeling places like Boston’s historic burying grounds, tell America’s early story through those buried there.  Others, like Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, are serenely quiet green spaces with magnificent grounds and remarkable statuary.  Some make unique architectural statements, like those in New Orleans, so dryly observed by Mark Twain: ”There is no architecture in New Orleans, except in the cemeteries.”   Yet others, like Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C., in their sheer simplicity, have the power to move.

Boston is home to some of America’s oldest burying grounds.  It is in King’s Chapel, Copp’s Hill, and the Granary, that legendary figures of America’s founding, those we learn about in history class – Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, victims of the Boston Massacre - are interred.  These sites are of such historic value that Boston’s Freedom Trail runs by them, and all are highlights of the stops on Old Town Trolley Tours of Boston’s tour route.  For the more sinister, Old Town Trolley Tours of Boston’s entertaining Ghosts & Gravestones tour offers a different prospective on night walks through Copp’s Hill and Granary Burying Grounds.  In nearby Plymouth, on the interesting Historic Plymouth Cemetery Tour, the meaning behind some of some of the gravestone iconography is explained.

In other colonial cities, look for early graveyards alongside historic churches, testaments to the religious beginnings of some colonies. Benjamin Franklin and four other signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried in the Christ Church Burial Ground, two beautiful acres in the heart of the historic “Old City” of Philadelphia.  Other signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried in graveyards of St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s Churches, the early churches of Charleston, S. C.

As populations outgrew small burying grounds and church graveyards, the large, park-like ”rural” cemeteries of the mid-1800s provided final resting places.  They, too, offer interesting perspectives on history and are great places to walk.  All contain unusual elements, beautiful and bizzare.  Some have spectacular grounds; others, elaborate monuments.  All have an atmosphere more uplifting than the burying grounds of the somber colonial era.  Noticeably absent is the ”death’s head,” common on colonial gravestones, which gave way to the more hopeful winged cherubs, reflective of the more romantic thinking of the Victorian era.

Spend an awesome morning or afternoon walking through Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery, a fine example of America’s rural cemeteries, revealed to the world in the book, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”  Here, under canopies of live oak, surrounded by an array of elegant statuary and impressive monuments, the silence is serene.  While you won’t see the famous Bird Girl there anymore (she’s been moved to Savannah’s Telfair Museum of Art for viewing), there is so much else to see and photograph.

Big and diverse, Manhattan should have equally interesting cemeteries, but all it has are remnant cemeteries!    Forbidden by ordinance as available land became scarce, graves were relocated to the other boroughs, displaced by glass and concrete towers.  What’s left are remnants: the tiny, tucked away Marble Cemeteries in the Lower East side.  And, in San Francisco, similarly land-limited, nothing is forever - at least one’s final resting place is not!  The city has moved its dead time and time again, each time to a “newer” spot, further and further off the peninsula, and there are amazing stories of those left behind, only to be discovered during later ground excavation!  Today, there are only two cemeteries left within city limits, the graveyard at historic Mission Dolores Church and the San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio, and two columbariums, one inside the famous Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill.

While each historic burying place is unique, it’s hard to top the visual impact of the above-ground vaults of New Orleans’ “Cities of the Dead,” miniature cities of elaborate tombs built like small houses laid out along streets.  Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, in the historic Garden District is significant for its history, location and architecture.  In St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, just outside the French Quarter, offerings are left for Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.  Elaborate marble tombs and larger-than-life statuary in Metairie Cemetery are dramatic statements of “new” wealth and prestige of the city’s intriguing, ethnically diverse residents.   For safety reasons, as well as for a memorable time, take one of New Orleans’ Cemetery Tours.

Bigger isn’t necessarily better.  Another sea-level city, albeit small, with an above-ground cemetery is the island of Key West.  As haphazard and colorful as the island itself, and true to the character for this quirky place, the small-scaled cemetery, located in the dead center of town, as locals are amused to say, is not grandiose.  Eye-level, whitewashed tombs are close-quartered, and giant gumbo limbo tree roots pushing up against the ground, causing cracked gravemarkers and lopsided statuary, leave a lingering sense that the tropical elements are about to take over.  It’s a great place to take in the oddities of the inscriptions on some of the gravestones: “I told you I was sick” reads the gravemarker of a well-known hypochondriac!

Wherever your travels take you, tour a historic cemetery.  Bring your camera; bring paper for gravestone rubbings…and most of all, bring your imagination!

The United States has celebrated St. Patrick’s Day well before it’s independence from Great Britain. The first St. Patrick’s Day and parade in North America was held in Boston in 1737 followed by New York City in 1756. While St. Patrick’s Day originated in Ireland, the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade is held in Chicago with over 2 million spectators and participants. The US, with it’s large Irish ancestory, has parties, parades and events throughout the country. Are you planning to “Go Green” in March? The largest St. Patrick’s Day Parades are:

1. Chicago, Illinois, since 1843 – Over 2 Million Spectators
2. New York City, Since 1756 – Tied with Chicago
3. Savannah, Georgia – Over 400,000
4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Another pre-Declaration of Independence aged St. Patrick’s Day
5. Kansas City, Missouri – 200,00 spectators
6. Boston, Massachusetts
7. San Francisco, California – Oldest and biggest west of the Mississippi
8. Houston, Texas
9. Cleveland, Ohio
10. New London, Wisconsin

Savannah, Georgia is a town I enjoy. History, architecture and creepiness combine with creative, eccentric folks living there for a singular experience. Of course, it rained non-stop.

I was doing a ride-along on our Ghosts and Gravestones in Savannah, which starts at the riverfront and goes to the Sorrel Weed House for the big finish. As always, I had a blast.

The ghost stories are well told and the atmosphere of the Sorrel Weed House is spooky. (Major kudos to Danica for the excellent design and art work of the Voodoo Room.) Everyone contributes so much here and SCAD is a great resource.

Both Savannah and St. Augustine have a natural creepiness similar to New Orleans in my opinion. Maybe it’s the spanish moss? Just seems to be a thickness, a heaviness that lingers over them and makes the shadows longer. One of my favorite things is to walk in these towns when they are quiet and dark. Listening, looking and remembering. See you in Savannah.

Halloween is just around the corner and one of my favorite Holidays. As a kid, it was the candy. Now, it’s the fantasy. I love seeing people dress up and become other characters. (You can tell a lot about people by the characters they choose). Pirates, Pop stars or witches the spectacle is endless.

The photo is from our Ghosts & Gravestones tour in Boston, MA. We also have them in Savannah, GA and St. Augustine, FL. All of them are different and each of them is a blast.

I’m involved with ghosts and storytelling year round but the height of the season is that day of days, October 31st. What are you doing this year? Countdown begins!

If you need some inspiration visit Bucky’s Boneyard or the Monster List of Halloween Projects.

Savannah, Georgia is like an old friend to me. The fact that it was founded in 1733 would be enough but I’ve also met wonderful people, eaten great food and been creeped out a time or two. My company operates Old Town Trolley tours and Ghosts and Gravestones here so I am fortunate to work with SCAD students and creatives all over town. (I even wrote a book about hauntings there called Ghost and Gravestones of Savannah, Georgia.) The charms of Savannah are endless and enticing. But time marches on.

Many years have passed since John Berendt’s best selling novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was published and made into a wonderful movie directed by Clint Eastwood. Fewer and fewer folks are as interested or familiar with the story.

So what now? What do you do when the big thing that spurs tourism in your area begins to fade? You reinvent yourself. Yes, it is possible to continue promoting your attraction, area or service after things change.

Now Savannah is hailing itself as “The Creative Coast” and attracting talented artists of all kinds and the people who want to see them. Riffing off the successes of the Savannah School of Art and Design (SCAD) and cooking celebrities like Paula Dean, Savannah is forging a bright new future. The reality is that things change and we need to be willing to change too. Focusing that effort in a useful way is the key. Change for the sake of change is “confusing motion with action” as Hemingway once said. Developing solid strategy and bold innovation wins the day. See you in Savannah.