Enticed by my affection for Paula Deen and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I spent the long weekend in Savannah, Georgia, and it was simply charming. Besides eating grits (delicious when served with fish, who knew?), drinking mint juleps and chatting with strangers, I checked out some of the the lovely ladies in the city:
Felix de Weldon captured the Savannah legend, Florence Martus, who for forty years welcomed ships entering the port. It’s said she was waiting for a sailor with whom she’d fallen in love, but who never returned. Sculpted in 1972, the piece sits on River Street, allowing Florence to still greet ships entering the harbor. Pictured above.
The haunting Bird Girl sculpture created by Sylvia Shaw Judson in 1936 was made infamous by the Midnight book cover (photograph by Jack Leigh) and film adaptation directed by Clint Eastwood. So many tourists flocked to Bonaventure Cemetery to see the piece that the constant traffic became a concern for the family on whose burial plot the sculpture stood; it was subsequently moved to the Telfair Academy at the Telfair Museum of Art. No photography is allowed in the Museum, unfortunately.
I miss cornbread.
