We drove down to Galveston yesterday to see the damage from hurricane Ike, which hit last summer. It is still a mess down there. Not as bad as New Orleans, but there are a lot of houses with blue tarps on the roof as you drive into town and a lot of signs that have been blown out. When you get on the Island, there is a lot of damage in the poorer part of town, where the construction is not very good. We drove along the seawall out to Pirates beach and the larger high rises all look pretty good. it is hard to tell if they were undamaged or if they were repaired quickly. Some of the older looking apartment complexes were more badly damaged with a lot of siding off and the lower floors flooded out. 
When we got out to Pirates it was strange how some houses looked very badly damaged, and the ones right next door were fine. One thing that was universal was the ground floor storage rooms were all flooded out. If you had a garage it is gone. When we got up to the waterfront the damage was much more obvious. Almost every house had sustained major damage and looked like it would have to be rebuilt as the foundation was gone. However, this maybe hard to do as the beach seems to have been washed away and the water was almost coming up to the first pilings of the houses. There were a lot of large trucks pushing sand back towards the beach that had washed up onto the land. Because of the tidal surge all the vegetation in the area was dead, making it look even more stark.The bay side seemed to have less wind damage, but you can tell they had a big tidal surge too as the ground floors are all damaged and being rebuilt. There are a lot of very expensive houses in this neighborhood and the construction projects seem to be moving along faster. Maybe they got faster payouts from their insurance.
On the way back from Pirates to downtown things got worse as you travelled east. The captains Table, a well known local haunt that has been there for years was totally destroyed. The nicer hotels seemed to do OK, the San Luis and the Galvez were both open and looked like they were doing good business. The Flagship Hotel out on the pier was closed and had a couple of huge holes in the side and the foundation of the pier looked like it was crumbling. UTMB looked like it did OK as well as the port, where there was a large Carnival cruise ship. The streets around UTMB did not fair was well. There was a lot of damage and it did not look like any rebuilding had begun. In fact UTMB has laid off half their staff and there is not longer going to be major medical services available in Galveston, all the more reason to leave the next time a hurricane comes through. The last place we stopped was the Strand. Almost all the stores and the bars looked like they were closed. Most troubling, Col. Bubbies, "The free world's only surviving AUTHENTIC military surplus store," was closed. I checked the web site http://www.colbubbie.com/ and it is up and running, but there are no store hours. Another troubling site was the Tremont Hotel, the nicest hotel in Galveston, did not look open. The website says it only sustained minor damage and will be opening in early 2009. So the strand was very quite, I even heard people were out selling stuff on the sidewalks during the Dickens Christmas shows as the stores were not open. On the way out of town we saw a few more positive signs. One, all the historical old houses looked undamaged. The Moody Mansion looked fine as did most of the buildings around it. We also saw that the renovations on the Galveston Daily News building were almost complete and that they will be moving back in soon. Started in 1842, this is the oldest newspaper in Texas. The bad news is there is not going to be as much to write about when they do get up and running, as I think Galveston will go the way of New Orleans and be a smaller city in the future.
Based on John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer winning play, Doubt stars Meryl Streep and Philip Seymore Hoffman. Set in the Bronx in 1964, the story focuses on the struggle between Hoffman's character Father Flynn who is trying to modernize the church and the school's principal, Sister Aloysius, played by Streep who rules with an iron fist and is desperately trying to hold onto the old ways. As her mistrust of the priest grows she accuses him of molesting the school's only black student. While there is no firm evidence, she is tenacious and will not let the issue drop. Amy Adams plays a young nun who at first accuses Father Flynn then believes he is innocent and that the Sister is out to get him. Viola Davis makes an amazing turn as the young boy's mother. 
While the acting in this film is amazing, and the subject matter well treated, the movie somehow under delivers. As is often the case with an adaptation of a play, the movie seems small. It's as if the film makers did not take full advantage of their medium and played out the stage story with a few extra sets and some nice exteriors. There are some great twists in this film and of course as the title suggests you left to make up your own mind on what really happened. One question we all asked as we left the film, did Sister Aloysius suspect the wrong boy was being molested?
Texadelphia started as a hole-in-the-wall in Austin, Texas. We ate there a lot because it was on the way home from the graduate school and because it is really good. The first location has gone upscale and there are now several locations in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. The main food item here is a Texas cheesesteak. I say Texas because I don't want Philly fans to get all over me and say it is not athentic, it's not. It's a Texas take on the cheesesteak that comes with chips and salsa; you can also add one of several sauces, my favorite is the original mustard blend. You should also order some queso to start with. As they have grown, Texadelphia has added chicken cheesesteak and a few other sandwich options as well as chicken tenders and hamburgers for the kids.
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