Signs of life -- and not

The island is a'buzz - literally. About half the homes in our neighborhood are works in progress with the sound of power tools throughout. The other half are occupied, so one can assume that in another few months most everyone will be back. Amazingly, there are only two homes out of about fifty for sale. Looks like the insurance money is finally trickling in. We've seen only a fraction of what it has cost to get our house back in shape but our ordeal with the insurance companies is far from finished. We got hot water yesterday in all but one bathroom. Otherwise, with the exception of some needed painting and patch-up, we're looking okay.

The Texas Forest Service comes to Galveston next week to assess our poor oaks lining Broadway, the main drag into town. The oaks were either planted after the 1900 storm or after the 1912 storm, the more senior denizens I've asked aren't sure. They've flourished through every adversity since - til Ike. There are no new leaves on a hundred of these bare old-timers, and spring long ago sprung on the rest of the island.

The oaks, like the oleanders, the beach, and Old Red at the medical school, have been the talk of concern since the storm. The oleanders had little trouble coming back, and the beaches have never looked better. Old Red was built in 1890 on a foundation of deeply dug giant stones that 'floated' during the Ike's flood. The building is now quietly, slowly settling under the watchful eye of engineers that know about this stuff. It is not inhabited as the settling process continues, but everyone is optimistic that it will return to its former stability within a year.
That leaves only the oaks to symbolize the lasting damage.

UTMB is rehiring. The legislature is in what appears to be the final processes of approving appropriate funding for rebuilding the hospital beyond its former first-class status as a teaching institution. Like our neighborhood, most of the island is in a rebuilding phase with the tents gone and the little FEMA trailer neighborhoods nicely maintained. All the housing projects in town (which were eyesores) are being razed, and in their place will be new duplexes, designed in the architectural mode of the island during the nineteenth century. New made to look old - such is the way things are going here.

Those old oaks may have to go. Too bad nobody's yet figured out how to make a sapling look like it's been there for a century.