A spectre-bark!

December 30th, 2010 Posted in Recovery Galvez, Weather Galvez
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I took a drive along Seawall Boulevard today. The weather was mild, balmy in fact, but the sky was overcast and dark, even though it was early afternoon, the air moist and thick, white caps pounding the beach. I love this kind of weather.

The crumbling hulk of the Flagship Hotel, a ghostly ship, a spectre-bark!

The crumbling hulk of the Flagship Hotel, a ghostly ship, a spectre-bark!

And as I drove along through the fog, lulled into a kind of dream, the old Flagship Hotel slowly materialized out of the heavy mist like a ghostly apparition and in my mind morphed into a Coleridge lyric:

The sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper o’er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.

From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Read the rest of this entry »

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Galveston Art Deco

December 28th, 2010 Posted in Heydey Galvez, Tour Galvez
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Rare and priceless as a pirate’s bullion, washed up on a modern shore—in my book, maybe more. And not just in Galveston.

A rare instance of residential Art Deco

A rare instance of residential Art Deco

And so it was, about a month ago, that Tip and I were on a walk and, on an impulse (mine), decided to take a leisurely side trip through a unique little neighborhood, just a smidgen northeast of us, known as Cedar Lawn.

Originally established in 1925, Cedar Lawn is a tiny enclave of roughly nine square blocks, distinctively shaped by an odd internal circular drive that is at once both its single entrance and exit. Cedar Lawn is one of the earliest examples of a “modern” planned neighborhood and now, having been fenced off at some later date by stately wrought iron, has become something of a gated community, deep in the heart of Galveston but somehow separate from it. Read the rest of this entry »

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