Weather: Partly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Humid with highs in the lower 90s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30 percent. Friday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the mid 70s. East winds 5 to 10 mph.
Today at the Editor’s Glance:
In Court: Circuit Judge Terence Perkins takes a plea from Melissa Gilham, who was charged with a third degree felony count of allowing her dangerous dog again to attack another person–a child. Perkins hears the plea at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse. Docket sounding is scheduled in several cases, including Robert Hill, who faces an attempted second degree murder charge, and Monserrate Teron and Justin Wallace on sex offenses.
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. Ayres and co-host Brian McMillan will talk to guests about the return to school. yes, that’s just around the corner. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM and 1550 AM.
First Friday in Flagler Beach, the monthly festival of music, food and leisure, is scheduled for this evening at Downtown’s Veterans Park, 105 South 2nd Street, from 5 to 9 p.m.
Keep in Mind: The Flagler Youth Orchestra Strings Program, a special project of the Flagler County School District, is launching its eighteenth season. Visit the string program’s website at www.flagleryouthorchestra.org to enroll online. Enrollment is open now and until Sept. 14. An open house and information session will be held August 31 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Flagler Auditorium, 5500 State Road 100, in Palm Coast. Flagler County’s public, private, charter and home-schooled students, 8 years old and older, may sign up to play violin, viola, cello, or double bass. Beginner, intermediate and advanced musicians are welcome. Tuition is free. Limited instrument scholarships are available. Students will learn about the enriching world of classical music and many other genres while receiving comprehensive string instruction in a player-friendly environment twice a week after school. One-hour classes are held at Indian Trails Middle School on Mondays and Wednesdays between 3:30 and 6:30 p.m., depending on your child’s time slot. Some scheduling restrictions apply. Attend the August 31st orientation at the Flagler Auditorium to learn more about the strings program and how to get started. For more information about the program, call (386)503-3808 or email [email protected].
Notably: There was a time in this country when this headline could be–and was–on the front page of The New York Times, above the fold: “65 cases of rum sized by police, are sought in vain.” A subheadline: “If liquor is not found today, police boat and station will be ransacked.” That was on this day in 1922, right next to a much tinier item on the front page noting the 32 percent increase in inflation in German in July alone (oh, the wonderful days of Weimar Germany) in the left column, and an equally small item about the weakening heart of Viscount Northcliffe, in London, to the right of the column (he was apparently the Rupert Murdoch of his day, owner of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror: he died on Aug. 14, 1922). But then ask yourself: how often do similar stories–to the boozy one, not Weimar or Northcliffe) make the front pages of newspapers or websites about the seizure of this or that drug, not even in such large amounts? Where’s the difference? And whatever was the point of either? Here’s a poem by Franklin P. Adams published in the New York World following the publication of the report by former attorney general George W. Wickersham of President Herbert Hoover’s National Commission on Law Observance, on Jan. 19, 1931:
Prohibition is an awful flop
We like it.
It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.
We like it.
It’s left a trail of graft and slime,
It don’t prohibit worth a dime,
It’s filled our land with vice and crime,
Nevertheless we’re for it.
Now this: It is John Huston’s birthday (1906).
Flagler Beach Webcam:
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
January 2026
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Friday Blue Forum
‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,’ the Billie Holiday Story, at City Rep Theatre
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Meeting
‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,’ the Billie Holiday Story, at City Rep Theatre
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
“Turtle Trail Artists of Flagler County,” at Expressions Art Gallery
Al-Anon Family Groups
‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,’ the Billie Holiday Story, at City Rep Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
To go by what just happened in Kansas, the country has had its fill of extremism. On Tuesday, Kansas became the first state in which voters — not ideologically truculent lawmakers, not Supreme Court justices with God complexes — had their say about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and those voters lashed back. They turned out in big numbers, and they decided overwhelmingly to preserve the right to abortion in the state’s constitution. The margin was about 59 percent to 41 percent.
Again, that was in largely rural, indisputably red Kansas, which Donald Trump won by more than 14 percentage points in 2020. The state’s cultural conservatism is so pronounced that when the journalist Thomas Frank wrote a book about the ways in which social issues attract voters to the Republican Party and drive their behavior, he titled it, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
There’s nothing the matter with Kansas this week. Its citizens chose common sense and individual autonomy over theocracy and the subjugation of women. That makes me just a little less worried about the direction in which this country is headed.
–From Frank Bruni’s “What’s the Matter With Arizona?” The New York Times, Aug. 4, 2022.
MikeM says
Donkey pox is what we should be worried about not monkey pox. Thank you Ron Desantis the best Fl governor ever. Keep up the good work.