Today at the Editor’s glance: Weather: Showers likely with a chance of thunderstorms. Less humid with highs in the mid 70s. Temperature falling into the upper 50s in the afternoon. Southwest winds 15 to 20 mph, becoming northwest in the afternoon. Gusts up to 35 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Saturday Night: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Much cooler with lows in the mid 30s. North winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph. See: “Severe Weather Tonight Into Saturday with Potential for Isolated Tornadoes, Followed By Freeze.”
Cancellation notice: The Strawberry festival scheduled for Saturday in Palm Coast’s Town Center was cancelled due to weather and standing water.
Reminder: Tonight at 2 a.m., time jumps an hour ahead. It’s “that puzzling ritual of mass clock-winding ill befitting freeborn Americans,” as Bill Kauffman described it in a 2005 Wall Street Journal review of Spring Forward, Michael Downing’s book on that pointless, aggravating, jet-lagging ritual, an “urban idea of a good idea, hatched in London and cultivated in the cities of Europe and the northern United States.” FDR, whose first-ever Fireside Chat is noted below (today is the anniversary), imposed it as a year-round measure in the 1940s and called it “war time,” befitting Americans’ closet-lust for all things martial (every American is a closet Spartan down to his sexual identity, but take him out of the closet at your own risk). There is, of course, no good sense in Daylight Saving Time anymore. As Kauffman and Downing write: “Stripped of its bogus efficiency arguments, Daylight Saving Time amounts to an extra hour for shopping and golf. Middle-class consumers are pitted against farmers — and we know who has the numbers. By 2000, writes Mr. Downing, “the number of Americans living on farms was approximately equal to the number of Americans who were permanent residents of golf-course communities.””
At the Flagler Playhouse: “Company,” the 1970 musical by Stephen Sondheim, is staged at 7:30 p.m. at Flagler Playhouse, 301 E Moody Blvd, Bunnell. Tickets are $25.00, and $20 for students 21 and younger with ID. Book tickets here.
Notably: Mustafa Kamal Aataturk, the man who modernized and secularized Turkey and led the Turkish revolution after World War I, was born on this day in 1881. He is considered a great man by Turks. But his legacy is marred by an atrocity: instead of stopping it, he played a significant role in furthering the genocide of Armenians–an inspiration to Hitler’s genocide of Jews–and in their forced conversions to Islam. Turkey to this day denies the Armenian holocaust, which began with massacres in the 1890s. The United States denied the Armenian genocide–as unconscionable an act as denying the Shoah–until President Joe Biden finally did in a statement only on April 24, 2021: “Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms. Of those who survived, most were forced to find new homes and new lives around the world, including in the United States.” Ataturk died of cirrhosis of the liver at 9:05 a.m. on Nov. 10, 1938 (his friend and closest aide, Salih Bozuk, tried to kill himself with a gun. He only wounded himself). The New York Times reported his death on its front page. Armenians were never mentioned.
Now this:
An old favorite, going back to those 80s when vinyl reminded us that all was not, despite Reagan, lost. This of course is a more recent interpretation of Claude Bolling’s “Irlandaise,” but it’s performed by a cool quartet:
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.
May 2025
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Al-Anon Family Groups
RockabillieWillie At City Repertory Theatre
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Nar-Anon Family Group
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
For the full calendar, go here.
“It is possible that when the banks resume a very few people who have not recovered from their fear may again begin withdrawals. Let me make it clear that the banks will take care of all needs—and it is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime. It needs no prophet to tell you that when the people find that they can get their money — that they can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes — the phantom of fear will soon be laid. People will again be glad to have their money where it will be safely taken care of and where they can use it conveniently at any time. I can assure you that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.”
–From Franklin Roosevelt’s first Fireside Chat, on this day in 1933.
Brian says
Good God Gertie! That would be a horrible sight. Also brings to mind “Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining”.