Weather: Partly cloudy. A slight chance of showers in the morning, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Monday Night: Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening, then partly cloudy after midnight. Lows around 70. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30 percent.
Today at the Editor’s Glance:
Palm Coast’s Memorial Day Commemoration: Join the City of Palm Coast for a Memorial Day Ceremony, “Remembering America’s Heroes,” on Monday, May 30 at 8 a.m. at Heroes Memorial Park, 2860 Palm Coast Parkway. There is limited parking on site, however, parking is available along Corporate Drive and at the library. The Matanzas Army JROTC will perform the Posting of Colors followed by remarks by Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin. The annual ceremony is open to all ages and honors the men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
County’s Memorial Day Commemoration: Join Flagler County at its Memorial Day Ceremony at 10 a.m. Monday, May 30, featuring special guest speaker Cecil Hengeveld, Colonel, U.S. Army (retired), a Vietnam War veteran, whose decorations include Legion of Merit, Air Medal with “V” device and 30 oak leaf clusters, Army Commendation Medal, and the Pennsylvania Commendation Medal. The ceremony will be in front of the Government Services Building, 1769 E. Moody Blvd., Bunnell.
Flagler Beach’s Memorial Day Commemoration: Join Flagler Beach city officials for the city’s Memorial Day Ceremony at veterans Park in Flagler Beach at 1 p.m. The speaker will be Army major Tom Hall, with a dedication by the Flagler Woman’s Club.
Notably: It is of course Memorial Day, in many more ways than usual this year. It is also Voltaire’s 244th death anniversary. Voltaire died in his 84th year in Paris, a few months after finally making the trip back to the capital from where he’d been banished decades earlier, and a few weeks after Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin met for the first time, though Franklin had admired him from afar going back to 1733, when he started reading him, and 1755, when he printed excerpts of Voltaire’s Siecle de Louis XIV in an American edition, then the Treaty on Tolerance in the late 1760s, where Franklin was again seduced by Voltaire’s appreciation of Quakers. Franklin went to see Voltaire with Franklin’s grandson in tow, and asked Voltaire to bless the younger man: “God and liberty,” are the words Voltaire spoke for the occasion, apparently in English the first time (he was fluent, thanks to his three years of exile in England in his much younger days, when the despicable Rohan, an aristocrat, first had him beaten, then imprisoned at the Bastille, then exiled, after Voltaire justly insulted him: Rohan had belittled Voltaire’s bourgeois origins, making fun of Voltaire’s name change–he was born Francois Marie Arouet–so Voltaire, ever the wit, told him that at least he didn’t bear a name he dishonored). Franklin, he called “the illustrious and wise monsieur Franklin, the most respectable man in America and probably Europe.”
All this is fine and good but just trivia compared to this: in 1968 Theodore Besterman, the Voltaire scholar who was first to complete a 50-volume edition of Voltaire’s complete correspondence, started a second, far more complete edition of the correspondence, and started the most accomplished, exhaustive edition of Voltaire’s works. Besterman–quirky, arrogant as hell, sometimes mean (he called for charity toward Rousseau, considering how vicious Voltaire was toward Jean-Jacques, yet named his dog after him) and brilliant–died in 1976, but the great work was launched. The Voltaire Foundation established itself in Oxford (Voltaire would have loved the irony of England midwifing the complete works of the greatest Frenchman of the ages) and just in March, the 205-volume edition was finally completed. It’s not for the faint of cents: each volume runs around $150 (you can shop here). Princeton and Harvard historian and 18th century scholar Robert Darnton delivered the celebratory lecture. See below. There’s “an academic conference about the newly completed Oxford edition of Voltaire, to be held in Paris, 9-10 June, followed by a week-long ‘Festival of Voltaire’ being organised in Paris in November this year,” the foundation says. Check the events page. I read him day in and day out. There is no more effective antidote to this compound madness we seem to be living (and no better palliative to the mass of bad writing surrounding us, not least on this site). Écrasez l’infâme!
And so, Now this:
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Flagler County School Board Workshop: Agenda Items
Flagler Beach Planning and Architectural Review Board
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Bunnell Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board
Palm Coast Code Enforcement Board Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Republican Club Meeting
For the full calendar, go here.
The superstition that we must drive from the earth is that which, making a tyrant of God, invites men to become tyrants. He who was the first to say that we must detest the wicked put a sword in the hands of all who dared to think themselves faithful. He who was the first to forbid communication with those who were not of his opinion rang the tocsin of civil war throughout the earth. I believe what seems to reason impossible — in other words, I believe what I do not believe — and therefore I must hate those who boast that they believe an absurdity opposed to mine. Such is the logic — such, rather, is the madness — of the superstitious. To worship, love, and serve the Supreme Being, and to be of use to men, is nothing; it is indeed, according to some, a false virtue, a “splendid sin,” as they call it. Ever since men made it a sacred duty to dispute about what they cannot understand, and made virtue consist in the pronunciation of certain unintelligible words, which every one attempted to explain, Christian countries have been a theatre of discord and carnage.
–From Voltaire’s Treaty on Tolerance (1763).
Nikki says
This is enough! Memorial Day & Voltaire? You evidently need to be educated on the meaning of this day. It is to honor all of our brave military who gave their all when they were called upon. Those who gave their life, those who gave parts of themselves, those who still haven’t returned& the Gold Star families who sacrificed. They all at least deserve this one day of deep honor & thanks! Do not dishonor this with a writing that represents nothing of the real meaning!To write nothing of this but of Voltaire is despicable no matter what political beliefs one has! Sure makes one wonder who this editor really is!