Weather: Partly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Humid with highs in the mid 90s. South winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Heat index values up to 106. Thursday Night: Mostly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening. Lows in the lower 70s. South winds 5 to 10 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable. Chance of rain 50 percent.
Today at the Editor’s Glance:
In Court: Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
Candidate forum: The NAACP Flagler Branch hosts a forum for candidates for the Palm Coast City Council and the Flagler County Commission, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the African American Cultural Society, 4422 North U.S. Highway 1, Palm Coast (just north of Whiteview Parkway).
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].
Notebook: A 1999 memory from my visit to the Iowa State Fair, which opens today: It is dusk, that lingering dusk of northern states where the air chills faster than the light fades and the prairie breeze gusts just enough to keep the flags atop the grandstand happy. I’m sitting on the rim of a flowerbed in the middle of Grand Avenue, the fairgrounds’ main thoroughfare. It’s like sitting on a rock in the middle of a river flowing, as steadily down-river as up, with Iowans. They never collide, those heartlanders allegedly more at ease with horizons than crowds. They just eddy out into promontories of beer tents and food stands and the Mighty Bluegrass Shows’ amusement rides. They swirl in sudden congregations and make strategy to live up to the fair’s theme (“Knock Yourself Out”). They beach themselves in pairs on each other’s shoulders, forming oblivious bubbles everyone respects. Bursting them would be a crime. Primal screams spill from behind the 90-year-old brick walls of the grandstand, where Tim McGraw is singing of the pretty sights of summer nights and, out of sync with his surroundings, how nobody ever said life was gonna be fair. Tonight, it is, extremely so. It is the perfect summer night, connected by sounds and smells and lights to all the perfect summer nights before it. I can see “the flashing into life of new banks of lights, seeming to burn up like some intricate fireworks, filling up the great picture, the gaudy booths, the gemmed buildings,” as Phil Stong described it all in “State Fair,” his 1932 novel set in this very place. “A coronet of light shot around the octagonal edge of the Exhibition Building, and the Fair Grounds had formally entered the evening.” Very little has changed in 67 years. An American fair is every bit a feast of nostalgia, summer’s last blast of familiar fun before harvest and winter’ rapid return.
Now this:
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.
July 2026
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
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
continued: “Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this, The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are nor interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. What pure power means you will under. stand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power un- willingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be tree and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictator- ship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to under- stand me?»
–From Orwell’s 1984 (1949).
James says
“Call Roto-Rooter that’s the name, and away go your troubles down the drain.” … old ad jingle.