Weather: Partly cloudy with a chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 80s. North winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Sunday Night: Mostly clear. A chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the evening. Lows in the lower 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable. Chance of rain 50 percent.
Today at the Editor’s Glance:
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 1 to 4 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
In medias res: Perhaps trying desperately to atone for its publisher’s incomprehensible and incoherent endorsement of one of the publication’s main advertisers and this county’s chairman of bigotry, the Observer nevertheless had a good story about 17-year-old organizer and FPC student Cameron Driggers’s mobilization of peers to campaign and get involved on behalf of school board candidates. “I think this rally and the active work that we’ve been doing on [candidates’] behalf is really a testament to how Gen Z is standing up and making their voice heard, and showing that we’re not going to take oppression lying down, we’re going to stand up for our rights,” Driggers told the Observer’s Jonathan Simmons, who reports: “Local LGBT activist and FPC student Jack Petocz helped organize the local group “Recall FCSB” — for “Recall Flagler County School Board” — last November after School Board incumbent Jill Woolbright pushed to have the district remove a black LGBT memoir, “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” from school media centers. Some students interpreted that act as a response to the book’s LGBT themes; Woolbright has said that her opposition to the text’s presence in schools stemmed from its explicit sexual content.” See the story here.
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: We should be shocked that Salman Rushdie got stabbed 10 times by a Muslim fanatic–a British citizen of Indian descent living in the United States for the past 20 years–on American soil. We should be more shocked by the fact that the attack is not, in fact, shocking, so much as another shard in an accumulating mass of degradation of discourse, of norms, of freedoms–democratic, literary, artistic–in direct proportion to a rise in insurrectionist fevers and religious nationalism. The shock is that it is a crime increasingly ordinary, that the fanatics of Karachi, Kandahar or the southern suburbs of Beirut are more kin than strangers to their Christian fanatics in this country. What does it matter that Rushdie’s would-be murderer is a Shiite-sympathizing bigot, when his fanaticism is not degrees apart but indistinguishable (have we forgotten Charlottesville? The Charleston church massacre? The recent Buffalo massacre?) from the white nationalism fueling mass or individual murders since the emergence of Trump and his apologists? “Rapidly, ruthlessly, the world of religion was setting the terms of the debate,” Rushdie wrote in Joseph Anton, his third-person memoir of living in hiding for 10 years after Khomeini’s fatwa in 1989, following the publication of The Satanic Verses (Khomeini, like any fanatic, had no sense of humor). “The secular world, less organized, less united, and, essentially, less concerned, lagged far behind; and much vital ground was given up without a struggle.” He had also written this: “On the day the novel was published in America, February 22, 1989, there was a full-page advertisement in The New York Times paid for by the Association of American Publishers, the American Booksellers’ Association and the American Library Association. “Free people write books,” it said. “Free people publish books. Free people sell books. Free people buy books. Free people read books. In the spirit of America’s commitment to free expression we inform the public that this book will be available to readers at bookshops and libraries throughout the country.” And he was, after all, at that talk at the Chautauqua Institution in new York (no stranger to Christian currents) to talk about the importance of America as a haven for writers. Are you listening, Jill Woolbright? Are you listening, Janet McDonald? Dumb questions.
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.
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
Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Democratic Women’s Club
Uncouth: Open Mic Night
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Blue 24 Forum
“I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” at City Repertory Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
He was remembering something Günter Grass had once said to him about losing: that it taught you more profound lessons than winning did. The victors believed themselves and their worldviews justified and validated and learned nothing. The losers had to reevaluate everything they had thought to be true and worth fighting for, and so had a chance of learning, the hard way, the deepest lessons life had to teach. The first thing he learned was that now he knew where the bottom was. When you hit bottom you knew how deep the water you were in really was. And you knew that you never wanted to be there again.
–From Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton: A Memoir (2012).
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