Weather: Mostly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning, then showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Humid with highs in the upper 80s. Temperature falling into the mid 80s in the afternoon. Southeast winds around 5 mph, increasing to east 10 to 15 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 90 percent. Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely in the evening, then a chance of showers after midnight. Lows in the lower 70s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable. Chance of rain 70 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.
Notably: It is Charles Boyer’s 125th birthday today (he was born in 1897), but it isn’t the French actor I’d like to highlight today, but Peter Boyer, the American composer and conductor. Last September his “Balance of Power” premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, both for the 90th anniversary season of the National Symphony Orchestra and the 95th birthday of Henry Kissinger. But Boyer appears to be a bipartisan composer. Here he is describing his “Fanfare for Tomorrow”: It was, he writes in the liner notes to his latest recording for the dexterous Naxos label under its wonderful American Classics series, “commissioned for the inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden on January 20, 2021. It was premiered at the United States Capitol during the Inaugural Prelude by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, led by its director, Colonel Jason K. Fettig. In what had to be a unique way for a composer to experience a premiere, I heard this fanfare being performed in the background of CNN’s television coverage, at the very moment when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris arrived at the Capitol, to take their oaths as the President and Vice President of the United States. Shortly after the premiere, I created this new orchestral version of the fanfare.” The piece is immediately recognizably American–the bright colors, the pomp, the touch of pomposity too, the verve and energy we hear in Copland and the martial echoes from Sousa, if not also the superhero tingles of a John Williams score: It’s all there. It is the America of expansive skies and hearts, of possibilities and discovery, and it is very much not in keeping with our sour moods of late. I don’t think it’s the best piece on the album, but it’s a very good piece, and for today, it’s the ideally named piece to also celebrate the anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech (all of which you can read about, and watch, here). Another Boyer work, “Radiance,” not to be confused with the new development north of Eagle Lakes that just made it through the County Commission, is an all-strings piece about nine minutes long that’s less bombastic and more complex (I am hoping a youth orchestra version can make its way to the music stands of the Flagler Youth Orchestra), but I couldn’t find a full rendition to post. You can watch the version of “Fanfare” Boyer watched here, and the version he rewrote, and that was recorded for Naxos, below. The entire album is worth its minimal price of $14
Now this: “Fanfare for Tomorrow.”
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 cheryl@flagleryouthorchestra.org.
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.
May 2025
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Palm Coast Democratic Club Recap Meeting
Town of Marineland Commission Meeting
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Friday Blue Forum
A Night at the Museum
For the full calendar, go here.
I watched a man hanged once; it seemed to me worse than a thousand murders. I never went into a jail without feeling (most visitors to jails feel the same) that my place was on the other side of the bars. I thought then–I think now, for that matter–that the worst criminal who ever walked is morally superior to a hanging judge. But of course I had to keep these notions to myself, because of the almost utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. In the end I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and that people can be trusted to behave decently if only you will let them alone. This of course was sentimental nonsense. I see now as I did not see then, that it is always necessary to protect peaceful people from violence. In any state of society where crime can be profitable you have got to have a harsh criminal law and administer it ruthlessly; the alternative is Al Capone. But the feeling that punishment is evil arises inescapably in those who have to administer it. I should expect to find that even in England many policemen, judges, prison warders, and the like are haunted by a secret horror of what they do. But in Burma it was a double oppression that we were committing. Not only were we hanging people and putting them in jail and so forth; we were doing it in the capacity of unwanted foreign invaders.
–From George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).
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