Weather: Sunny. Highs in the mid 80s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Sunday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the mid 60s. North winds around 5 mph.
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.
The Flagler Humane Society celebrates its 40th anniversary at a 4 p.m. gala at the Caldwell Barn of th Florida Agricultural Museum, 7900 Old Kings road, Palm Coast, 4-7 p.m. The cost is $75 a plate, the dress code is “barn chic.” Cash bar, heavy hors d’oeuvres, a performance by the Flagler Youth Orchestra Quartet.
Sondheim’s “Assassins,” at City Repertory Theatre in CRT’s black box theater at City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B207, Palm Coast. (Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m.) Tickets are $30 adults and $25 students. Season tickets are $150. Individual show tickets and season subscriptions are available online at crtpalmcoast.com or by calling 386-585-9415. Tickets also will be available at the venue just before curtain time. “Assassins,” the 1990 play with music and lyrics by Sondheim and book by John Weidman (which they based on an original concept by Charles Gilbert Jr.), weaves the true-life histories of nine presidential assassins and would-be assassins into a bizarro musical fantasy. The characters include John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooters of Ronald Reagan and Ford, and other rogues. (And yes, Sbordone says, the play takes liberties with history.) See the preview: “Sondheim’s ‘Assassins’ Opens City Repertory Theatre’s New Season, and Dares Go From There.”
“Oliver!” the musical, at Flagler Playhouse, 301 E Moody Blvd, Bunnell. Tickets at $30. Shows are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., from Sept. 23 to Oct. 9. Book tickets here. “Oliver!,” based on Charles Dickens’s 1838 novel, Oliver Twist, is a coming-of-age stage musical written by Lionel Bart and originally staged in London in 1960. Bart won the 1963 Tony Award for Best Original Score. The score includes such pieces as “Food, Glorious Food”, “Consider Yourself” and “I’d Do Anything.” The streets of Victorian England come to life as Oliver, a malnourished orphan in a workhouse, becomes the neglected apprentice of an undertaker. Oliver escapes to London and finds acceptance amongst a group of petty thieves and pickpockets led by the elderly Fagin. When Oliver is captured for a theft that he did not commit, the benevolent victim, Mr. Brownlow takes him in. Fearing the safety of his hideout, Fagin employs the sinister Bill Sikes and the sympathetic Nancy to kidnap him back, threatening Oliver’s chances of discovering the true love of a family. The stage adaptation of the novel is much simplified, with Fagin played to comedic effect rather than villainy.
Notably: It’s Gandhi’s birthday (1869), and that of Graham Greene, that tortured Catholic who’d have enjoyed World Communion Sunday, also today. I recall my first communion when I was 8 or 9. Maybe it could make boring services worth the wait. I’d spent years thinking it a mortal sin, on the one or two occasions we did it, to nibble at an unconsecrated eucharist before one’s communion. (If we were nibbling at one, it suggests we’d have had to commit a larceny to get to one.) As children we had no choice but to endure the weekly torture of Sunday mass, wherever our parents chose to waterboard us. Communion was the redeeming snack. It then became a matter of sampling the different kinds on offer: the tasteless wafers at Catholic churches, the heartier, chunky breads at Greek Orthodox services. I don’t remember what they served at Maronite services. But I do remember that in some churches we could join and extend our two palms to the priest for the wafer to be dropped there, leaving us to put it in our mouths. That was in contrast with the disgusting insistence of some perverted orally-obsessed priests to force us to accept the offering directly from their fingers. I don’t mind the cannibalism symbolized by the whole thing (not symbolized, hardcore churches will tell you: actualized). But it’s vile than to feel the fingernail of a halitosized priest, moistened by countless previous tongues, touching yours as he drops the wafer there, picking up more of your own loathsome vileness (isn’t that what Pascal taught us to think of ourselves?) for the next guy or head-covered gal. Yes, they made women veil themselves at church in Lebanon. Blessed be my Mom, I do not recall her doing so except maybe when she was in too close proximity to my paternal grandmother, who, hopped up on saccharine tablets, could be a bit of a tyrant with these things. The vileness got worse when I got to the United States. In Lebanon for some reason they did not serve us wine at church so much as dip the wafer in wine, if wine was available at all. (Voltaire tells us in his Essai sur les moeurs that after Charlemagne’s time they’d use straws to drink the wine during the offering. The custom was eventually dropped. Environmental concerns?) In the United States in the late 1970s, early 80s, the last years I endured, at a Catholic church on Skillman Avenue in Queens, they were in the habit of passing the chalice around and having you drink from it, one among hundreds (take this, all of you…). Covid had such cozy places to gestate. I’m pretty sure it did not emerge from a Wuhan marketplace but from a Catholic church, incubator of two millennia of viruses. I have not been to church in years, and the few times I have, out of obligation, crushing nostalgia or sadomasochism, I’ve abstained from the offering, not wanting to be struck dead. But in recent months the plain bagels we’ve been getting from Aldi suddenly struck me: same taste, same texture, as some of those eucharists from the tastier, crumblier churches. I’ve been Catholic for a brief moment almost every morning since.
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.
May 2025
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Community Traffic Safety Team Meeting
St. Johns River Water Management District Meeting
Flagler County School Board Workshop: Agenda Items
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
Flagler County Planning Board Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee 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 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
For the full calendar, go here.
There is no question that Mr. Niemann’s performance is a statistical anomaly, not just in this one particular game but also over the last year. As Mr. Niemann said in his postgame interview on Tuesday, for the last two years, he went from one tournament to the next, without pause, living out of a suitcase. His Elo rating, a metric used to gauge the strength of chess players, rose above 2700 after his win over Mr. Carlsen last week, from 2484 in January 2021 — an increase so sharp many people don’t believe it is possible. Statistical analysis by Pawnalyze, a chess analysis blog, showed that Mr. Niemann had consistently outperformed his rating strength to an astonishing degree. Those who think that Mr. Niemann may be cheating can also point to circumstantial evidence from his past. In a recent interview that took place after Mr. Nakamura’s comments, Mr. Niemann acknowledged that he had violated rules of fair play at least twice in the past by using computer assistance in online games.
–From “The Chess World Isn’t Ready for a Cheating Scandal,” The New York Times, Oct. 1, 2022.
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