Weather: Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of thunderstorms. A chance of showers, mainly in the morning. Highs in the lower 80s. East winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 30 percent. Monday Night: Mostly clear. Areas of fog after midnight. Lows in the mid 60s. East winds around 5 mph.
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Today at the Editor’s Glance:
Early Voting and voting by mail: Voting is ongoing for the general election, culminating with Election day on Nov. 8. See a sample ballot here. Early voting is on, through November 5, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at four sites in the county, listed here. You may vote early at any of the four sites regardless of your precinct location. To vote by mail, request your mail-in ballot here. Because of the Legislature’s new law, restricting voting convenience, drop boxes are available, but only to a limited degree. The ballot drop box at the Elections Office will be monitored by a staff member beginning 60 days prior to the election, through Election Day. This drop box will no longer be available after office hours or on weekends, except during the early voting period. Other drop boxes will be available at early voting locations, but only during the days of early voting, and only during voting hours. Mail ballots must be received in the Elections Office by 7 p.m. on Election Day in order to be counted. If returning your ballot by mail, please allow at least ten days for delivery. A postmark does not extend this deadline. You may track your ballot here. All other election-procedure related inquiries can be answered at the Elections Office’s website.
Will Furry Courtney VandeBunte Flagler County Commission Jane Gentile-Youd (NPA) Leann Pennington (R) Palm Coast City Council Alan Lowe, District 2 Theresa Carli Pontieri, District 2 Fernando Melendez, District 4 Cathy Heighter, District 4 Background Flagler County Voters Will Vote on Whether to Retain 11 Judges Will Furry Chooses Sleaze. Again. Elections 2022 |
In Court: A day of arraignments in Flagler County Circuit Court. At the United States Supreme Court today, justices at 10 a.m. hear oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, cases questioning the use of affirmative action in undergraduate admissions at public and private universities. SCOTUS Blog reports that 33 briefs support SFFA and 60 briefs support the universities. They are summarized here. The court’s website will post the audio of the arguments later this week.
Daytona State College students: Advance Registration for Spring 2023 today on all DSC campuses for currently enrolled students based on priority.
Halloween trunk or treat at St Thomas Episcopal Church, 5400 Belle Terre Parkway, Palm Coast, in the parking lot, from 5 to 7 p.m.
The Halloween Hall of Terror is back at Palm Coast Fire Station 21, Monday Oct. 31 from 7 to 10 p.m. This year’s theme, Halloween: The Night He Came Home, will have attendees coming face-to-face with Michael Myers as they make their way through scenes from the popular horror film franchise. All ages welcome, but supervision is recommended for children 13 and younger. Admission is free.
Nar-Anon Family Groups offers hope and help for families and friends of addicts through a 12-step program, 6 p.m. at St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church, 303 Palm Coast Pkwy NE, Palm Coast, Fellowship Hall Entrance. See the website, www.nar-anon.org, or call (800) 477-6291. Find virtual meetings here.
In Coming Days:
5th Annual Hidden Treasures at Hidden Trails Community Sale, November 5, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Hidden Trails Community Center and Park, 6108 Mahogany Boulevard, Bunnell (in Daytona North.) The event is in cooperation with Flagler County government. Aside from endless treasures, there will be live music, food vendors, and tons of fun. Support small business, and give those who share treasures the opportunity to gain from it, as well as those who take them home. There will be Antiques, Appliances, Tools, Jewelry, Art of every genre, Crafts of every kind, Vendors who have small businesses to encourage prosperity, and so much more. You can make new friends, listen to great music, eat delicious food, enjoy raffles and family fun, and so much more. Bring your Mom, or buy her something beautiful and unique. If you are a Flagler Resident, Artist, Crafter, or Vendor, please sign up, and meet us there. Call, Text, Email to 386-295-0611, or ridingtherays@gmail.com or visit the event “Hidden Treasures at Hidden trails” on Facebook.
FEMA Assistance Reminder: If you were impacted by Hurricane Ian and live in one of the 26 counties designated for disaster assistance, Flagler County among them, FEMA may be able to help. To apply you can visit a Disaster Recovery Center, go online to disasterassistance.gov use the FEMA app on your smartphone, or call 800-621-3362. The line is open every day from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Notably: A San Jose-born idea since 2001 has given books for treats instead of candy on Halloween: “Since Halloween 2001, we’ve given up to 10,000 books each year to excited, costumed Willow Glen trick-or-treaters. Then-Mayor Ron Gonzales, then-Councilman Ken Yeager, Mayor Chuck Reed and Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio joined us in greeting the kids and happy parents,” reads the movement’s website. “Books feed children’s minds, while candy only feeds their cavities. Books encourage children to read, and parents to read with them and/or ask them about their books. Many children rarely receive books as gifts, so even gently read books are special treats. The National Endowment for the Arts recently released a report revealing that the average 15- to 24-year-old spends seven minutes daily on “voluntary” reading. If we kindle children’s excitement about reading before they are teenagers, they will continue the habit into adulthood.” I imagine if the idea was tried in Flagler County, the mum on liberty, that vigilante group of illiterate mullahs in drag, would start a movement to firebomb homes that take part.
Now this:
Flagler Beach Webcam:
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Water once flowed out of Lake Okeechobee without interruption, or interference from men. Aspiring farmers wanted to challenge her blue hegemony. All that rich peat beneath the lakes was going to waste! Melaleuca quinquenervia was an exotic invasive, an Australian tree imported to suck the Florida swamp dry. If you were a swamp kid, you were weaned on the story of the Four Pilots of the Apocalypse, these men who had flown over the swamp in tiny Cessnas and sprinkled melaleuca seeds out of restaurant salt and pepper shakers. Exotic invasives, the “strangler species” threatened our family long before the World of Darkness. The Army Corps of Engineers had planted thousands of melaleuca trees in the 1940s as part of their Drainage Project, back when the government thought it was possible to turn our tree islands into a pleated yellowland of crops. I was raised to be suspicious of the Army Corps of Engineers, with good reason. The dikes and levees that the Army Corps had recommended for flood control had turned the last virgin mahogany stands into dust bowls; in other places, wildfire burned the peat beds down to witchy fingers of lime. Now the melaleucas had formed an “impermeable monoculture.” That meant a forest with just one kind of tree in it. Most of the gladesmen had long ago abandoned the dream of farming their islands. You could sum up the response of the Army Corps of Engineers and the swamp developers in one word, said our dad: “Oops!” Forest fires raged and burned the swamp down to peat. Frosts came and a man could break his knife trying to slice through a glade tomato. By 1950, the dream of drainage was largely dead. The Army Corps of Engineers changed its objective from draining the “wasteland” of the swamp islands to saving them. Unfortunately for my family, the melaleucas were still root-committed to the old plan, the drainage scheme. They swallowed fifty acres a day.
–From Karen Russell’s Swamplandia (2011).
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