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Weather: Patchy fog in the morning. Mostly cloudy. Highs in the lower 70s. Northeast winds around 5 mph. Monday Night: Partly cloudy in the evening, then becoming mostly cloudy. Patchy fog after midnight. Lows in the upper 50s. North winds around 5 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable.
Today at the Editor’s Glance:
In Court: Felony court is off today.
The Flagler County Commission meets at 9 a.m. for a regular meeting, when commissioners are expected to approve a $5 million grant for emergency beach sand from the Department of Environmental Protection. The commission meets again in workshop at 1 p.m. to hand out its members’ committee assignments for the year. at the Government Services Building, 1769 E. Moody Boulevard, Building 2, Bunnell. Access meeting agendas and materials here. Meetings stream live on the Flagler County YouTube page.
The Beverly Beach Town Commission meets at 6 p.m. at the meeting hall building behind the Town Hall, 2735 North Oceanshore Boulevard (State Road A1A) in Beverly Beach. See meeting announcements here.
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.
Fantasy of Lights at Palm Coast’s Central Park: The Rotary Club of Flagler County hosts its 17th Annual Fantasy Lights Festival at Central Park in Town Center, through Dec. 30, 6:30-9 p.m. each night. Fantasy Lights is free self-guided walking tour around Central Park with over 50 large animated light displays, festive live and broadcast holiday music, holiday snacks and beverages. A favorite for the kids is Santa’s House and Village with a collection of elf houses festively painted and nestled among the lights, warm fire to roast marsh mallows or create smores, and encircling the village is Santa’s Merry Train Ride. See the full brochure here and the nightly schedule of events https://flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/Fantasy-Lights-Program-2022_FINAL.pdf#page=7
For more information, please contact Bill Butler at 386-986-3760 or 386-445-0598 or email: [email protected].
World Cup: After France’s thrashing of Poland and England doing the same to Senegal on Sunday, the pressure is on Japan and Croatia (at 10 a.m.) and Brazil and Korea (at 2 p.m.) to rival the entertainment. Brazil can always pull it off. They’re in it for the show. The others? They may be too nervous to enjoy themselves. Those two matches will wrap up the round of 16, with the quarterfinals next.
Notably: The AFL-CIO was founded on this day in 1955, when a third of the labor force was unionized, wages were rising, inequality and poverty were diminishing. By 1980, there were just 21 million union members (22 percent of the workforce) on the eve of Ronald Reagan launching his war on unions (he didn’t want Margaret Thatcher to look like the bigger hero). Today, it’s 11.6 percent of the workforce. Last year non-union workers had median weekly earnings of only 83 percent of those of union members. Today 91 percent of Iceland’s workforce is unionized. That country’s economy is the envy of Europe. It has a labor participation rate of nearly 80 percent, 20 points more than the U.S.
Now this: From the pre-Gloria Steinem files. Grit and bear it:
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.
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
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
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
I ended my drive at Stone Mountain, just east of the city. Reputedly the largest hunk of exposed granite in the world, the dome-shaped mountain poked up from Atlanta’s wooded perimeter like a very tall, very bald man in a crowd. Chiseled on its face was the world’s largest bas-relief sculpture, a three-acre carving of the Confederate trinity–Lee, Jackson and Davis–riding horses and holding hats over their hearts. Lee alone stood nine stories tall. Commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1915, and begun by the same artist who crafted Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain was intended as the South’s foremost Confederate shrine. It also became a rallying place for the Ku Klux Klan, which was reborn there in 1915 and later declared Atlanta its Imperial City. But eighty years later, when the park at Stone Mountain’s base was named an Olympic venue, the Invisible Empire became, well, invisible. A museum exhibit on Stone Mountain, opening just before the Games, omitted any mention of the Klan. “I think some chapters are just better left to the historians,” Atlanta’s mayor told the local press.
–From Tony Hurwitz’s Confederates in the Attic (1998).
