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Weather: Mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 90s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Saturday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the lower 70s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Check tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Wickline Park, 315 South 7th Street, featuring prepared food, fruit, vegetables , handmade products and local arts from more than 30 local merchants. The market is hosted by Flagler Strong, a non-profit.
Perch-a-thon: Chris Dalessio, a Palm Coast resident, is holding a two-day fund-raiser for Bunnell Elementary’s lunch program, by perching himself atop a boom at Flagler Beach’s Veterans Park from Aug. 25 to the 27th. The city of Flagler Beach granted Dalessio a park-fee waiver. Dalessio was to go up Friday evening and stay there until 2 p.m. Sunday. There will also be a bounce house and other activities. Disclaimer: The Flagler County school district and Bunnell Elementary are not partners in the event, nor did they seek it out, the district’s board attorney said. And be aware that this year, all students in all Flagler County schools, regardless of background, are eligible for free breakfasts and lunches, and carry no debts.
Gamble Jam: Musicians of all ages can bring instruments and chairs and join in the jam session, 2 to 5 p.m. . Program is free with park admission! Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach, 3100 S. Oceanshore Blvd., Flagler Beach, FL. Call the Ranger Station at (386) 517-2086 for more information. The Gamble Jam is a family-friendly event that occurs every second and fourth Saturday of the month. The park hosts this acoustic jam session at one of the pavilions along the river to honor the memory of James Gamble Rogers IV, the Florida folk musician who lost his life in 1991 while trying to rescue a swimmer in the rough surf.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 10 a.m. to 1 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 Coming Days:
August 29: Bunnell Elementary Segregation Crisis/School-Community Forum, 6 p.m. at the G.W. Carver Center at 201 E. Drain Street, Bunnell. Interim Superintendent LaShakia Moore is hosting the forum to discuss the fallout from the segregation assembly at Bunnell Elementary earlier this month. The district did not mention the issue in its announcement of the forum, describing it as inviting “everyone in the community to join her for a sit-down discussion on the power of school and community connections. […] This will be an opportunity to have an open dialogue with Flagler Schools administrators, local officials, community-based organizations, families, stakeholders, and students. Bring your questions, concerns, and ideas on building better connections within our Flagler Schools community.”
September 16: Flagler OARS’ 3rd Annual Recovery Festival at Veterans Park in Flagler Beach, from 3 to 9 p.m., with live bands, food trucks, exhibitors, hosted by Open Arms Recovery Services. Vendor booth space and sponsorships available. Click here or contact [email protected].
Keep in Mind: The Belle Terre Swim & Racquet Club is open, welcoming and taking new memberships, and if you enroll before Sept. 1, you’ll beat the price increase kicking in then. Experience the many amenities including a lap pool, wading pool, tennis/pickleball courts, sauna, and a modern wellness center–all for less than what you’d pay just for a fitness center at your typical commercial gym. Friendly staff is available to answer any questions you may have about becoming a member. Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club is the sort of place where you can connect with fellow community members and experience the welcoming atmosphere that sets BTSRC apart. If you have any questions, feel free to call at 386-446-6717. If you would like to learn more about our club and membership options please visit online.
Storytime: Raymond Carver is the Emily Dickinson of the American short story, a blunt instrument that seems to seethe and scalp you by surprise. His working class characters, like Al in “Jerry Molly and Sam,” are as common as cliches. He’s married, overextended, cheating, he goes out drinking too often, he keeps a bank of lies to use on his wife. He has two young children his wife slaps around when she loses it. He wants to screw it all. He reminds me of a man I recently read about in an arrest report for child abuse (“fuck this family and fuck you,” that father told his daughter, before he “started throwing things in the garage in an aggressive manner.” Carver’s story: “In the garage, he said, ‘Goddamn you all!’ and kicked the rake across the cement floor. Then he lit a cigarette and tried to get hold of himself.” The fire pit of the story is Suzy, “the goddamn dog.” His wife’s sister gifted it to the kids, the way she’s always making gifts that end up costing money. His wife Betty had just convinced him to move into a “cushy two-hundred-a-month-place” (it appeared in his first collection, Will You Please Be Quiet Please, in 1976, when $200 was worth what would be $1,100 today) just as they were laying off at the manufacturing company. He thinks he’s next. He has no control over much of anything. So the dog: he wants to get rid of it. Disappear it. He’d do it sneakily. Nobody would know. So he finally does. At “the darkened end of the street.” Then a bar, flirting with a turtlenecked girl who doesn’t give him the attention he wants. He ends up with Jill, the mistress (not exactly a Carver sort of term), but she’s too interested in hunting for blackheads. The dark end of the street is weighing on him. Back home, the kids have lost it, so has Betty, who’s worried about a nervous breakdown. “I know you don’t love me any more–goddamn you!–but you don’t even love the kids!” He promises her everything will be all right. He leaves: “He saw his whole life a ruin from here on in. If he lived another fifty years–hardly likely-he felt he’d never get over it, abandoning the dog. He felt he was finished if he didn’t find the dog. A man who would get rid of a little dog wasn’t worth a damn. That kind of man would do anything, would stop at nothing.” He had misjudged who really was at the dark end of the street, and who was finding whom. He finds Suzy again. “The world was full of dogs. There were dogs and there were dogs. Some dogs you just couldn’t do anything with.” I’m not sure he was referring to Suzy by then, who’d whisked off around a house.
—P.T.
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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.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
In the midsized city where I live, OxyContin continued to be viewed as a rural problem into the early 2010s—a problem in the coalfields, some four hours to the west. While the Roanoke Times covered the 2007 sentencing hearing of Purdue Pharma executives, it rarely mentioned OxyContin after that. We in Roanoke had heard opioid abuse was seeping into distressed factory towns like those in Henry County, but very rarely did our newspaper report on it. We were safe in our ignorance, or so we thought—content to stereotype drug addiction as the affliction of jobless hillbillies, a small group of inner-city blacks, and a few misguided suburban kids. But another invisible hand was upon us. Heinrich Dreser’s drug moved seamlessly across city and county lines, with zero regard for politics, race, neighborhood, or class.
–From Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America, by Beth macy (2018).
Laurel says
DeSantis may spout off crazy town, but he doesn’t have the personality to pull it off.