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Weather: Partly cloudy. Highs in the lower 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Thursday Night: Mostly cloudy. Not as cool with lows in the upper 50s. East winds around 5 mph. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
In Court: Willie Gardner is back in court at 8:30 a.m. as his lawyer attempts to keep him from having to serve a jail sentence in an animal cruelty case. See: “In Rare Rebuke, Judge Rejects Plea Agreement and Asks for Jail Time in Dog Abuse Case.”
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Nightly from 6 to 9 p.m. at Palm Coast’s Central Park, with 55 lighted displays you can enjoy with a leisurely stroll around the pond in the park. Admission to Fantasy Lights is free, but donations to support Rotary’s service work are gladly accepted. Holiday music will pipe through the speaker system throughout the park, Santa’s Village, which has several elf houses for the kids to explore, will be open, with Santa’s Merry Train Ride nightly (weather permitting), and Santa will be there every Sunday night until Christmas, plus snow on weekends! On certain nights, live musical performances will be held on the stage.
In Coming Days:
Dec. 2: Daytona State College is hosting a special early enrollment day on Saturday, Dec. 2 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Daytona Beach Campus to help new students with enrollment, class registration, financial aid and academic advising. Spring Semester classes begin January 16 and early registration offers the best chance for the broadest range of courses. Students can call 386-506-3642 or register for an enrollment appointment time at DaytonaState.edu/Enrollment-
Dec. 23: Culmination of toy drive for Toys for Tots at AW Custom Kitchens, European Village, starting at 11 a.m. A drawing for all eligible participants will take place at 2 p.m. Anyone who will have donated toys for the drive will have a chance to win various items, including a 65-inch 4K Smart TV, an Apple iPad, a pair of Apple Air Pods, and gift cards from the co-sponsors of the event. Fifty such cards have been donated. With proof of a voucher, donors also will receive a free hot dog, a free drink, a free popcorn, a free cotton candy, and a free snow cone. There will be a variety of fun things to do such as a bouncy house for children in thanks to the community for its generosity. See details here.
Notably: Annie Ernaux, the 2022 winner of the literature Nobel, in 2011 wrote a very brief book, half memoir, half essay, 100 percent shattering, called L’autre fille, or The Other Girl. It’s all in the title. When she was 10, she overheard a conversation and learned that she had a sister who died at age 6 of diphtheria, before Annie was born. Her parents never told her about the death, never acknowledged it to her. She pieced the story together from shreds here and there, and from the sense that her parents would have preferred her sister to her. Halfway through Ernaux refers to a cartoon by Resier, or Jean-Mar Resier, who died in 1983 after a career in the style of Charlie Hebdo. Here’s the cartoon. The sign says: “Bridge of the Lost Children.” Make of it what you will:
—P.T.
Now this: Marineland Mayor Angela TenBroeck:
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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.
January 2026
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Stetson University Concert Choir in Concert with Orlando Philharmonic
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Stetson University Concert Choir in Concert with Orlando Philharmonic
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
I doubt that anyone can travel the length of the Florida Keys without having communicated to his mind a sense of the uniqueness of this land of sky and water and scattered mangrove-covered islands. The atmosphere of the Keys is strongly and peculiarly their own. It may be that here, more than in most places, remembrance of the past and intimations of the future are linked with present reality. In bare and jaggedly corroded rock, sculptured with the patterns of the corals, there is the desolation of a dead past. In the multicolored sea gardens seen from a boat as one drifts above them, there is a tropical lushness and mystery, a throbbing sense of the pressure of life; in coral reef and mangrove swamp there are the dimly seen foreshadowings of the future.
–From Rachel Carson’s The Edge of the Sea (1955).
Pogo says
@Kissinger died before the planet he killed —
https://www.google.com/search?q=Kissinger
leaving you to pay for his, and your, funerals.
And so it went.
Laurel says
OMG! I only saw highlights, so biased so far, but I cannot wait to see the full Newsom v. DeSantis debate! Fire up the popcorn! I could almost feel sorry for DeSantis…almost…well, no. DeSantis just squirmed with a false smile plastered throughout, it was such a delight! I never paid any attention to Newsom before, but now I am all ears!
Newsom and Buttigieg for the future, YES! Time for brains, action and civil behavior!
Sherry says
I watch most of the debate. From the get go it was massively biased:
1. FOX
2. Hannity
3. Questions stilted to make Florida appear to be better than California
4. Supposed facts in questions cherry picked . . . again to make FL look better
5. DeSantis allowed to talk over governor Newsom again and again
Even with all that going for him. . . desantis was all fear filled, and attack exaggeration. . . topped with emotional bluster. . . typical!
Newsom was more calm, professional and credible.
Laurel says
Let me tell you how stupid I think DeSantis is. There are a whole lot of voters in California…
Laurel says
Oh, and don’t forget Kati Porter! Yeppers.