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Weather: Partly cloudy. Not as cool with highs in the lower 80s. Southeast winds around 5 mph. Friday Night: Mostly cloudy. Lows in the mid 60s. Southeast winds around 5 mph. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
In Court: Three sentencings are scheduled for today. At 8:30, Gabriella and her brother Nicholas Alo are sentenced on various charges resulting from the assault of a juvenile and of a Flagler Beach woman who came to the juvenile’s aid last January. (“Brother and Sister Face Several Felony Charges in Beating and Hit-and-Run at Wickline Park.”) It’s likely to be a long hearing. Both have tendered open pleas, leaving it to the judge to decide their punishment. That means potentially many witnesses will take the stand to sway Circuit Judge Terence Perkins’s decision, though the State Attorney’s Office is recommending five years in prison and 10 years on probation for Nicholas. Gabriella faces much more serious charges, two of them second degree felonies, one of them a first degree felony, with combined maximum exposure to 65 years in prison. The state had originally recommended 15 years in prison followed by 15 on probation, but struck that off the plea deal. At 1:30 p.m., Brenan Hill is sentenced to life in prison on a second degree murder conviction. That’s a foregone conclusion. Hill was tried and found guilty by a jury last September (“Jury Finds Brenan Hill Guilty In Murder of Savannah Gonzalez, and Faces 25 Years to Life in Prison.”) Perkins has little discretion in the matter, though the defense has filed several motions–for a new trial, and to strike two of the three counts against Hill on double jeopardy grounds.
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. See previous podcasts here. Today, on holiday despair, depression and suicide, and what to do about it, plus a few words from Bill Butler about Fantasy Lights in Town Center. On WNZF at 94.9 FM and 1550 AM.
The Blue 24 Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the conference room behind the Beverly Beach Town Hall, 2735 North Oceanshore Boulevard, Beverly Beach. It normally meets at the Palm Coast Community Center, but will be meeting at Beverly Beach through Aug. 11. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
First Friday in Flagler Beach, the monthly festival of music, food and leisure, is scheduled for this evening at Downtown’s Veterans Park, 105 South 2nd Street, from 5 to 9 p.m. Featured tonight: Christmas music by Flagler school choirs. The event is overseen by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and run by Laverne M. Shank Jr. and Surf 97.3
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: It’s been interesting to watch the coverage o the death of Kissinger. I’ve stayed away from television, as always–I hardly know anymore how to dial up CNN, let alone the other hobbling networks–but Press Reader gives me a look at the world’s print press every morning. The papers are trying to balance the horror that was Kissinger with the fascination he also was, and the perverse respect he commanded. The Las Vegas Review Journal runs a mid-page, dominant picture of him with oddly rouged lips–he looks more like my paternal grandma Alice in that one–with a simple, neutral headline, his name below 1923-2023. The sub-head is just as tame: “Still-controversial figure was secretary of state under Presidents Ford and Nixon,” as if that, as opposed to his graveyards on so many continents, was the hook. The LATimes puts him at mid-page, too, with a similar, less rouged portrait, the “Henry Kissinger 1923-2023” bit, and the headline: “Towering figure in U.S. foreign policy,” and in smaller print: “Architect of Cold War strategy was as controversial as influential.” Then there’s “Lightning Rod of diplomacy” (Denver Post), the sort of headline that appears to acknowledge something off but still slobbers; “A powerful voice who reshaped the world, for better and worse,” the grammatically incorrect, top-of-the-fold headline from the Boston Globe, showing a much younger Kissinger jabbing a finger at an apparent news conference. The New York Times put him at mid-page, showing him in a sideway portrait in the typically thoughtful pose, chin resting on hand and gazing at something in the distance, not his conscience. The headline? “Strong-Willed Architect of the Cold War.” The entire membership of the American Institute of Architects must be vomiting. Le Devoir, the French daily from Montreal, has a similar, larger sideways profile, hand on chin, but in this one Kissinger is looking more toward the ground, scoping out his space in hell. The news must’ve broken too late for the European and Asian papers to pick up the story, with the Jerusalem Post orgasming a headline across the top of the page about Netanyahu “prepared to restart war as end of pause nears.” Le Monde publishes the next day’s paper in the afternoon, so the papers that appeared in kiosks today are Friday’s editions. Here he is, sitting on a window ledge between a portrait of Nixon and one of Ford: “Henry Kissinger La diplomatie entre ombre et lumière” (Diplomacy between shadow and light), and for a moment I thought I’d see Disney’s Lumière jump out and sing Be Our Guest. Le Monde notes on the front page what I had forgotten: he was actually the 1973 co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, with Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho: how best to crown a war that wiped out 2 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans, not counting American mercenaries and civilians? I’m surprised at Le Monde’s fawning. It used to be reliably left of center. Page two is more like it: “L’embarras de Washington face a Israel.” For more candid assessments, we have to turn to Mother Jones: “Dead at 100, Henry Kissinger Leaves Behind a Bloody Legacy.” Had Christopher Hitchens not donated his body to science, there might have been a party around his grave today. I’m sure he’ll pull a Lazarus somewhere to celebrate the final demise of his nemesis.
—P.T.
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Begin, however, had a trump card. He brought the actual text of a letter from Carter’s predecessor, Gerald Ford. In 1975, Ford’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, had been trying to broker an agreement in which Israel would withdraw from a portion of Sinai that it had occupied in the 1973 war. During that negotiation, the U.S. made a number of pledges, including the one that Begin brought with him, in which America agreed not to produce any peace proposals without first consulting the Israelis. Little had been gained from this extraordinary commitment, but it had hung over American policy makers ever since. In effect, Ford’s pledge gave Begin a powerful veto over any peace proposal and compromised the American posture of being an impartial broker.
–From Lawrence Wright’s Thirteen Days in September (2014).
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