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Weather: Mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Saturday Night: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming mostly cloudy. Lows in the upper 50s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Notably: “The number of Gaza residents reported killed during Israel’s 10-week-old war in the territory has already surpassed the toll for any other Arab conflict with Israel in more than 40 years and perhaps any since Israel’s founding in 1948,” The New York Times reported on Dec. 21. There is no “perhaps” about it. I noted this a week or two ago here–the death toll in Gaza matching or exceeding that of the Lebanon war in 1982. The video below is a graphic analysis of the bombing campaign, the use of 2,000-pound bombs, the targeting of civilians–the deliberate targeting, the video analysis confirms: at least 200 instances of 2,000-pound bombs in areas designated safe for civilians. “And though Gaza officials have said counting the dead has become increasingly challenging, most experts say the figure is likely an undercount and express shock at the enormity of the loss. Some military experts said more people had been killed more quickly in this war than during the deadliest stages of the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan or Iraq.” How do we react, when we see a father calling out for his daughter in the rubble–“Salma! Salma!”–or the father saying he’s looking for his four children, with a ridiculously tiny hammer, in an area that looks as if it was just vaporized by Israeli bombs. It is notable that the Times has increasingly been more detailed and implicitly critical in its reporting of the the ongoing massacres–the pogrom of Palestinians, a phrase that needs a bit more currency. But irony has never stopped folly.
—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.
December 2025
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Community Traffic Safety Team Meeting
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry
St. Johns River Water Management District Meeting
Flagler County School Board Workshop: Agenda Items
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 10-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
Flagler County Planning Board Meeting
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn
For the full calendar, go here.
But this was Lebanon, where the end never really came. By the third month of the siege, we found fresh fruit on sale in west Beirut. Some of it was in boxes with Hebrew writing. The Lebanese were buying it, for thousands of dollars, from the Israelis. We scrounged fuel too, sometimes directly from the Israeli army. The Lebanese had discovered that this was easy, and they were right. We did not have to plead for it. We paid for it, bribed for it with dollar bills. One news agency was said to have drained the entire fuel reserve of a Merkava tank with the connivance of its Israeli crew, four soldiers of Russian-Jewish extraction who openly announced that the war was a farce. I watched money being exchanged down by the port, an Israeli soldier warmly shaking hands with a Lebanese taxi driver after selling him a box of army rations and allowing him to drive back to west Beirut. The driver would make handsome profits. The soldier had money to spend. The Israelis were being corrupted by Lebanon, as surely as the Syrians had been corrupted before them.
–From Robert Fisk’s Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (1990).
Bob says
I would hope u are referring to the Biden administration.