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Weather: Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of thunderstorms. A chance of showers in the morning, then showers likely in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 70s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph, becoming northwest in the afternoon. Chance of rain 60 percent. Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers likely with a chance of thunderstorms in the evening, then a chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms after midnight. Patchy fog after midnight. Lows around 60. Southeast winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 60 percent.See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
Flagler County Public Library Book and Bake Sale, 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast. Join us and browse the hard and soft-cover books, audio and video tapes, puzzles and a wonderful BAKE SALE! All at super-low bargain prices for the holidays. Stock up for the cold hard winter. Bring the kids, friends and neighbors. Pass the word!
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.
The Flagler Beach All Stars hold their monthly beach clean-up starting at 9 a.m. in front of the Flagler Beach pier. All volunteers welcome.
Palm Coast Historical Society Speaker Series: Carrie Ayvar on More Than Orange Blossoms: Feisty, Fabulous Females of Florida”, A free lecture, 10 a.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. Though not always in the history books, the women who helped build, form, shape, and develop the state have inspired hope and possibility. Stories of strong, courageous women like Julia Tuttle, known as the Mother of Miami, or Mary McLeod Bethune, daughter of enslaved parents who went on to become an advisor to several US presidents, and other brave women who influenced and impacted their communities, Florida, and the nation. Discover and rediscover some of the women who grew and shaped the state!
Sunshine and Sandals Social at Cornerstone: Every first Saturday we invite new residents out to learn everything about Flagler County at Cornerstone Center, 608 E. Moody Blvd, Bunnell, 1 to 2:30 p.m. We have a great time going over dog friendly beaches and parks, local social clubs you can be a part of as well as local favorite restaurants.
‘Tuck Everlasting,’ at Limelight Theater, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. Tickets: $22.50. Book here. 7:30 p.m., except on Sundays, when the show is at 2 p.m. What would you do if you had all eternity? Eleven-year-old Winnie Foster yearns for a life of adventure beyond her white picket fence, but not until she becomes unexpectedly entwined with the Tuck Family does she get more than she could have imagined. When Winnie learns of the magic behind the Tuck’s unending youth, she must fight to protect their secret from those who would do anything for a chance at eternal life. As her adventure unfolds, Winnie faces an extraordinary choice: return to her life, or continue with the Tucks on their infinite journey.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
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.
 Keep Their Lights On Over the Holidays: Flagler Cares, the social service non-profit celebrating its 10th anniversary, is marking the occasion with a fund-raiser to "Keep the Holiday Lights On" by encouraging people to sponsor one or more struggling household's electric bill for a month over the Christmas season. Each sponsorship amounts to $100 donation, with every cent going toward payment of a local power bill. See the donation page here. Every time another household is sponsored, a light goes on on top of a house at Flagler Cares' fundraising page. The goal of the fun-raiser, which Flagler Cares would happily exceed, is to support at least 100 families (10 households for each of the 10 years that Flagler Cares has been in existence). Flagler Cares will start taking applications for the utility fund later this month. Because of its existing programs, the organization already has procedures in place to vet people for this type of assistance, ensuring that only the needy qualify. |
Notably: It can be shocking to realize, if we pause and think about what we’re reading for a moment, how easily we accept, how easily we absorb, racist, bigoted stereotypes, even admire them, because we may admire the writer, because we may be intimidated by the thickness of his book and the degree to which he was celebrated, as Will Durant was from the time he published the first volume of his History of Civilization in 1935. Toward the end of the 935-page book (not including the notes and bibliography), we get this. I’m quoting it at length, because you really need to get the full sense of the charm of Durant’s writing, and the way he raptures you into his little snare, before he springs the orientalist trap he is surely not aware of. The History of Civilization’s first volume had the virtue of looking at history as a global reality, not a Western or American or Eurocentric one. Nevertheless, the orientalism, in the worst sense of the term, is as embarrassingly pronounced. The passage (and so many parts of the book) could only have been written without that self-awareness of imperial arrogance that Graham Greene would eventually embody in Alden Pyle in The Quiet American and that, I think, we have yet to learn from. I’m not sure we have yet learned that we continue to write, to speak, in those stereotypes, if maybe transferred to different people or groups (Arabs and anyone not heterosexual comes to mind). Here’s the passage:
“The Japanese character, like that of man everywhere, is a mosaic of contradictions; for life offers us diverse situations at diverse times, and demands of us alternately force and gentleness, levity and gravity, patience and courage, modesty and pride. Therefore we must not be prejudiced against the Japanese because they are sentimental and realistic, sensitive and stoical, expressive and reticent, excitable and restrained; aboundingly cheerful, humorous and pleasure-loving, and inclined to picturesque suicide; lovingly kind—often to animals, sometimes to women—and occasionally cruel to animals and men. The typical Japanese has all the qualities of the warrior—pugnacity and courage, and an unrivaled readiness to die; and yet, very often, he has the soul of an artist—sensuous, impressionable, and almost instinctively possessed of taste. He is sober and unostentatious, frugal and industrious, curious and studious, loyal and patient, with an heroic capacity for details; he is cunning and supple, like most physically small persons; he has a nimble intelligence, not highly creative in the field of thought, but capable of quick comprehension, adaptation, and practical achievement. The spirit and vanity of a Frenchman, the courage and narrowness of a Briton, the hot temper and artistry of an Italian, the energy and commercialism of an American, the sensitiveness and shrewdness of a Jew—all these have come together to make the Japanese.”
Should Durant be excused because he was a man of his time? I don’t think so. We don’t excuse any historians or intellectuals for being people of their time: if they cannot transcend their time, then who? The point is made simply, lucidly and beautifully by Fernand Braudel, the French historian, who wrote in his Mediterranean, at the same time that Durant was writing his civilizations, the following line: “The image that the stranger conceives and peddles of a country is often as irreducible as it is false.” Of course, we could spend eternity debating the very idea of “national character,” if not “character,” tout court. But I should also note that this item here in no way diminishes my admiration for Will and Ariel Durant, or what they achieved over 30 or 40 years: I continue to reread them, despite the occasional dread and hair-raising. I would not have been able to belabor my pedantry over the passage above had I not just finished reading, for the third time, that often unforgivably wrong-headed but more often delightful book.
—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.
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
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
For the full calendar, go here.
Man is not willingly a political animal. The human male associates with his fellows less by desire than by habit, imitation, and the compulsion of circumstance; he does not love society so much as he fears solitude. He combines with other men because isolation endangers him, and because there are many things that can be done better together than alone; in his heart he is a solitary individual, pitted heroically against the world. If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes death with taxes, and yearns for that government which governs least. If he asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
–From Will Durant’s Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I (1935).
Pogo says
@Good news…
…while the important business of debating, commenting, and emoting about what has been said about civilization — brutes, criminals, and insane of every type are creating the need for civilization’s post-mortem; something else to chew on.
I smoke in moderation. Only one cigar at a time.
— Mark Twain