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Weather: Mostly sunny. Highs in the mid 70s. East winds 10 to 15 mph. Monday Night: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Lows in the upper 50s. East winds 5 to 10 mph.See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
Nar-Anon Family GroupsĀ offers hope and help for families and friends of addicts through a 12-step program, 6 p.m. at St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church, 303 Palm Coast Pkwy NE, Palm Coast, Fellowship Hall Entrance. See the website, www.nar-anon.org, or call (800) 477-6291. Find virtual meetingsĀ here.
The Flagler County Beekeepers AssociationĀ holds its monthly meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Flagler Agricultural Center, 150 Sawgrass Rd., Bunnell (the county fairgrounds). This is a meeting for beekeepers in Flagler and surrounding counties (and those interested in the trade). The meetings have a speaker, Q & A, and refreshments are served. It is a great way to gain support as a beekeeper or learn how to become one. All are welcome. Meetings take place the fourth Monday of every month. Contact Kris Daniels at 704-200-8075.
The Bunnell City CommissionĀ meets at 7 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell, where the City Commission is holding its meetings until it is able to occupy its own City Hall on Commerce Parkway likely in early 2023. To access meeting agendas, materials and minutes,Ā go here.
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. |
Diary: The Friday before last I was in bed having a bit of a hard time sleeping. I was hearing what I thought were one of those long YouTube videos of rain. I thought Cheryl was playing one–she has trouble sleeping–though usually she plays her meditation sounds through her airpods. Maybe their juice had run out. Maybe she was playing it from the phone. I covered my ear with a pillow and went back to sleep. The sounds continued, and then there was what sounded like the rockets that used to hit our building back in Beirut, that muffled crackling thud accompanied by tremors. I got up. I opened the bedroom door. It was not the YouTube video. It was water streaming through my upstairs and down through the floor and ceiling below. The thudding sound was a bunch of ceiling tiles crashing. Half the living room was a waterfall. one of the couches was covered in drywall. Somehow, the bookshelves had for the most part been spared, though a couple of them were struck by falling skies too. It was not yet 4 a.m. It was impossible to close the source of the flood, the pipe incoming to the upstairs bathroom, and neither of us knew how to turn off the water main. Well, we knew: we had two places. But the one in the garage wouldn’t turn. It had atrophied over the past 15 years. The one outside, where I dug in the darkness, I didn’t dig deep enough, and wouldn’t have known what to do had I gotten there. It was two hours later that we finally got it shut off. ServePro invaded at 6 and was here until about 2 p.m. They made a desert and didn’t yet call it dry. I exaggerate a little: the living room was made a desert, its carpeting ripped out down to the concrete, and my beloved reading room upstairs had part of its carpeting ripped out, though I’ve come to think that was a bit of overkill. Four humidifiers and fans a friend compared to the propellors of B-29s were left on 24/7, as a moisture reader from Lowe’s showed the moisture fall over the days–very quickly for the floors, a bit slower for the affected walls, but still. Outside, we had one of those piles of flooded out furniture that I had seen lining up the avenues of Flagler Beach in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in 2017, though our pile was child’s play in comparison. Next will be the drywalling, then the painting, then the flooring. I’ve had a few bouts of despondency, but self-despondency in our case is self-indulgent: the damage isĀ relatively slight. It is more discomfort than damage, more of an infuriating expense–an expense that could have been prevented with the $50 water alarms I have since bought–than a more substantial loss. And not a day goes by without reports in one news source or another of people losing homes, getting bombed out of homes, getting evicted from homes, seeing their homes wash away. That I could write these lines to the sound of fans, a few feet from where water was streaming only those few days ago, tells you how–not to be mawkish or falsely, stupidly, providentially pious about it, which would be the real upchuck–all told, it may not have been luck, but it was not the catastrophe it seemed to be when I woke up to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Waters in my own home.
—P.T.
XXX
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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
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Palm Coast Code Enforcement Board Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Republican Club Meeting
Flagler County’s Cold-Weather Shelter Opens
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Flagler Beach Parks Ad Hoc Committee
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
For the full calendar, go here.
The sack of Constantinople is unparalleled in history. For nine centuries the treat city had been the capital of Christian civilization. It was filled with works of art that had survived from ancient Greece and with the masterpieces of its own exquisite craftsmen. The Venetians indeed knew the value of such things. Wherever they could they seized treasures and carried them off to adorn the squares and churches and palaces of their town. But the Frenchmen and Flemings were filled with a lust for destruction. They rushed in a howling mob down the streets and through the houses, snatching up everything that glittered and destroying whatever they could not carry, pausing only to murder or to rape, or to break open the wine-cellars for their refreshment. Neither monasteries nor churches nor libraries were spared. In St Sophia itself drunken soldiers could be seen tearing down the silken hangings and pulling the great silver iconostasis to pieces, while sacred books and icons were trampled underfoot. While they drank merrily from the altar-vessels a prostitute set herself on the patriarch’s throne and began to sing a ribald French song. Nuns were ravished in their convents. Palaces and hovels alike were entered and wrecked. Wounded women and children lay dying in the streets. For three days the ghastly scenes of pillage and bloodshed continued, till the huge and beautiful city was a shambles. Even the Saracens would have been more merciful, cried the historian Nicetas, and with truth.
–From Steven Runciman’s A History of the Crusades, vol. 3 (1954).
Ray W. says
Please accept my best wishes for your complete recovery and restoration.
Pierre Tristam says
Thank you Ray, we’re on the way.
Pogo says
@P.T.
Thoughts and prayers for real.
FWIW, a conversation:
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=Steven+Runciman
And more, pro and con… IMO, worth 20 minutes, if you spend the full fare:
Laurel says
Oh, so sorry to hear about your home! We had a cool rental in south Florida, that was built in 1948. It had real linseed oil linoleum floors (not fake vinyl) with inlays throughout. An organization that helps families in trouble rented it from us and put in a mom and two boys. In the beginning, everyone was so grateful as our house was very well cared for. After a while, the mom started getting weird to the point that we asked the organization to move her out. Well, before they left, they brought in a hose and flooded the whole house, and all those linoleum floors buckled up, and were not salvageable. The oldest boy had ninja stars, and damaged all the walls and doors inside the house. A friend of ours, who had helped us get the house ready for rental, when he saw the house inside, he literally leaned against the wall and slid down it until he was sitting on the floor!
Fortunately, the organization that rented the house paid nearly $10K restoration as they didn’t want to have this information to get into the local news. No security fee from a family would have covered it. After the restoration, we repainted and upgraded the house and sold it.
As for sleeping issues, tell Cheryl I had the same problem for years. This may sound simple, but it worked for me. I’ve set a bedtime that I stick to, and each night, I watch a series on Disney + called “Secrets of the Zoo.” It’s a little interesting, a little slow and a little boring. No anxiety, ever. There are several episodes in Tampa, Australia and Columbia, Ohio. That tells my brain that it’s time to calm down, relax and that it’s time to go to sleep. I also eat two to three Majool dates before bedtime, which contains tryptophan. Sounds corny, but it works 90% of the time.
Peace!
Laurel says
Medjool. So hard to be perfect…