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Weather: Sunny. Highs in the mid 80s. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Thursday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the mid 60s. East winds 5 to 10 mph.See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library, 11 to 11:30 a.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach. It’s where the wild things are: Hop on for stories and songs with Miss Doris.
National Day of Prayer Protest: Members of the Atlantic Coast Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (www.au.org) will gather to protest the National Day of Prayer from noon until 1 p.m. at the northwest corner of Belle Terre and Pine Lake Parkways in Palm Coast. They object to the National Day of Prayer because it involves the government, by Presidential Proclamation and Congressional Action, suggesting when Americans should pray. This event will last an hour and is open to the public: all are welcome. Participants are invited to bring their own signs promoting religious freedom, separation of church and state, and reproductive rights. For further information email [email protected] or call 804-914-4460.
The Palm Coast Songwriters Festival is scheduled for May 2-5 at the Daytona State College Amphitheater, 545 Colbert Lane, Palm Coast, and other venues, including JT’s Seafood Shack at 5224 North Oceanshore Boulevard. Check the schedule for details. Starting at 5 p.m. May 2, midday or earlier on May 3, 4 and 5, with nearly 40 HIT Songwriters with over 125 #1 HITS and hundreds of additional charted songs to their credit performing. Single-day tickets start at $25 per day. These great songwriters give the attendees the ability to peek behind the curtain and learn the story behind the songs, along with hearing the writers perform them as well.
‘First Date,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. 7:30 p.m., except on Sundays, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $32.50, including fees. Book tickets here. The 2012 musical takes the audience through the first meeting of Casey and Aaron, two 30-ish New York City singles set up by friends and family. The two have nothing in common: Aaron is a conservative banker, Jewish, and looking for a meaningful relationship, while Casey is an artist and a little too funky for Wall Street. With the influences of their friends and family (played out in their imaginations) as well as the effects of social media (Google, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube personified), this first date seems to be doomed. But with the help of a meddling but well-meaning waiter, Casey and Aaron might make a connection after all. With a contemporary rock score, FIRST DATE gleefully pokes fun at the mishaps and mistakes of blind dates and gives hope that there could be that one perfect moment.
 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: Somewhere in this universe sits a pair of ravaged and diminished human beings, possibly Adam and Eve as they might seem after a few centuries in hospice care: those are the two people who, time after time, town after town, street after street, year after year, come up with our street names–our Dingleberry Drives, our Rucksack Avenues, our Hairy Chestnut Boulevards, our Pulchritude Parkways (if only street names were that countercultural). Because who else comes up with them, other than a recyletron regurgitating them from a vast tub of worn words every time a new subdivision swathes creation? That’s for street names. Which two creatures come up with paint names? Ambling the aisles of Home Depot the other day, we stopped by the paint aisle, since we are still in reconstruction mode after our minor flood here, and studied what colors we should buy. The names though were something else. Not that we were looking at these colors (not for us, those sizzles), but in the row of reds to orange, you could choose from: Emergency Zone (the color was no different than an Emergen-C powder sold at Walgreens), Sizzling Sunset, Mandarin, Bergamot Orange, Inferno, Bonfire Night, Japanese Koi, and Tart Orange. The bluish-whitish-gray spectrum was just as nonsensical: Pink Sea Salt, Peach Sachet, Seed Pearl, Marshmallow Whip, Everblooming, Fruit Salad (did I mention these were for the dullest drays?), Paper Heart, Pumpkin Essence. You have to name these things, so you could always argue that any name will do, but at that point might as well name colors after actual names: Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, Julius Caesar. Here are a few more from a color difficult to describe, a very faint tan tinged with scarlet hues: Tostada, Practical Tan, Crepe, Honey Tea, Real Cork, Summerwood, Flax Straw, Antique Treasure. Turns out paint-naming must be a thing, with, no doubt soon, a sure-fire major and endowed chair about to be announced at New College of Florida.
—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.
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
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.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to “enlarge” your mind? Subtilize it.
–From Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851).
ed says
there are only 2 sides to the palestinian issue: hamas and israel with palestinians in the crossfire. hamas and muslum world has maintained and nurtured a tortured and oppressed palestinian people for the purpose of keeping constant military and political pressure on. by attacking jews, protestors are supporting global terrorism. there is more than enough oil resources in the muslum world to solve the palestinian misery, yet they refuse to do so in order to avoid relieving israel of this infected thorn in its side. truth.
Ray W. says
Yet another FlaglerLive commenter who is both right and wrong at the same time. Indigenous Jews have been murdering indigenous Palestinian Arabs for two thousand years or more. Indigenous Palestinian Arabs have been murdering indigenous Jews for two thousand years or more. The religious extremist Jew? The religious extremist Palestinian? Both are infected thorns in the side of “civil” Palestinian/Israeli society. Hamas lies and claims the phrase, “From the River to the Sea” is not hateful toward Jews. The religious Jewish zealot lies and claims that the phrase, “Promised Land” is not hateful to Palestinian Arabs. Each of the extremist groups would ethnically cleanse all of Palestine if they could.
Since the early 1920s, Zionism as a political movement has heightened the vengeful nature of both indigenous groups toward each other, not that it wasn’t heightened before the revisionist Zionist movement was formed by Jews displaced by the violence in Europe during WWI. Russia had collapsed. The Ottoman Empire had collapsed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had collapsed. Balkan fissures gaped wide. Germany had collapsed. Poland and Czechoslovakia were in their infancy. England, France and Italy were each drained by four years of war. All over Europe, Ashkenazim were displaced, homeless, without government. Many fled to Israel.
The answer is not doing away with Zionism; it is enhancing and empowering the positive aspects of Zionism. It is reducing the political power held by the murderous elements of both indigenous groups. It is cradling what little democracy remains in the region and allowing it to grow and thrive. Only a two-state solution can do that, but I do not claim any hope that it can be achieved. The hatreds are too entrenched. The desire for malice too strong. The fear of loss of identity too overwhelming. Over the last century, plenty of Jews and Arabs indigenous to Palestine have learned how to kill. Very few have learned how to govern.
Reason tells us that a partial truth must give way to a more complete truth any day. Please “subtilize” your mind, ed.
Ray W. says
Thank you, Mr. Tristam, for your never-flagging efforts to “subtilize” the minds of all FlagerLive readers. I like the ideal of it.
Let us all subtilize for a time. Yesterday, the monthly BLS jobs report came out. The AP did a good job of condensing the data.
“The Labor Department reported Wednesday that employers posted 8.5 million vacancies in March, down from 8.8 million in February and the fewest since February 2021.
“The number of Americans quitting their jobs fell to the lowest level since January 2021 – a sign of diminishing confidence in their ability to find something better. But layoffs fell.
“Monthly job openings are down sharply from a peak of 12.2 million in March 2022 but remain at a high level. Before 2021, they’d never exceeded 8 million – a threshold they have now reached for 37 straight months.
“The high level of job openings reflects a surprisingly strong U.S. labor market. When the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in March 2022 to combat a resurgence in inflation, the higher borrowing costs were expected to tip the economy into recession and push up unemployment.
“Instead, even as the Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times, the economy kept growing, companies kept hiring and unemployment stayed low, coming in under 4% for 26 straight months – longest such streak since the 1960s. Employers have added a healthy average of 276,000 jobs a month this year – up from last year’s 251,000 – and Friday’s April jobs report is expected to show they tacked on another 230,000 last month, down but still solid…”
Is it an economic maxim that the Fed raising lending rates is designed to cool off an overheating national economy? Is it an economic maxim that Congressional stimulus packages are designed to heat up an overcooling national economy? Is it an economic maxim that a national economy that is adding jobs at a rate above 120,000 jobs per month (necessary to keep up with a steadily rising population) is a sign of robust health? Is it an economic maxim that driving the unemployment rate below 4% risks inflationary pressures because an unusually low jobless rate places upward pressures on national wage rates? Is it an economic maxim that the ratio of unemployed workers to posted job openings should range from 1.0 -1.2, and that a rate above that range places inflationary pressures on a national economy? I argue that each of these quantifiable factors are maxims.
Is our national economy better off than it was four years ago. Absolutely, without question, undoubtedly! 37 straight months of record levels of posted job openings! Does this mean that employers just can’t find enough employees? If so, if Americans since 2007 have had a birth rate below replacement rate, does this mean that for the American economy to continue to thrive without inflation, for American employers to fill some of their 8.5 million posted job openings, we just might need more immigrants to fill the need? Millions more? Does political opposition to immigrants force wages up, causing inflationary pressure on our national economy? Does a lack of immigrants in Florida to pick crops impact Publix prices?
Are we as individuals better off today than we were four years ago? Most are. Some are not. Such is the nature of capitalism. Without oil money, Oklahoma and Texas would be far worse off, economically. Extended low gasoline prices derived from low crude oil prices cripples the American petroleum industry. Florida doesn’t have oil money revenues of any significance. Yes, there are very old wells in southwest Florida that are still producing. But Governer DeSantis, in one of his first acts in office, signed an executive order forbidding new exploration for oil within Florida’s territorial boundaries (I don’t disagree with him). Yes, some American regions contain vast quantities of natural resources. Others, not so much. When crude oil prices are high, Oklahoma and Texas boom. When low, the two states have to rely on other economic factors to get through the downturn. Boom and bust. As a child, when my family travelled through Texas, Dad would point out the oil pumping stations. If they were cycling, he would say the economy is strong. When stationary, he would say the economy is down. Florida, as a state, thrives on tourism, but it is a regional economy. The Orlando regional economy has boomed ever since Disney opened. Belle Glade, at the heart of the sugar industry, does not boom, ever. We can have a relatively weak economy in Flagler County, based on schools and governments, medical services, road building, and commercial and residential construction, plus the old mainstays of timber and agriculture, and still be a relatively stagnant pocket within a much stronger state and national economy.
Please, Dennis C. Rathsam and JimboXYZ, “subtilize” your minds.
ASF says
The Neo-Nazis of Charlottesville were despicable enough but their parade was shut down after one day. Far Left Anti Semitic/Anti-Zionist elements have been proliferating for years. But they have been especially disruptive and destructive over the past few months; unleashed, it seems by the genocidal massacre of 1200 Jews by Hamas in October. That didn’t bother them too much. It is the predictable aftermath that they strangely found to be astounding.
The October 7th masssacre–and the Palestinian resisitance forces pledge to repeat it over and over again, is what started the war that has been raging ever since. Hamas, which has received yet another generous ceasefire offer from Israel this past week, has indicated that they are rejecting that offer while cintinuiing to do their obstructive dance around the negotiating table–just so they can run out the clock while more hostages and their own people die.
There has been very little effort, up to now, to try to rein in or correct the skewed propaganda “Anti-Zionist” forces have been spewing forth–often with the complicit assistance from media outlets that one might hope would know better.
It appears obvious to me that that the intent of these protests is no longer to “advocate” for the welfare of the Palestinians (…if it ever was. If it was, they would be protesting against Hamas and for the reelase of the hostages.) Their intent is to force insitutional hands to join in on their “Divest”/BDS agenda, since they haven’t gotten far enough along with it up to now.
Their message to the adminstrations of these targeted campuses seems to be: “You want us to fold our tents and shut up? Dump Israel! NOW!”