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Weather: Patchy fog in the morning. Sunny. Highs in the mid 80s. East winds around 5 mph, increasing to around 10 mph in the afternoon. Friday Night: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 60s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
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. Today: County Judge Anddrea Totten and Clerk of Court Tom Bexley. See previous podcasts here. 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 Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. 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. The event is overseen by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and run by Laverne M. Shank Jr. and Surf 97.3.
‘Hysteria,’ At Palm Coast’s City Repertory Theatre, 160 Cypress Point Parkway (City Marketplace, Suite B207), Palm Coast. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for students. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. except on Sundays, at 3 p.m. In this surprisingly touching and hilarious farce, step into the wild world of “Hysteria,” Terry Johnson’s clever and funny play that blends fact and fantasy through the uproarious collision of Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud’s brilliant minds. Prepare for unexpected twists, outrageous situations, and a rollercoaster of emotions in this riotous farce set in 1938 London.
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.
Free Family Art Night: “Textured Turtles”, Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens, 78 East Granada Boulevard, Ormond Beach. All art supplies are provided. No art experience is needed, and all ages are welcome. Free Family Art Night is a popular, monthly program typically scheduled on the first Friday of each month to coordinate with the free, family-friendly movie shown outdoors at Rockefeller Gardens. The two programs offer a stimulating evening for families, at no charge, in the heart of downtown Ormond Beach. Our art program takes place in the OMAM Classroom, rain or shine, but the City’s outdoor movies are weather dependent. Movie information can be found here or call The Casements at 386-676-3216.
‘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. |
Afterlives Afterthoughts: Odd, the serendipity of coincidental readings. I read these passages from two books worlds apart within a few days: From Melville’s White Jacket: “As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing, never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright; and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral. The port we sail from is for ever astern. And though far out of sight of land, for ages and ages we continue to sail with sealed orders, and our last destination remains a secret to ourselves and our officers; yet our final haven was predestinated ere we slipped from the stocks at Creation.” Then from a 1774 letter by Voltaire, who died four years later–he was suffering from what scholars now think was a form of cancer, probably of the bladder: “We are all in this world like prisoners in a prison courtyard, each awaiting his hanging without knowing when; and when that time comes, it so happens that we’ve lived quite uselessly.” But let us not end on a note so gallant of gallows. So here’s another Melvillian bit read the last morning of a full moon’s dawn, from—of all ambiguous works, Pierre: “Oh, praised be the beauty of this earth; the beauty, and the bloom, and the mirthfulness thereof. We lived before, and shall live again; and as we hope for a fairer world than this to come; so we came from one less fine.”
—P.T.
Now this: Eternity explained, with thank to Pogo.
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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.
Thus sailing with sealed orders, we ourselves are the repositories of the secret packet, whose mysterious contents we long to learn. There are no mysteries out of ourselves. But let us not give ear to the superstitious, gun-deck gossip about whither we may be gliding, for, as yet, not a soul on board of us knows—not even the Commodore himself; assuredly not the Chaplain; even our Professor’s scientific surmisings are vain. On that point, the smallest cabin-boy is as wise as the Captain. And believe not the hypochondriac dwellers below hatches, who will tell you, with a sneer, that our world-frigate is bound to no final harbour whatever; that our voyage will prove an endless circumnavigation of space. Not so. For how can this world-frigate prove our eventual abiding place, when upon our first embarkation, as infants in arms, her violent rolling—in after life unperceived—makes every soul of us sea-sick? Does not this show, too, that the very air we here inhale is uncongenial, and only becomes endurable at last through gradual habituation, and that some blessed, placid haven, however remote at present, must be in store for us all?
–From Melville’s White Jacket (1850).
Pogo says
@As stated
You’re welcome friend; and my thanks to you, and to all the others who attend, and attend to, this andragogy.