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Weather: Mostly sunny. A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning, then showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 90s. South winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable. Chance of rain 50 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Flagler Beach’s Planning and Architectural Review Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 S 2nd Street. For agendas and minutes, go here.
The Palm Coast City Council meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall. The council will consider placing a charter amendment on the November ballot that would remove the charter’s limitation of the city’s borrowing authority. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The Bunnell Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board meets at 6 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The board consists of Carl Lilavois, Chair; Manuel Madaleno, Nealon Joseph, Gary Masten and Lyn Lafferty.
The Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
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.
 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: In 2001 the French novelist and literary shock jock Michel Houellebecq published Plateforme (Platform in Chaucer’s English) about sex tourism in Thailand. The book culminates with a terrorist attack in one of those pleasure pots, anticipating the trio of Bali terrorist attacks against tourist spots in October 2002. In 2010 Susannah Hunnewell, who would end her career, before cancer’s assassination, as the Paris Review’s publisher, interviewed him for the Art of Fiction segment (No. 206, fall 2010). He seems not to have made a pass at her, as he usually does, or did, with his female interviewers, sometimes with the kind of insistence that could land him in harassment jail, though it never has (he was sued for inciting a riot after calling Islam the stupidest religion, which was the stupidest suit despite his occasional but since diminished Islamophobia). Hunnewell asked him about Platform. He had apparently done his own research–he is a great fan of prostitution in principle, though he says fame has made it unnecessary for him–with a trip to Pattaya, the Babylon of his Thailand. His answer struck me as essentially describing Epcot, with only very, very small differences. Houellebecq tells Hunnewell : “ I was completely fascinated by Pattaya, where the book’s ending takes place. Everyone goes there. The Anglo-Saxons go there. The Chinese go there. The Japanese go there. The Arabs go there, too. That was the strangest part. It was something I read in a guidebook that made me make the trip to Thailand. They said that in one hotel in Bangkok, the Thai prostitutes wore veils to please their Arab clients. I found that fascinating, that adaptability. There are lots of French Algerians from the projects who go to Pattaya for the whores. So the Thai girls speak French but with a ghetto accent. “Ouais, j’tassure! Ouais, ta mère!” There are karaoke bars for the Japanese, restaurants for Russians with lots of vodka. And there’s a poignant side to it, too, something end-of-the-road about all these people, especially the old Anglo-Saxons. You sense they’ll never be able to leave. And there’s the dust, in the afternoon, when the go-go bars are still closed. There’s something very poignant about that moment when the girls start arriving on their scooters and you see the old Anglo-Saxon tourists start to come out like turtles walking in the dust. There is something very, very strange about that town.” Exactly as there is about Epcot and its different moods–the arrival, the climax, the mass departure as we all wave to the huge-gloved attendants.
—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.
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Blue 24 Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Flagler County’s Cold-Weather Shelter Opens
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
It’s Back! Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
For the full calendar, go here.
“That’s precisely what’s so extraordinary about you, you enjoy giving pleasure. Offering your body as an object of pleasure, giving pleasure unselfishly: that’s what Westerners don’t know how to do any more. They’ve completely lost the sense of giving. Try as they might, they no longer feel sex as something natural. Not only are they ashamed of their own bodies, which aren’t up to porn standards, but for the same reasons they no longer feel truly attracted to the body of the other. It’s impossible to make love without a certain abandon, without accepting, at least temporarily, the state of being in a state of dependency, of weakness. Sentimental adulation and sexual obsession have the same roots, both proceed from some degree of selflessness; it’s not a domain in which you can find fulfilment without losing yourself. We have become cold, rational, acutely conscious of our individual existence and our rights; more than anything, we want to avoid alienation and dependence; on top of that we’re obsessed with health and hygiene: these are hardly ideal conditions in which to make love.”
–From Michel Houellebecq’s Platform (2001).
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Ray W. says
Most months, I check a site that reflects the month-by-month stock market performance by president. While the site allows anyone to go back to President Harding for comparisons, I choose to compare presidents from Reagan to the present, mainly because the 15-year bout with stagflation from roughly 1968 to 1983 skews the reliability of older figures.
Through 42 months in office, here are the following Dow figures for our last seven presidents:
Clinton: 67%.
Obama: 62.6%.
GHW Bush: 44.9%.
Trump: 33.0%.
Biden: 30.6%.
Reagan: 17.7%.
GW Bush: -6.9%.
Make of the numbers whatever you will. When a gullible commenter (yes, that’s you, JimboXYZ) writes of destruction of an economy, however, it seems plausible to argue that the commenter does not know what he or she is talking about. I take the view that the independent Federal Reserve Bank is likely as much as or more responsible for stock market performances than presidential policies, but who can separate out the impacts?