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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. Light and variable winds, becoming northeast around 5 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 60 percent. Heat index values up to 106.
Thursday Night: Partly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. East winds around 5 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:
United Flagler 4th: Flagler County Government and the Cities of Palm Coast, Flagler Beach, and Bunnell host the United Flagler 4th Community Celebration all day, beginning with the cherished Stars and Stripes parade in the morning, proudly presented by the Rotary Club of Flagler Beach. The parade will follow its traditional route from North 6th Street to South 6th Street along A1A in Flagler Beach. Following the parade, residents and visitors can enjoy the beach while indulging in the music and entertainment at Veterans Park in Flagler Beach. The highlight of the day will be the awe-inspiring Fireworks Over the Runways, hosted at the Flagler Executive Airport off of Fin Way. The entire community is welcome to attend, with gates opening at 5:00 p.m. The dazzling fireworks display will begin at 9:00 p.m. See details here.
Choral Arts Society Presents “Celebrate America”, 1 p.m. at St Thomas Episcopal Church, 5400 Belle Terre Parkway, Palm Coast. Choral Arts Society provides a wonderful concert of “Music from the Stage” with many of your favorites. There is no admission charge, but tax-free donations are accepted to assist in providing scholarships to local college-bound students. Please go to www.casfl.org for more information, or send an email to [email protected]
Notably: If Jon Meacham were to select a soundtrack for his 2018 book, The Soul of America, it would have to be compositions by Peter Boyer, the buoyant American composer with Copland, John Williams, not a little bit of Sousa, and a lot of Boyer in him. Meacham must have been depressed, writing The Soul of America, watching that soul daily mangled and nearly murdered by Donald Trump. Meacham became an adviser to Joe Biden. It’s to Meacham, that Biden owed the central theme of his presidential campaign: the fight for the “soul of America.” So it was natural that, whoever was choreographing the inaugural and who had a knowledge of these things, would turn to Peter Boyer for a composition. He writes in the liner notes to his third Naxos collection of American Classics (2022), “Fanfare for Tomorrow was commissioned for the inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden on January 20, 2021. It was premiered at the United States Capitol during the Inaugural Prelude by ‘The President’s Own’ United States Marine Band, led by its director, Colonel Jason K. Fettig. In what had to be a unique way for a composer to experience a premiere, I heard this fanfare being performed in the background of CNN’s television coverage, at the very moment when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris arrived at the Capitol, to take their oaths as the President and Vice President of the United States. Shortly after the premiere, I created this new orchestral version of the fanfare.” I am as depressed as Meacham must have been in 2018, and not as hopeful as the central theme of his Soul of America, intended as therapy no doubt, implies–that somehow the United States, that Americans, always find a way out of the darkness. I am not sure that the darkness hasn’t been a more prevalent way of this country than its often illusory ideals, or that things aren’t darkening much faster than they are brightening. The other day the columnist Paul Krugman wondered aloud whether the coming election may be our last. Shudder with me, as we listen to Peter Boyer’s “Fanfare,” what musical fare Trump, our once and future fascist president, has in store for us. And Happy July 4.
—P.T.
Now this: Peter Boyer and the LSO, “Fanfare for Tomorrow.”
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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.
December 2025
Holiday Plant Class Series
Holiday Sale to Benefit Area Homeless
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Flagler Beach All Stars Beach Clean-Up
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
John’s Towing 35-Year Celebration at Joan B. King Park
Flagler Beach Holiday at the Beach Parade
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Palm Coast’s Starlight Parade in Town Center
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre
‘Greetings,’ A Christmas Comedy
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
For the full calendar, go here.
John Locke, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, the Marquis de Condorcet, and Adam Smith permeated the age with the hope that progress would be possible through inquiry, argument, agitation, and finally reform. At the Sorbonne in December 1750, Turgot articulated the doctrine of progress. “The whole human race, through alternate periods of rest and unrest, of weal and woe, goes on advancing, although at a slow pace, towards greater perfection,” he said in the lecture later published as A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind. “Like the ebb and flow of the tide, power passes from one nation to another, and, within the same nation, from the princes to the multitude and from the multitude to the princes. As the balance shifts, everything gradually gets nearer and nearer to an equilibrium, and in the course of time takes on a more settled and peaceful aspect.” Of the American Revolution, Turgot wrote: “America is the hope of the human race.”
–From Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (2018).
Ray W. says
It’s been almost 3 decades since I roamed the blue highways of the 7th Circuit with a New-Journal reporter who had asked to shadow me during my sudden campaign for State Attorney. I had been a registered Republican until the morning after the Democratic challenger had dropped out of the race after the primary due to the acute onset of a serious illness. The governor then reopened the Democratic primary period. Within eight days, I had re-registered as a Democrat and entered the race. It was an exciting and very brief 49 days to election day.
I lost the race 53-47%. I lost Volusia County; it was reported the next day, by 23 votes. After the military vote came in, I was down by 55 votes. Putnam County? Less than 500 points down. Flagler County? Roughly 2000 votes. St. Johns? I took southern precincts, but north of St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra and Julington Creek were 90% Tanner.
On a Flagler backroad on the way to some now forgotten event, we talked about emerging political trends. At one point, I posited that “ideas gain momentum” until they reach a point at which large groups of people will accept them. Being a Hegelian even then, I explained that once an idea becomes powerful enough to be embraced by a political group, it is then unveiled into the political marketplace, where the tussle, or scrum, exposes every strength and flaw. Some ideas fail immediately under the scrutiny. Others gain even more momentum. Some ideas, using the German term “zeitenweide”, become epochal turning points.
July 4th has become a zeitenweide, an epochal turning point, throughout the world.
When I called John to concede the night of the election, he told me that his polling showed that I was closing the gap so rapidly that his pollsters predicted that I would beat him if I had two more weeks. I thought then and I think now that John was being gracious in victory, that he could afford to be magnanimous. Nonetheless, it was a different time. I had been born in Halifax Hospital and grew up in a political family. I knew things that might have changed the race had I used them, but political morals prevented their use. No doubt John knew things about me, too. I would never have then and would not have now ever flown a FJT flag flapping in the wind as I campaigned around the four counties.
I wish everyone a Happy July 4th!