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Weather: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly after 4pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 85. Heat index values as high as 103. Calm wind becoming east 5 to 7 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. Tonight: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly before 10pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 74. Southwest wind 3 to 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.
- 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:
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’s guests include Flagler County Superintendent LaShakia Moore and Sheriff Staly who will talk about back to school. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM and 1550 AM.
The Scenic A1A Pride Committee meets at 9 a.m. at the Hammock Community Center, 79 Mala Compra Road, Palm Coast. The meetings are open to the public.
Paris Olympics Opening Ceremonies on NBC and Peacock, the live event begins at 1:30 p.m. Palm Coast time. The opening ceremony is on the Seine.
The Flagler County Canvassing Board meets today at the Flagler County Supervisor of Elections office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The meeting is open to the public. Check the time in the sidebar or in this chart, which includes the full year’s meeting schedule (the pdf schedule does not include the dates and times of required Canvassing Board meetings which may be necessary due to a recount called locally or statewide.) The board is chaired by County Judge Andrea Totten. This Election Year’s board members are Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhart and County Commissioner Dave Sullivan. The alternates are County Judge Melissa Distler and County Commissioner Donald O’Brien. March-April meetings are for the presidential preference primary, such as it is. See all legal notices from the Supervisor of Elections, including updated lists of those ineligible to vote, here.
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.
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock, 2 to 5 p.m., Picnic Shelter behind the Hammock Community Center at 79 Mala Compra Road, Palm Coast. It’s a free event. Bring your Acoustic stringed Instrument (no amplifiers), and a folding chair and join other local amateur musicians for a jam session. Audiences and singers are also welcome. A “Jam Circle” format is where musicians sit around the circle. Each musician in turn gets to call out a song and musical key, and then lead the rest in singing/playing. Then it’s on to the next person in the circle. Depending upon the song, the musicians may take turns playing/improvising a verse and a chorus. It’s lots of Fun! Folks who just want to watch or sing generally sit on the periphery or next to their musician partner. This is a monthly event on the 4th Friday of every month
 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: The Olympic games began on this day in 1936, in Berlin, as they do today in Paris. The two events are comparable in some ways: they both were, are, furled in a resurgence of fascism, though Paris managed to keep the barbarians at the gate a bit longer with that legislative election as Germany had not. The Times on Aug. 2 headlined the opening in berlin: “100,000 Hail Hitler; U.S. Athletes Avoid Nazi Salute To Him.” Frederick Birchall was the reporter: “A gray sky that threatened rain without really ever fulfilling that threat lowered today over the opening ceremonies of the eleventh and greatest Olympic games of modern times” in “the world’s newest and biggest stadium,” designed not by Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, but by Werner March, to hold 100,000 people. “The American athletes received a bigger hand going out of the stadium than when they entered,” when whistles greeted them. The reporter called Hitler “the new Caesar of this era,” describing him: “There can be no doubt that he was proud at this moment of the climax of two years’ patient preparation and endeavor.” Odd to read a line like this, so seemingly normal, through the prism of 50 million deaths. Paris will be more fun. It is Paris, after all, and democracy is not over, not there, not here: the American athletes might’ve gotten booed had Biden still been in the race. I imagine they’ll be cheered now, with more han hopes resting on their shoulders.
—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
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
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.
“England’s biggest track meet in 40 years opened this afternoon with a pageant of nationalism, an orgy of oratory and a paroxysm of symbolism but no running, jumping or bulging of the biceps.” That’s the way Red Smith opened his column on the Opening Ceremony at the London Olympics before last, 65 years ago. Smith, underwhelmed but not cynical, deadpans his way through the description of what was, even then, an overwrought spectacle: “Out of a runway at the east end of the oval came a Boy Scout with bare knees and a sign reading “Greece.” […] [The King] looked on while trumpeters trumpeted, speakers spoke, and attendants released a great mess of caged pigeons, which zoomed and swooped over eighty-two thousand unprotected skulls.” Smith disputes the number of pigeons — the Olympic organizers claimed 7,000; he says 2,000 — which allows him to drop an oblique reminder that the host country was still licking its World War II wounds: “Chances are the brass didn’t dare turn loose that many squab in this hungry nation.” At last, the torch is lit, and Smith puts a button on the whole shebang: “The crowd made with the tonsils. It was hokum. It was pure Hollywood. But it was good. You had to like it.” With its evocation of Shakespearean comedy and its note of tempered approval not overwhelmed by enthusiasm, “You had to like it” would have been an apt alternate title for the Library of America’s American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith. Edited by Daniel Okrent, the collection does not give the Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter the classic LoA treatment: the black dust jacket is replaced by a handsome cream cover, with photos of Smith’s two favorite sports — baseball and horse racing — replacing the usual author portrait. But that’s packaging. Whether he got in through the side door or no, Smith has entered the canon now.
–From Sebastian Stockman’s review of the Library of America’s American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith, in the Los Angeles Book Review, Sept. 18, 2013.
Pogo says
@Still ungrateful
…but entirely sincere.
And so it goes.
Ray W. says
Toshiba recently released a prototype lithium-ion battery pack for an EV bus that recharges to 80% in 10 minutes, instead of the normal four hours. The battery uses niobium titanium oxide as part of its anode composite material, in place of graphite, making the battery more energy dense. Greater energy density means that battery packs can be lighter and smaller.
According to the press release, an ordinary bus route that once required six buses (three running, three charging) can be reduced to four buses (three running and one charging). The buses weigh less and have more interior room.