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Weather: Sunny. Highs in the upper 80s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Friday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the lower 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph.
- 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:
Election Primary Early Voting is available today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at four locations. Any registered and qualified voter who is eligible to vote in a county-wide election may vote in person at the early voting site. According to Florida law, every voter must present a Florida driver’s license, a Florida identification card or another form of acceptable picture and signature identification in order to vote. If you do not present the required identification or if your eligibility cannot be determined, you will only be permitted to vote a provisional ballot. Don’t forget your ID. A couple of secure drop boxes that Ron DeSantis and the GOP legislature haven’t yet banned (also known as Secure Ballot Intake Stations) are available at the entrance of the Elections Office and at any early voting site during voting hours. The locations are as follows:
- Flagler County Elections Supervisor’s Office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell.
- Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast.
- Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE.
- Flagler Beach United Methodist Church, 1520 South Daytona Avenue, Flagler Beach.
See a sample ballot here. See the Live Interviews with all local candidates below.
Flagler County School Board Derek Barrs, Dist. 3 Janie Ruddy, Dist. 3 Lauren Ramirez, Dist. 5 Vincent Sullivan, Dist. 5 Flagler County Commission Andy Dance, Dist. 1 Fernando Melendez, Dist. 1 Kim Carney, Dist. 3 Bill Clark, Dist. 3 Nick Klufas, Dist. 3 Ed Danko, Dist. 5 Pam Richardson, Dist. 5 Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin Peter Johnson Alan Lowe Cornelia Manfre Mike Norris Palm Coast City Council Kathy Austrino, Dist. 1 Shara Brodsky, Dist. 1 Ty Miller, Dist. 1 Jeffrey Seib, Dist. 1 Dana Stancel, Dist. 3 Ray Stevens, Dist. 3 Andrew Werner, Dist. 3 |
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: it’s all about Town Center, with guests Jeff Douglas of Douglas Properties and Quint Studer, author of Building a Vibrant Community. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM and 1550 AM.
Flagler and Florida Unemployment Numbers Released: The state’s Commerce Department released the previous month’s preliminary unemployment numbers for Florida and its 67 counties, at 10 a.m. See the data releases page 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.
 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: Probably the most common and most evocative sound of my childhood was not the Pink panther theme, though it’s close, or any one of a few thousand children’s or pop songs from the 1970s, but this: the five beeps followed by a long beep followed by the orchestral introduction-theme to the hourly BBC World Service’s nine-minute newscast (it was nine minutes back then), which was on, it seemed, all the time at my house. The newscast was in English. I didn’t understand a word. My mother and father–mostly my mother, especially after my father died in 1976, though one never knows–listened, and probably learned all their English from it. Especially my mother. Especially after the war started in 1975, when reliable newscasts were not available in Lebanon, not without screeds or censorship. We knew even then that the Voice of America, which tried to compete with the BBC, was as lousy as our own militia radio stations. So we stuck to the BBC, which I continued to listen to, like a fiend, in my first year in boarding school in England in 1978. I was homesick–comatose with homesickness–and listening to the news brought me closer to home, since Lebanon was almost always in the news. That theme was like a nursery rhyme. The newscaster’s voice like a soothing lullaby. Strange, how we find our binkies. Stranger still how years, how decades later, we are reawakened to those years with something as startling as it is felicitous. So here I was, working on my usual daily productions for this site, when I noticed a new Deutsche Grammophon album posted to the Naxos Music Library, my everyday companion at work: Daniel Hope’s “Irish Roots.” I’m not bonkers for Irish music, but the violin on the cover seduced me, so I listened, and worked. Most of the time when I write, if I’m listening to music, the music tends to fade to an inaudible background as the material on the keyboard takes over. But then I was shocked out of my zone. Lightly plucked, airily plucked, deliciously plucked as if on a mandolin (but actually on Daniel Hope’s violin, by Daniel Hope), was the BBC World Service theme from 1975! I looked at the liner notes. I had no idea: all these decades, what I had been listening to was actually Henry Purcell’s New Irish Tune in G Major (Z. 646 if you’re into catalog listings). This time, without the news about the latest massacre, the latest beheading down the street, the latest usurpation by Syria, the latest violation by Israel, the latest rape of my sweet and hopeless land. Just Purcell. I still miss the old BBC theme though.
—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.
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Flagler County Canvassing Board Meeting
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
Flagler Tiger Bay Club Guest Speaker: Carlos M. Cruz
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
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.
I believe that the BBC, in spite of the stupidity of its foreign propaganda and the unbearable voices of its announcers, is very truthful. It is generally regarded here as more reliable than the press.
–From George Orwell’s “London Letter to Partisan Review,” April 15, 1941.
Pogo says
@Good morning Floridanam
DeSantis has a brainstorm — and can’t stop himself.
DeSantis says state will look into former UF President Sasse’s millions in expenses
The university’s student paper reported that Sasse’s office spent $17.3 million during his first year in office.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2024/08/15/desantis-says-state-will-look-into-former-uf-president-sasses-millions-expenses/