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Weather: Partly sunny with a chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then mostly cloudy with showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 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 Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
The Flagler County Canvassing Board resumes its meeting at 9 a.m. after recessing at nearly 1 a.m. today, continuing its recount in two races to determine the winner of two close races–the County Commission race between Pam Richardson and Ed Danko, and a Palm Coast City Council race for second place, and a spot in the November runoff, between Ray Stevens and Dana Stancel. See: “Ed Danko’s Chance of Flipping Result Is Remote as Provisional Ballots and Recount Steps Ahead Are Mapped Out,” “Ballot Review Doesn’t Change Outcome: Richardson Beats Danko, Stevens Holds 2-Vote Lead,” and “Longer Than Expected Recount Recesses at 1 AM to Continue Saturday at 9.” The proceedings are open to the public.
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Wickline Park, 315 South 7th Street, featuring prepared food, fruit, vegetables , handmade products and local arts from more than 30 local merchants. The market is hosted by Flagler Strong, a non-profit.
Coffee With Commissioner Scott Spradley: Flagler Beach Commission Chairman Scott Spradley hosts his weekly informal town hall with coffee and doughnuts at 9 a.m. at his law office at 301 South Central Avenue, Flagler Beach. All subjects, all interested residents or non-residents welcome. The special guest today is City Manager Dale Martin.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
 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: Some of my ultimate-favorite people in that picture, taken at my Parnassus barely a year ago: my Aphrodite-Anchoress on the left, the only mayor to have a New York City tunnel named after her (it’s about time), the only man I can talk lit with before dawn (and the man who legally made Palm Coast possible. But miracle of life: he endures my atrocious writing), and the reason for this intrusive diary entry: our beloved Colleen Conklin, who’s had a bit of a challenge in the last few days, the kind all of us in that picture, and the one taking it, have had or continue to have–with Milissa’s exception, unless she’s keeping a secret from us–because age at our age is a massacre, as Roth put it, and there’s no let up. It’s a fucking massacre, and there’s no excuse: whoever concocted us had a screw loose. To be so cruel, so sloppy, so cavalier. So damn incompetent, really: you foresee all, but you can’t foresee this? This annual holocaust? “When, as occasionally happens,” writes Bill Bryson, “a cell fails to expire in the prescribed manner, but rather begins to divide and proliferate wildly, we call the result cancer.” Or the greatest literal crime against humanity. We’re all Gazans in its wake. Colleen announced after her surgery that all went well. We cheer, we exult, we raise fists in the air the way Tommie Smith and John Carlos did at the Mexico Olympics did even though it has nothing to do with it, and even the least-believing among us pray, because she prayed for us in our difficult times: Colleen’s heart is the size of Ireland. Incidentally, it’s no secret why she got it: that school board has been lethal for years. (My wife can attest. Those bastards.) She’s leaving just in time, though it was good to see that her seat remains in Conklinish hands. Until the next cell fucks up.
—P.T.
Now this: From the Luka collection (and he had no idea what it would be paired with.)
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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.
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
Nar-Anon Family Group
Flagler County Beekeepers Association Meeting
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club, at Flagler Beach Public Library
NAACP Flagler Branch General Membership Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence. Don’t you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be. Bacteria, never forget, got along for billions of years without us. We couldn’t survive a day without them. They process our wastes and make them usable again; without their diligent munching nothing would rot. They purify our water and keep our soils productive. Bacteria synthesize vitamins in our gut, convert the things we eat into useful sugars and polysaccharides, and go to war on alien microbes that slip down our gullet.
–From Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003).
The dude says
MAGA is very confused, and a little scared, at the outright display of genuine love from a son to a father.
Their orange would be great MAGA king would never indulge in such trivial matters such as love, or being loved.
Ed P says
You know what would be refreshing? Leaving family members out the the Arena. More policies and less rhetoric.
Ray W. says
The Cool Down reports that in 2016 an Icelandic geothermal drilling team unexpectedly hit “supercritical fluid” (magma) 1.5 miles into a planned three-mile-deep bore. It is estimated that the superheated rock can produce 10 times the electrical power produced by a normal geothermal plant.
A research team, expecting that technology innovations will yield equipment that can operate at the expected higher temperatures of the supercritical fluid and funded by a $105 million budget, plans to bore the first of two test wells in 2026 near the Krafla volcanic caldera.
Make of it what you will. Me? There are 8 billion people on this earth. Many if not most of them want Western comforts, i.e., climate-controlled homes, personal transport, personal communications, etc. These comforts require ever-increasing production of energy in its many forms. According to the article, one billion of us live within 60 miles of a caldera. There are billions of intelligent and motivated people who, if educated and given the opportunity, would provide the ideas for the many needed technological innovations to provide the extra energy we all demand. Yet many in the political class oppose innovation, both here and abroad. Some say, “Drill! Baby! Drill!” to the exclusion of other forms of energy. Others say the alternatives are too pollutive, so don’t even try.
Dodge, 99 years after GE rolled out the first diesel-electric locomotive, then designed with efficiency and maintenance in mind, is finally rolling out its 690 HP EREV (extended range electric vehicle) “Ramcharger” truck series using electric drive motors. No transmission. A V-6 detuned from 305 HP to 174 HP to generate electricity when the plug-in battery runs low. The holdup all these years? Battery technology? Perhaps. Yet GE made the idea work in 1925! What or who held back the development of battery technology? We used solid-state batteries during the Apollo space program. Was it truly a lack of imagination? Possibly. Perhaps it was a lack of inertia. Possibly. Could it be that political thought often outweighs the value of pragmatic thought? Or that business thought, focused primarily on short-term profits, can be blinded to the possibility of long-range profit?