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Weather: Cloudy with a slight chance of thunderstorms. A slight chance of showers in the morning, then a chance of showers in the afternoon. Cooler with highs in the upper 60s. Temperature falling into the lower 60s in the afternoon. North winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Friday Night: Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the evening, then partly cloudy after midnight. Much cooler with lows in the mid 40s. North winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30 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:
Ted Torres Martin as Elvis The Show at Fitzgerald Performing Arts Center (Flagler Auditorium), 7 p.m. 5500 State Road 100, Palm Coast. “This man puts on an unforgettable show,His portrayal is brilliant!” Ted Torres Martin is a multi-talented actor/singer/songwriter/musician who has accomplished extensive touring around the world. This includes: USA, Germany, U.K, Spain, Austria, Italy, Japan, Norway, Singapore, Australia, Canada to name a few. He is the 2016 “Images Of The King” World CHAMPION His stage acting experience include shows like: “Biloxi Blues’, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” & “Death Of A Salesman” to name a few… His portrayal of The King Of Rock N’ Roll is one of the Top Tributes in the world! He acquired this title in Memphis Tennessee as recognized by Elvis Presley Enterprises. Ted is the top Elvis vocal stylist in the world. His vocals are the closest to Elvis you will ever hear!
A Christmas Carol at Athens Theatre, 124 North Florida Avenue
DeLand, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Adult $30, Senior $28, Student/Child $12; Groups of 8 or more, $25 per ticket. A $5 per ticket processing charge is added to all purchases. As the historic Athens Theatre does not have an elevator, the balcony is not accessible to anyone with a wheelchair or walker. Get ready to unwrap the true spirit of the holidays in an unforgettable experience with A Christmas Carol, a musical adorned with original enchanting melodies by the maestro Milton Granger and performed by a live band. This festive explosion of joy and redemption promises to transport you into the heart of Dickens’ timeless tale. With a live band providing the soul-stirring soundtrack, this production transforms into a captivating celebration of the season, weaving together the magic of music and the power of Dickens’ iconic story. Join the festivities as you embark on Scrooge’s transformative journey.
Starting Saturday: Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Nightly from 6 to 9 p.m. at Palm Coast’s Central Park, with 55 lighted displays you can enjoy with a leisurely stroll around the pond in the park. Admission to Fantasy Lights is free, but donations to support Rotary’s service work are gladly accepted. Holiday music will pipe through the speaker system throughout the park, Santa’s Village, which has several elf houses for the kids to explore, will be open, with Santa’s Merry Train Ride nightly (weather permitting), and Santa will be there every Sunday night until Christmas, plus snow on weekends! On certain nights, live musical performances will be held on the stage.
 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 a nostalgic mood, we turn to Wim Statius Muller and Curacao, that Caribbean island nation 40 miles north of Venezuela with a population Flagler County will soon equal: 150,000. Curacao’s size is 171 square miles, about twice the size of Palm Coast and a third that of Flagler County. Curacao still has gorgeous coral reefs only somewhat damaged by the island’s refineries. It used to “belong” to the Dutch. That ended to some extent in 2010, though Holland still runs Curacao’s foreign policy and assures its defense–not a bad idea with Venezuelan anger a swim away. The country is big on tourism and used to be big in prostitution, legal there as long as you were a foreigner and worked in “Le Mirage,” the huge army barrack turned brothel. But the brothel apparently closed a few years ago. There was this item in the Curacao Chronicle last June: “Prime Minister Gilmar Pisas sparked debate during a parliamentary session by endorsing the establishment of a prostitution center on Curaçao, suggesting it could potentially be located at the former site of Campo Alegre or elsewhere. Pisas made these remarks while addressing questions regarding the government’s current lack of a prostitution policy. Speaking from his experience as a former police officer, Pisas emphasized the necessity for such a center. “I have never visited Campo Alegre for pleasure, but I understand the need for a regulated facility,” he stated. The debate intensified as Pisas disclosed receiving numerous appeals to reopen Campo Alegre, a topic that has stirred controversy since its closure.” Stirred indeed. Not to worry: prostitution is “proliferating” elsewhere on the island. Curacao is also known for Wim Statius Muller, the late composer and pianist too often compared to Chopin, though the closer comparison is to Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the American composer of the Civil War era to whom Muller is closer in style and geography.
—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.
Blue 24 Forum
Ted Torres Martin as Elvis The Show at Fitzgerald Performing Arts Center (Flagler Auditorium)
A Christmas Carol at Athens Theatre
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Peps Art Walk Near JT’s Seafood Shack
A Christmas Carol at Athens Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
It would be a mistake to imply that two lives can unite and make a life between them without discord and pain. Marriage is a perilous and fearful effort, it seems to me. There can’t be enough knowledge at the beginning. It must endure the blundering of ignorance. It is both the cause and the effect of what happens to it. It creates pain that it is the only cure for. It is the only comfort for its hardships. In a time when divorce is as accepted and conventionalized as marriage, a marriage that lasts must look a little like a miracle. That ours lasts- and in its own right and its own way, not in pathetic and hopeless parody of some “expert” notion–is largely, I believe, owing to the way it began, to the Camp and what it meant and came to mean. In coming there, we avoided either suspending ourselves in some honeymoon resort or sinking ourselves into the stampede for “success.” In the life we lived that summer we represented to ourselves what we wanted- and it was not the headlong pilgrimage after money and comfort and prestige. We were spared that stress from the beginning. And there at the Camp we had around us the elemental world of water and light and earth and air. We felt the presences of the wild creatures, the river, the trees, the stars. Though we had our troubles, we had them in a true perspective. The universe, as we could see any night, is unimaginably large, and mostly empty, and mostly dark. We knew we needed to be together more than we needed to be apart.
–From Wendell Berry’s “The Long-Legged House” (1969).
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