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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.
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
Sunshine and Sandals Social at Cornerstone
Flagler Beach Holiday Parade
Palm Coast Holiday Market
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
The Kingdom Choir at the Fitz
‘The Country Girl’ at City Repertory Theatre
A Christmas Carol at Athens Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
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).
Pogo says
@P.T.
A word, to pair with Mr. Berry:
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=eudaimonia
Pogo says
@As stated
Florida man charged in nationwide scams worth millions. What is phishing, how to avoid it
C. A. Bridges
USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida
https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/crime/2024/11/21/phishing-noah-michael-urban-palm-coast-florida-scam/76474983007/
Shows bigly promise to join trump team, perhaps consumer protection — no, of course not, burner phone liaison to RT, and Tulsi Gabbard.
да, that’s the ticket.
Ray W, says
This past Wednesday, OPEC ministers pushed back a meeting planned for Sunday to December 5th. The meeting’s purpose is to determine whether the 12 voting OPEC nations would finally agree when to begin unwinding long-standing production cuts that had been originally implemented in February 2021.
This past summer, OPEC announced that it would slowly begin to increase overall crude oil production starting in October, reversing its near-four-year policy of manipulating oil production for profit.
The new plan was to ultimately raise production by 2.2 million more barrels of oil per day.
The start date keeps being pushed back. Right now, it is set for the end of December. Market analysts report a consensus that at the December 5th meeting, OPEC will push the start date back at least another three months.
In February 2021, OPEC nations began cutting its previously announced reduction in overall production of crude oil by six million barrels per day.
Saudi Arabia began cutting an additional one million barrels per day on a voluntary basis.
Roughly 7% of the world’s crude oil supply was then slowly phased out of production.
Crude oil prices began to rise from around $45 per barrel in December 2020, eventually breaking the $80 mark.
Prices skyrocketed after Russia invaded the Ukraine and Western sanctions were then imposed on Russian exports of crude oil; they peaked as high as just over $120 per barrel.
As of the third quarter of 2024, the 12 voting OPEC nations, plus 10 other non-voting members, held 41% of the world’s overall market share of crude oil. Since overall production now is just over 100 million barrels per day, the 22-nation bloc of OPEC producers are extracting just over 41 million barrels per day.
According to the EIA, the 22-nation coalition currently has an excess capacity of 4.35 million barrels per day, which by definition means that the coalition could increase crude oil extraction by that amount within 30 days and maintain the increased level for at least 90 days, i.e., the bloc is not pumping as much crude oil as it can.
Why is any of this of any importance?
Let’s engage in a thought exercise. If prior to 2021, OPEC nations were producing 45 million barrels of crude oil per day at $45 per barrel, the math is simple: $2.025 billion per day. If OPED+ reduces production by 7 million barrels a day and the price rises to $80 a barrel, the math is still simple: $3.04 billion per day.
A number of industry analysts have reported that Saudi Arabia’s goal is to keep prices at or above $80 per barrel. At that level, all of the Saudi Arabian government’s fiscal needs are reportedly met by oil revenue.
Prices for Brent crude now hover around $72 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate is about $4 per barrel less. A number of OPEC+ nations apparently have been pumping above their quotas, because the Saudi oil minister has gone on record with threats to force prices down to $50 per barrel if they don’t stop pumping above their quotas. If the Saudi threat brings the wayward OPEC nations in line, is it reasonable to argue that oil prices might soon rise?
This raises a different issue.
President-elect Trump has repeatedly promised to increase American crude oil production by 3 million barrels a day, similar to the increase that occurred during the Biden years. “Drill! Baby! Drill!” is his mantra. He claims that he will quickly cut gasoline prices by 50%.
On the other hand, OPEC+ has manipulated international crude oil prices since late 2020. What evidence do we have that OPEC+ will suddenly stop manipulating the international crude oil marketplace?
All OPEC+ has to do is to reduce production by 3 million barrels a day to match the claimed increase in American production and oil prices will stay at or above the $70 per barrel level.