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Weather: Mostly sunny. Highs in the mid 60s. North winds 5 to 10 mph. Saturday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows in the upper 40s. North winds around 5 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 Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Peps Art Walk, noon to 5 p.m. next to JT’s Seafood Shack, 5224 Oceanshore Blvd, Palm Coast. Come shop for the holiday season! Step into the magical vibes of Unique Handcrafted vendors gathering in one location, selling handmade goods. Makers, crafters, artists, of all kinds found here. From honey to baked goods, wooden surfboards, to painted surfboards, silverware jewelry to clothing, birdbaths to inked glass, beachy furniture to foot fashions, candles to soaps, air fresheners to home decor and SO much more! Peps Art Walk happens on the last Saturday of every month. A grassroots market that began in May of 2022 has grown steadily into an event with over 30 vendors and many loyal patrons. The event is free, food and drink on site, parking is free, and a raffle is held to raise money for local charity Whispering Meadows Ranch. Kid friendly, dog friendly, great music and good vibes. Come out to support our hometown artist community!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Notably: Now that the fury over our magafascist president’s Madison Square Garden orgy a week and two heaves before Election Day is well over, now that America is Madison Square, it’s worth putting on Billy Joel and taking a brief trip down Madison Square Lane to recall that its present location above Penn Station was not its location when the Bund held its Nazi version of Washington’s birthday in 1939. The original Madison Square, a “grimy, drafty structure” according to Steven A. Riss in that elixir of a book called The Encyclopedia of New York City, opened in 1879 at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, when Edith Wharton was 17. The building was razed 10 years later. It was not making money. The Horse Show Association put up a $3 million building in its place, seating 8,000, the largest auditorium in the country at the time. It still lost money, got new owners, and was foreclosed by the New York Life Insurance Company. The circus and boxing revived the building’s fortunes after Tex Rickard leased it in 1920 for $200,000 a year. The Democrats held their convention there in 1924, nominating the uninteresting John Davis of West Virginia, who lost to the even more uninteresting and vaguely fascist Calvin Coolidge, with Robert La Follette winning Wisconsin for the Progressives. Rickard built the next Garden at 50th and Madison in 1925, keeping it in the money through the Depression and drawing a record crowd of 23,306 for the January 17, 1941 welterweight championship fight between Henry Armstrong and Fritzie Zivic, which of course Donald Trump won. It was only in 1968 that the new, the current Madison Square was built atop Penn Station, for what was $116 million then, what would be $1 billion now. It was renovated in 1990 for $200 million ($500 million in today’s dollars).
—P.T.
 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. |
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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.
Santa in Bunnell
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
Blue 24 Forum
Free Clinic Open House
First Friday in Flagler Beach
Free Family Art Night at Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
‘The Country Girl’ at City Repertory Theatre
A Christmas Carol at Athens Theatre
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
For the full calendar, go here.
Anti-Semitism was a fact of life in America. In the Red Scare years, Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, a Michigan newspaper, chronicled the alleged Jewish influence in American life and published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated anti-Semitic text that provided haters a false narrative of Jewish conspiracy. “When we get through with the Jews in America,” Father [CHARLES] Coughlin told an audience, “they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” The German-American Bund, led by Fritz Kuhn, had held a twenty-thousand-strong gathering at Madison Square Garden in February 1939 that featured cries of “Heil Hitler.” “The principles of the Bund and the principles of the Klan are the same,” a Bund leader said while appearing with Arthur Bell, the grand dragon of the New Jersey Klan.
–From Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (2018).
Ray W, says
Again, I thank you, Mr. Tristam, for the simple act of bringing a truth to the FlaglerLive readership. The hateful rhetoric of Father Coughlin echoes through time.
This cannot be repeated too often.
During the St. Augustine racial crisis of 1964, my parents moved to a St. Augustine motel. The six Warren children at the time moved with them.
One hot summer day, I was standing last in line at a motel room sink waiting my turn to brush my teeth after lunch. The pool beckoned large in my thoughts. One by one, my siblings finished brushing their teeth and raced out of the room and across the parking lot to the stand-alone pool. I could see them playing in the water as I brushed my teeth.
When I finished, I ran as fast as I could towards my family. Tripping in my haste, I split my lips on the asphalt. Blood streaming down my face and chest, I ran crying to my mother. When she saw me, she began screaming to my siblings to get out of the pool and line up. She counted heads and then turned to me.
At seven years of age, I couldn’t understand why my mother didn’t immediately help me. What she knew, and what I didn’t know, was that the local Klan had long before been infiltrated by an undercover law enforcement officer who was allowed to attend the most secret meetings. He reported that national Klan leadership had agreed to fund the hiring of an assassin to kill my father and my entire family in retribution for my father prosecuting local Klansmen who had attacked black fishermen fishing off the Vilano Beach bride in the middle of the night.
My mother had to take a head count to ensure no one was missing before attending to me.
Either that night or almost immediately after, we all bundled into the family station wagon and my father drove up to Greensboro, North Carolina, to place the six children into hiding. We arrived after midnight and quickly unloaded our luggage. My mother and father turned around to return to St. Augustine. We stayed with our paternal grandmother.
The politically blinded among us just don’t get it.
When a local Republican politician took to the airwaves to ask just when would it be time to begin beheading Democrats, he meant what he said. It wasn’t that he intended to kill anyone; it was that he intended for others to kill Democrats, if given the chance. He can claim it was just political hyperbole and apologize if necessary. The fact that he hasn’t apologized speaks volumes.
When President-elect Trump promised while on the campaign trail to crush vermin, he meant what he said. It wasn’t that he intended to crush anyone; it was that he intended for others to crush vermin, if given the chance. He can claim it was just political hyperbole and apologize if necessary. The fact that he hasn’t apologized speaks volumes.
When our governor told an audience while on the campaign trail that if elected, he would on day one of his presidential administration “slit throats”, he meant what he said. It wasn’t that he intended to slit anyone’s throat, it was that he intended for others to slit throats, if given the chance. He can claim it was just political hyperbole and apologize if necessary. The fact that he hasn’t apologized speaks volumes.
When North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial candidate told a rally audience that “some people need killing”, he meant what he said. It wasn’t that he intended to kill anyone, it was that he intended for others to kill those who need killing, if given the chance. He can claim it was just political hyperbole and apologize if necessary. The fact that he hasn’t apologized speaks volumes.
It was out of fear that my mother screamed to my siblings to immediately line up for a head count before attending to my injuries.
This is the message of the Nazis. This is the message of the American Bund. This is the message of Klan. This is the message of Hamas. This is the message of the religious extremist Jewish settler movement. This is the message of Putin. This is the message of the American white-nationalist movement. And this is the message of certain leaders of today’s no-longer conservative Republican party.
“Fear us”, rings out the chorus of centuries.
When my family returned out of hiding in North Carolina to Daytona Beach Shores, for about two weeks we had a 24-hour police presence at our ocean-front home. A manned cruiser on the beach near the approach up through the dunes. A manned cruiser in the driveway. An officer carrying a shotgun on the sundeck of our three-story home.
My memories of this times include offering glasses of iced tea or ice water to the officers through the hot summer days. If my mother needed to go anywhere, we all piled into the car. The officer in his driveway-parked cruiser would drive into A-1-A traffic to block the traffic flow. Mom would drive out and he would back into the driveway. When we returned, he would pull out into traffic to block the flow. Mom would pull in and he would back into the driveway.
“Fear us”, rings out the chorus of the centuries.
I oppose anyone who foments fear, violence and death in the name of political power. I didn’t start commenting on FlaglerLive until one of Flagler’s own hate-filled messengers took to the radio waves to spread his personal vision of fear, violence and death.
I have repeatedly commented about the Muslim survivor of the Serbian death squads that roamed Sarajevo and its suburbs and surrounding villages.
He spoke of a Serbian friend and factory co-worker. For years, he had worked with the man. For years, he had celebrated village festivals with this man. His children had played with his friend’s children. He had eaten in his friend’s home. His friend had eaten in his home.
And then came the war. It wasn’t the Serbian generals killing the Muslims. It wasn’t the Serbian politicians killing the Muslims. It was the former friend, the Muslim man’s factory co-worker who had eaten in his home, the man who had welcomed and accepted the Muslim man’s hospitality, who led the village death squad. The Muslim man had survived the massacre, but he held the memory of his friend killing his wife and children.
“Fear us”, ring out the chorus of the centuries.
Our political leaders do not intend to personally kill anyone. They intend for our neighbors and friends to do the killing, when the time comes.
All one needs to do to understand this is to read an Al comment and feel the anger and hatred dripping form Al’s words. Then one can understand how close to home the potential for violence is right now.
We are still in the early stages of an age of political violence. The ageless voice of vengeance and retribution echoes on these very pages.