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Weather: Partly sunny with a 20 percent chance of showers. Highs in the mid 70s. Northeast winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph.
Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy with a 50 percent chance of showers. Lows in the lower 60s. 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 Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
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 gatherings usually feature a special guest.
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.
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, 6400 North Oceanshore Blvd., Palm Coast, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Flowers, bushes and hard to find plants. The event is sponsored by the Friends of Washington Oaks. Regular entrance fee applies: $4 per vehicle with one person aboard, $5 for vehicles with more than one person.
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.
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Monthly Meeting, 11 a.m. at Cypress Knoll Golf Club, 53 Easthampton Blvd, Palm Coast. A monthly speaker is featured. Lunch is available for $20 in cash, $21 by credit card, but must be ordered in advance. The lunch menu is available on our website. Lunch may be ordered by sending an email to: [email protected].
Gamble Jam: Musicians of all ages can bring instruments and chairs and join in the jam session, 2 to 5 p.m. The program is free with park admission! Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach, 3100 S. Oceanshore Blvd., Flagler Beach, FL. Call the Ranger Station at (386) 517-2086 for more information. The Gamble Jam is a family-friendly event that occurs every second and fourth Saturday of the month. The park hosts this acoustic jam session at one of the pavilions along the river to honor the memory of James Gamble Rogers IV, the Florida folk musician who lost his life in 1991 while trying to rescue a swimmer in the rough surf.
Palm Coast’s Starlight Parade in Town Center is scheduled for 6 p.m. Dec. 14 in Central Park (assuming no tornadoes, pandemics, lightning storms or rains of frogs), this year capping off the city’s 25th anniversary celebrations. This festive parade will be a celebration of community traditions, featuring numerous community partners. Enjoy a delightful evening with food, entertainment, and fun for all ages. Don’t miss this opportunity to come together and honor the vibrant spirit of Palm Coast. Be part of this magical event and celebrate our community in style! Santa will arrive on a Palm Coast Fire Engine! There will be food trucks, Letters to Santa station, face painting, and kids crafts.
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.
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.
Readings: Brett Martin in October wrote a perceptive piece on Vegas (“How Las Vegas Became the Weirdest, Wildest, and Most Futuristic City in America”), that city of shimmering metaphors, daring you to judge: “You want to say that Las Vegas represents exploitive capitalism at its most grotesque? A privatized surveillance state in which the government has declared open season for corporations to use the most manipulative and addictive technologies ever created to prey on its own citizens? A place where the underclass labors to provide ever more vapid and distracting entertainment to the increasingly wealthy, laying waste to the world’s resources as the planet spins toward inevitable catastrophe? Okay. But where do you live, pal? Couldn’t be New York City. Couldn’t be San Francisco, or Chicago, or Miami. Is that a slot machine in your pocket, or is FanDuel just happy to see me?”
—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 Commission Workshop
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Community Traffic Safety Team Meeting
St. Johns River Water Management District Meeting
Flagler County School Board Workshop: Agenda Items
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
Flagler County Planning Board Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Contractor Review Board Meeting
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting
Tourist Development Council Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board
For the full calendar, go here.
Quote: Night falls as we approach Las Vegas. These days, Las Vegas is more fashionable than Reno. Enormous posters throughout California feature a cowboy chomping down on a big cigar and winking playfully and below this: “For fun… Las Vegas.” There’s also a girl telephoning her boyfriend, showing her terrific legs, and saying. Yes …ifit’s at the Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas.” And there are the same advertisements as you see for Reno: “Get married in the Chapel of the Stars. All arrangements for marriages. Quick divorces.” Here we see festive gardens, which are only “courts” or “lodges.” And here’s Las Vegas, all glittering with lights. It’s difficult to find rooms, but we finally discover some in a motel that smells of tamarinds and mimosa. They rent us a whole cottage: two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. I notice that in these places, they never ask us for iden-rification; no one knows when you come or go or whether you bring visitors. There are many ways of eluding American thoroughness. A taxi driver shows us a restaurant whose cooking makes up for the glaring lights, the heat, and the brouhaha. The clubs are much like those in Reno: the same lit-up signs evoking the gold rush period, the same games, the same lotteries all marinating in the stench of alcohol and tobacco. But the wretched clientele of cowboys and bums mingles with a more respectable public. I notice, among others, women who look distinctly lower middle class, sitting on stools on both sides of a long counter. They each have a mug of beer beside them and a bingo card in front of them. I assumed bingo was a quiet diversion played in the family, and these women are as old as the mothers and grandmothers who would play this game to amuse the children on a quiet evening. But as the lottery wheel turns above the counter, they follow it with maniacal intensity. A voice over a loudspeaker announces the number chosen, and they place their numbered chips on the corresponding spaces. They are each as alone as the old Frenchwomen who kill their evenings at the fireside. But they are alone all together by the hundreds. And in this innocent pastime they risk real money.
—From Simone de Beauvoir’s America Day By Day, tr. Carol Cosman (1954, tr. 1999). .
Pogo says
@FWIW, so many criminals behind desks, so few behind bars
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+casinos+are+used+to+launder+money
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=payday+loan+sharking
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+informal+economy
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=cashless+society
As stated
https://www.google.com/search?q=Panama+Papers+incident
NJ says
The Daily Cartoons are from a Chinese Communist Party member!! USA! USA! Peace thru Strength will STOP the CCP from DESTROYING America’s Freedom!
Pierre Tristam says
I don’t think the Chinese Community Party would employ a decorated 8-year U.S. Air Force veteran whose assignments included Air Force One and Air Force Two, and four years with the Strategic Air Command, and whose awards are too numerous to mention here. NJ may have more to do with those bizarre lights above his eponymous name than anything earthy or reality-based.
James says
From the “Colored lights can hypnotize…” Dept.
What’s more likely?
(a) It’s an alien police invasion force searching for Trump.
(b) It’s a saucer interceptor group sent out from Trump’s Jersey golf course for fears they’ve finally found him.
(c) This is an example of what happens when you legalize marijuana.
(d) It’s a test of a “not so secret anymore” new weapons system.
Me?
I’m leaning towards BOTH (a) and (b).
Just an opinion.
Sherry says
Time magazine fact checked trump’s interview with them. They found several untrue/misleading statements by trump. For example:
What Trump Said: “The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it.”
The Facts: Trump made this comment while discussing vaccines. The false claim that there’s a link between vaccines and autism traces back to a retracted study from the 1990s. Even though that study has been widely debunked and refuted, and modern studies continue to consistently show that shots are safe, the idea that vaccines are linked to autism persists, without evidence, among some vaccine skeptics.
While it’s true that autism is diagnosed much more frequently now than in the past, it is not because vaccines are causing the condition.
Pierre Tristam says
Sherry, I think you’re missing a key point. Autism may very well have spiked since 2016. Obviously, something, or someone, is causing it. Hell, we’ve all been on the spectrum since that elevator descent took us down to Hades in 2015.
Laurel says
“I have just one word for you. Are you listening? Plastics! Shhh. Nuff said”
Maybe.
Great scene.
Sherry says
Wonderful Pierre,
The FL “Reply” click through is not working. Your quick wit has me laughing though! HO! HO! HO!
I envision an escalator ride down below hades to a dangerous looney bin golf course for the next administration. The players are already being assembled. I’ll enjoy a glass of yummy French wine, thank you! Happiest of Holidays!
Pogo says
@A modest proposal
… along with the cartoon and other regular features of this particular page: Today, from the center ring of djt’s flea circus, and suspect lineup — a really, really bad idea!!!
A sample
https://www.google.com/search?q=doge+eliminate+fdic
trump is a backed up toilet of crap like that — and worse.
Sherry says
Please be sure to read the TIME trump fact check article to understand just what a prevaricator he really is :
https://time.com/7201574/person-of-the-year-2024-donald-trump-fact-check/
Sherry says
My Mantra:
1. Live and act in “Factual Reality”
2. News sources include AP, BBC and PBS News
3. Live a highly principled life, and expect the same from others
4. Always strive for Ethics, Integrity, Truth, Honesty, Equal Justice, Honor, Law and Order
5. Passionately protect our shared earth and its environment
6. Never ending education and appreciation of the arts
7. Keep a “World” perspective, respecting other cultures and peoples
8. Actively participate in the surrounding culture, politics and society
9. Maintain a healthy mind and body
10. Be authentic and open minded and accepting of other moral people of different skin color/cultures/religions