To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Partly sunny, with a high near 66. Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 49.
- 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 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.
‘The Niceties,’ at Palm Coast’s City Repertory Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, 160 Cypress Point Parkway (City Marketplace, Suite B207), Palm Coast. $25 for Adults, $15 for Students. Book here. An urgent debate about race, history and power by Eleanor Burgess. Zoe, a Black student, meets her white professor to discuss a paper on slavery’s impact on the American Revolution. What starts as a polite clash of perspectives erupts into a riveting debate. Praised for its gut instinct and talent, The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess offers a wholly satisfying evening of theater. The Saturday performance will be followed by discussion panel.
See:
The Friends of the Library host a book sale from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast. There will be Fiction, Non-Fiction, Specialty Books, Children’s Books and much more. No Large Bills or Credit/Debit Cards accepted.
Peps Art Walk, noon to 5 p.m. next to JT’s Seafood Shack, 5224 Oceanshore Blvd, Palm Coast. 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 Annual Native American Festival is at Princess Place Preserve, 2500 Princess Place Road, Palm Coast, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, $10 per person, Kids 12 and under FREE!
Mermaids and Pirates Seafood Fest, 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Flagler County Fairgrounds, 150 Sawgrass Road, Bunnell. Family Fun Festival featuring Mermaids, Pirates, Vendors, Artisans. Local Businesses, Entertainment, Music & Food Trucks. Feel free to dress up in your best garb or mermaid attire for the occasion.
Gamble Jam: Musicians of all ages can bring instruments and chairs and join in the jam session, 2 to 4 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.
‘The Drowsy Chaperone,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, $35. When wealthy widow, Mrs. Tottenham, hosts the wedding of the year, she gets a lot more than a write-up in the society pages. This magical piece of meta-theatre and playful, heartfelt parody of the 1920s musical comedy features a chirpy jazz age score by Tony-winning collaborators. Book here.
F.R.E.S.H. Book Festival in Daytona Beach, FRESH as in Fiction, Romance, Erotica, Spirituality and Health, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, starting Thursday at 6 p.m. with the FRESH Book Film Festival at the Museum of Arts and Sciences, 325 South Nova Road, Daytona Beach, then Friday and Saturday with the book festival at the Julia and Charles Cherry Cultural Center, 925 George Engram Boulevard, Daytona Beach. See the full schedule and costs here.
‘One Slight Hitch,’ at Daytona Playhouse, 100 Jessamine Blvd., Daytona Beach, Adults $25, Seniors $24, Youth $15, 7:30 p.m. except Sunday matinees and special March 1 matinee. It’s Courtney’s wedding day, and mom is making sure everything is perfect. Then, like in any good farce, the doorbell rings, and all hell breaks loose. So much for perfect.
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.
Storytime: Eudora Welty wrote “A Visit of Charity” in 1941. There may have been an element of autobiography. If so, she captured the dank desperation we have all felt when visiting a nursing home–here called Old Ladies’ Home–heard the rasp of its residents’ decompensating lungs, smelled the slipperiness of its one-way floors, longed to leave as soon as we got there, the mirror of our future proving too unbearable for any charity. Welty grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. She knew a house by that very name, and must’ve walked by it many times and went inside fewer times. The Mississippi Department of Archive and History has a 1967 postcard reproduction of the actual Old Ladies Home, the one above this piece (without the possessive apostrophe Welte added with grammatical fustiness, unless it was her editors’ corruption), with this explanation: “Old Ladies Home, 2902 West Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi 39209. A home established in 1902 for 95 elderly ladies without children or sufficient means of support. Maintained largely by the generosity of citizens within the State and friends outside who are concerned with the welfare of these ladies.” Mississippi State’s Scholars Junction has more details: “Chartered in 1902, constructed in 1908, the Old Ladies Home was long a Jackson landmark. This hand-colored image reveals structural additions to the original building. In 1902 Samuel Livingston gave 2 acres between Livingston Park and Cedarlawn Cemetery for the site of the Old Ladies Home. The women of Mississippi raised the money, and the building was completed in 1908. It was a magnificent 2-story brick building lighted by electricity, immediately on the street car line, and accommodating 40 aged women. Additions were made through the years to house more ladies, but by 1987 the Home was found unsafe and the residents moved elsewhere. The building was razed in 1991. The title of the card is printed in red along the upper edge of the image.” That’s the postcard appearing below, from back when it cost a penny to mail one (penny postcards first went on sale in 1873, a price that held, amazingly, until Jan. 1, 1952, according to this delicious history of the postcard by the postal service.) “A Visit of Charity” is about 14-year-old Marian, “the little girl” (adolescence’s imperiousness had yet to emerge in 1941) is a Campfire Girl. (Unlike Old Ladies Home and penny postcard, Camp Fire is still around, but as a coed organization. Its only chapter in Florida is in Lakeland.) Forgive the endless tangents, but I find all this fascinating, this being the archeological dig that the opening lines of a short story can turn out to be even before we get to its literary beauties, though rare is the story that manages literary power on a vacuum of archeology. “A Visit of Charity” is that story of endless layers. Marian is visiting the Old Ladies Home for utilitarian rather than charitable reasons. “I have to pay a visit to some old lady,” she tells the desk nurse, “any of them will do.” Marian knows none of them. The old ladies have no names, only a value: three points for her Camp Fire Girl ledger. Four if she brought flowers (she brought a potted plant) and double if she brought a Bible and read from it to the ladies (no Bible). From the opening lines, the story has three recurring sensations: coldness, whiteness and sheep. Welty repeats the word “sheep,” usually as a simile, four or five times. Walking with Marian down a hallway that smells “like the interior of a clock,” the pair hear it: “an old lady of some kind cleared her throat like a sheep bleating.” The nurse shoves Marian in that dark room and its two darker (but white-skinned) convicts, who proceed to nearly terrorize Marian with their merciless bickering and bleating. One of them is called Addie. We never learn what the other one is called. The bleating sheep hates the flowers, the other one likes them. They bicker about that, and about the time when someone read to them from the bible. The nameless one claims it’s Addie’s birthday and she’s mad about that. Addie protests. It isn’t. Nothing is, anymore for Addie. But Marian finally sees her as more than a point and asks her how old she is. “Now she could see the old woman in bed very closely and plainly, and very abruptly, from all sides, as in dreams. She wondered about her–she wondered for a moment as though there was nothing else in the world to wonder about. It was the first time such a thing had happened to Marian.” But Addie is now crying: “It was a sheep that she sounded like–a little lamb.” Marian escapes the room and flees out of the building, stopping by a bush where she’d hidden something. A red apple. She jumped on a bus “and took a big bite out of the apple.” With the image of the old woman reduced to a little lamb and of the bite at the red apple, the story goes from spectral to scriptural. Addie’s Eden has long been over. Marian’s may have just ended. Charity is like the ceiling Marian looked at when she was shoved into the room, “like being caught in a robbers’ cave, just before one was murdered.”
—P.T.
View this profile on Instagram
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.
March 2025
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Tyrese Patterson Sentencing
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Palm Coast Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee
Flagler Beach City Commission Meeting
Town of Marineland Commission Meeting
For the full calendar, go here.
If, then, this is true—that books are of very different types, and that to read them rightly we have to bend our imaginations powerfully, first one way, then another—it is clear that reading is one of the most arduous and exhausting of occupations. Often the pages fly before us and we seem, so keen is our interest, to be living and not even holding the volume in our hands. But the more exciting the book, the more danger we run of over-reading. The symptoms are familiar. Suddenly the book becomes dull as ditchwater and heavy as lead. We yawn and stretch and cannot attend. The highest flights of Shakespeare and Milton become intolerable. And we say to ourselves—is Keats a fool or am I?—a painful question, a question, moreover, that need not be asked if we realized how great a part the art of not reading plays in the art of reading. To be able to read books without reading them, to skip and saunter, to suspend judgment, to lounge and loaf down the alleys and bye-streets of letters is the best way of rejuvenating one’s own creative power. All biographies and memoirs, all the hybrid books which are largely made up of facts, serve to restore to us the power of reading real books—that is to say, works of pure imagination.
–From —Virginia Woolf, “How Should One Read a Book?” Yale Review, Sept. 1, 1926.
JohnB says
Why has Senators Scott’s email been down for the past several weeks?
Pogo says
@What’s in your wallet? (and who?)
Feel this?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technology/cryptocurrency-exchange-says-it-was-victim-of-1-5-billion-hack/ar-AA1zxRW2?ocid=nl_article_link
trump and elon are on the job — no worries…
Ray W, says
Brian Kilmeade hosts a radio show.
Yesterday, the guest of honor was President Trump. When the subject of discussion shifted to the Ukraine, President Trump flip-flopped yet again from his recent flip-flopping admission that Putin had invaded the Ukraine, though he maintained his position that Zelenskyy had had been the one who had permitted the invasion by failing to stop Putin from committing acts of war on the Ukrainian people.
Trump said:
“You have a man who has let a country that had the more beautiful cities get demolished, … had the most beautiful domes. Those domes are the most beautiful in the world.”
Kilmeade interrupted: “[T]hat’s Russia’s fault. …”
Undeterred, Trump continued:
“They’re all demolished, a thousand-year-old domes, and everything’s demolished, it looks like a demolition site. It’s sort of like Gaza. In fact, it’s more — at least Gaza has a couple of buildings standing. This place, you look at demolition of so many of those cities, also, those people are killed, never to come back again. They’re all killed.”
Again, Kilmeade interjected: “But Mr. President, that’s Vladimir Putin’s fault, don’t you agree?”
Again undeterred, Trump continued:
“I get tired of listening to it, I tell you what. … I’ve seen it enough, and then he complains that he’s not in a meeting that we’re having with Saudi Arabia trying to intermediate peace. Well, he’s been at meetings for three years with a very — uh, with a president who didn’t know what the hell he was doing.”
University of Illinois Professor of International Relations Nicholas Grossman responded to Trump’s approach to international relations:
“At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Zelenskyy is negotiating with a very big card: 3 years of thwarting Putin’s attempted conquest, at an immense cost to Russia which they cannot sustain. … We can be confident that Trump gets, at some level, how big that card is, because he keeps trying to weaken it.”
Professor Grossman is saying what I have been saying. Russia has already lost the war. Only the killing remains before Russia collapses. Russia cannot win this war without Trump’s intervention. No one else can or is willing to come to Russia’s salvation.
Normally, I would write at this point, “Make of this what you will.” But there is only one way of looking at this.
Thank goodness that for about three years now, I have repeatedly referred to academia’s view of empire. There are three types of empire: Conquer, Destruction, and Trust. Academia recognizes only two empires of trust in all of human history. Early Rome, before its age of Ceasars and fascism, and the United States, from Wilson’s League of Nations and Roosevelt’s United Nations. Yes, Churchill and the British people were significant parts of the effort, but with dominions and colonies, it is hard to argue that Great Britain was ever an Empire of Trust; it was more an Empire of Conquer.
For the past 100 years’, the Shining City on a Hill attempted, not without setbacks, to create an Empire of Trust. We opposed the rise of what was once a cultured people, the Soviets and its Russian people. In three short years, Russia has become the home of perhaps the most uncultured society on earth. It is widely reported that Russian officers have begun ordering their soldiers to shoot any Ukrainian soldier who surrenders.
When Russia invaded the Ukraine for the second time in eight years, the initial effort was to overthrow the popularly elected Ukrainian democratic government and install a puppet government. Russia desired the resources of the Ukrainian people without having to destroy the people. The Russian army did not demolish bridges or dams or the electricity grid, because a puppet government would need the structures.
Russia’s attempt to build an Empire of Conquer, with the Ukraine as the first brick in the wall, failed. The Ukrainian people not only stopped the paper tiger, but they also then threw it back on its heels. Russia is still on its heels after 2 1/2 years of flailing.
After the attempt to conquer the Ukrainian government and its people failed, Putin shifted away from his attempt to conquer and he set out to build an Empire of Destruction. Ukrainians as a people are no longer to exist. No puppet government would rule a people. Russia accelerated its kidnapping of Ukrainian children, who were taken to Russia. Many children were placed with Russian families. Putin says there is no such thing as an ethnic Ukrainian; they are all Russians. In an Empire of Destruction, bridges and dams and electricity grids need no longer exist. Indiscriminate bombing has become the norm. Shopping centers and hospitals are to be targeted. In essence, Russia is trying to erase the Ukrainian people’s future and their past.
For three years, former President Biden attempted to carry on as the leader of the sole nation that had maintained an Empire of Trust, an empire that had been in existence for over 100 years, but the stupidity of the Republican House thwarted the effort.
In 10 short days, the free world has now been forced to accept that the Shining City on a Hill no longer exists. We have become an Empire of Conquer. When Trump presented to Zelenskyy a document that requires the Ukrainian people to surrender their future, their birthright of human ingenuity, of immense mineral wealth, of agricultural wealth and the world’s most fertile soil, of industrial strength, of strategic importance, he was announcing America’s new intent to grab its share of wealth from the ruins exacted by the now uncultured Russian people.
Just another day in the Great Russian Appeasement of 2025.
Skibum says
The same racist individual who spent years spreading the lie that Barack Obama wasn’t a natural born American citizen but instead was from South Africa (Kenya to be exact) and therefore ineligible by law to be at the helm of American government… has now installed a REAL South African (an Afrikaner to be exact) in Elon Musk, an avowed supporter of far right white supremacy in Europe, to run ram shod over all congressionally approved federal budgeting and federal agencies. Musk has relished brandishing an actual chain saw in public while slashing scores of workers from the federal workforce, including from agencies with whom Musk has a direct conflict of interest due to having contracts, loans, grants and agreements with various parts of our federal government for his automobile, space and medical equipment companies. Musk and the orange-faced buffoon occupying the WH have no real intent to seek and cut out any “found” fraud, waste or inefficiencies within the federal government or they would have utilized the Inspector Generals that were already working within every federal agency for that specific purpose. In fact, the IGs were the very first federal employees to be fired by the idiot-in-chief, so what should that tell the American people about this scam of epic proportion? It should be a five alarm warning that what they REALLY are doing is taking essential services away from American citizens while at the same time eliminating the various oversight and protections that we have so there will be no way for any American to fight back when these two give themselves and their billionaire friends unfettered access to tax cuts, while at the same time denying the rest of us the services and protections we have rights to and that Congress has allocated to the states and each citizen. They have already decried that the federal consumer financial protection agency is GONE! Unscrupulous and excessive bank fees will be coming soon, and we will no longer have a say so or any consumer protections from the fraudulent and illegal antics of banks and large lenders that the financial protection agency shielded us from. Now the buffoon is saying he wants to take over the postal service and all other independent federal functions that the executive branch, by law, does not control. The official White House media account has posted a picture of drumph wearing a crown, saying “Long live the king!” Does anyone recall before the election when that imbecilic wanna-be dictator said he was going to be a “dictator on day one, but only for one day” so he could put forth necessary things he wanted to accomplish without interference from Congress? Well, shocking to have to announce this to everyone, but HE LIED! We are more than a month in to drumph 2.0 and he STILL is trying to wield even more power, taking illegal and unconstitutional acts and trying to completely eliminate federal agencies and budgets that were approved and funded by Congress, you know that other, co-equal branch of the federal government who is supposed to be standing up for the American people and telling the president that he does NOT have king like power to rule this land! But instead, the GOP majority in both the House and Senate cannot seem to find their spines or even to dig deep within their soulless beings to find the courage or the cowardly lion to speak out about one man who is taking away Congress’ own power and authority, and instead giving it to an Afrikaner, a Nazi lovin and saluting white supremist, allowing him to invade every American’s personal and confidential tax, social security, medicare and other closely held account information, saying he “trusts him”… but you know what? Drumph has NO trust in you or I, NO trust in our federal government, NO trust in Congress or the 3rd branch of the government – our courts – when they disagree or submit decisions and court orders blocking his actions which he refuses to comply with. He has NO trusts in our military leaders, and has been firing our top Pentagon generals right and left, trying to install puppet military officials who will do his bidding without question. But you know who he has repeatedly said he does trust? Vladimir Putin!!! The man occupying our WH is about as anti-American as anyone can get, yet there are STILL far too many gullible Americans who continue to believe he is doing something worthwhile for them, while he is scamming them and would take every last penny they have in the process. WAKE UP!!!
Pogo says
@Elsewhere
As stated
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2025/02/22/florida-insurance-profits-desantis-regulation-investors-crisis/
Floriduh gubment — 27 years of corruption and destruction.
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
I was able to send an e-mail to Sen. Dick Scott on Thursday with no problem, except the auto reply was the same old send him money reply that we’ve seen for years now.
Trish says
Hopefully not an amerikkkan concentration camp
Sherry says
Thank You Skibum! Hopefully your passionate plea will start to sink into the minds of some of the smarter cult members. I believe in miracles!