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Weather: Mostly clear. Highs in the mid 70s. Lows in the upper 40s.
- 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 Palm Coast City Council meets in workshop at 9 a.m. at City Hall. The commission has a long agenda, including presentations on the Flagler Humane Society, the county airport’s proposed zoning regulations, a presentation by County Administrator Heidi Petito on coastal erosion and the necessary management of the beach, and some additional items. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The Flagler County School Board meets at 11 a.m. in a closed-door session at the Government Services Building. The meeting is about collective bargaining strategy.
The Flagler County School Board meets at 1 p.m. in an information workshop. The board meets in the training room on the third floor of the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Board meeting documents are available here.
The Flagler County School Board meets at 6 p.m. in Board Chambers on the first floor of the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Board meeting documents are available here. The meeting is open to the public and includes public speaking segments.
Budgeting by Values: A Free, Virtual Class to Learn Budgeting Skills, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. every fourth Tuesday of the month organized by Flagler Cares and Truist Bank, and presented by Financial Inclusion Leader Vladimir Rodriguez. To sign up or get information, call 386/319-9483, text 386/986-0107, or email [email protected].
The NAACP Flagler Branch’s General Membership Meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the African American Cultural Society, 4422 North U.S. Highway 1, Palm Coast (just north of Whiteview Parkway). The meeting is open to the public, including non-members. To become a member, go here.
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club at the Flagler Beach Public Library meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
Notably: Sidney Catts was the Governor of Florida from 1917 to 1921, the governor who signed Flagler County into existence. He is not much remembered, if at all, though he was memorable for the wrongest reasons: his bigotry had no bounds. He was the governor at the time of the massacres and lynchings in Ocoee and would have applauded the massacres in Perry and Rosewood: “Your Race is always harping on the disgrace it brings to the state by a concourse of white people taking revenge for the dishonoring of a white woman,” he told the NAACP in 1919, when if you would teach “your people not to kill our white officers and disgrace our white women, you would keep down a thousand time greater disgrace.” In other words, Blacks were to blame for their own lynchings. He had murdered a Black man himself once, claiming self-defense. A native of Alabama, he’d been a lawyer then an Elmer Gantry preacher then an insurance salesman who in 2016 campaigned on an anti-Catholic, anti-booze ticket. He appealed to Florida crackers–he loved the uneducated–for rising to power outside the manacles of patronage, but not outside the spoils of corruption. He played on Floridians’ racism and their religious differences, and he had no patience for following the law. “He could say things that in other speakers would sound coarse and possibly offensive,” an observer noted, according to The Economist. “Above all, Catts sensed that Florida had an unserved market for nativism, which, like populists before and later, he mixed with promises of a fairer economy. He had imbibed white supremacy in Pleasant Hill and saw segregation as natural and necessary. In Tuskegee, home of a pioneering black university, Catts’s wife, Alice May, once unwittingly invited Booker T. Washington, its first president, to do her gardening. […] His conspiracy-mongering illustrates the enduring power of whopping lies. […] He had a taste for violent rhetoric, and flirted with actual violence. Colourful insults and nicknames were a forte, such as “Hog Island Pete”, for a man who did business on Hog Island, Pennsylvania. Catts revelled in personal attacks and braggadocio, favourably comparing the size of his head, and supposedly his brain, with a rival’s. He hated journalists and they reciprocated. After he predicted they would be “cast into hell”, one said he feared bumping into Catts there. It wasn’t just words. As well as brandishing a Bible, he toted two loaded pistols with which to fend off assassins. He spoke darkly of his supporters marching on Tallahassee, the state capital, should he be denied victory. He threatened to punch, shoot or imprison his critics.” He was arrested on federal bribery charges soon after he left office. He’d accepted bribes to free a prisoner. You get the idea. We are living through the second term of Catts reincarnated. But as the Economist consoles, “Such populist irruptions are not fatal to democracy but part of it. The lightning of history illuminates a gaudy champion—and then the storm passes.”
—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
Flagler County School Board Information Workshop
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club, at Flagler Beach Public Library
Budgeting by Values: A Virtual Class to Learn Budgeting Skills
NAACP Flagler Branch General Membership Meeting
Flagler County School Board Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) 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
Flagler Woman’s Club Forum for Flagler Beach City Commission Candidates
For the full calendar, go here.
[Sydney] Catts introduced a remarkable variety of changes to Florida politics. He was the only man in the state’s history to marshal predominantly religious and moral issues to win the governorship; he was the only man between Reconstruction and Claude Kirk to defeat the Democratic party in Florida; he was the only successful candidate to bolt his political party and run as an independent; and he was the only gubernatorial candidate who stumped the state with twin revolvers prominently displayed. Never before had a Florida governor so thoroughly employed the spoils system, nor had so many public officeholders ever lived in such dread of being summarily ousted from their jobs. Never had a Florida governor faced a legislature which disliked him so thoroughly as was true of Catts, and there have been few Florida politicians who have experienced such a rapid political eclipse as he did.
–From Wayne Flynt’s “Sidney Catts: The Road to Power,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 1970.
