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Weather:
- 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:
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 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.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at Silver Dollar II Club, Suite 707, 2729 E Moody Blvd., Bunnell, and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
Storytime: In a May 2015 essay in Novel, A Forum on Fiction (a Duke University publication), the writer Matthew Sussman (now a senior lecturer in English at the University of Sydney) published an essay called “Henry James and Stupidity.” After letting his disclaimer of an introduction go to Jamesian lengths to establish James’s intelligence (quoting obituaries or critics who called him “the most intelligent man of his generation” etc.) he writes: “In this essay I neither assert that James lacks intelligence nor deny that intelligence plays a crucial role in the creation and reception of his work. However, I do argue that an overly narrow celebration of Jamesian intelligence has eclipsed the meaningfulness and centrality of stupidity and related concepts, such as ignorance and density, within his fiction.” It’s not an original thesis: a lot of James is written from such heights that as the words drop, so does a condensation of disdain that drenches those beyond the pale of James’s pantheon, his sensibilities, his manners, his idea of what must a human being, and certainly what an American, be. He did not always like Americans. His patience for women was limited, his respect for them even more so. A not-too-small book could be bound of the passages that diminish women–“The Romance of Certain Old Clothes” is a story stupendous for its sexism– or on occasion make them look like dumbasses (though not nearly as much as Dickens does with his cardboard-cutout women). Then there’s this: Sussman doesn’t mention “The Third Person,” from The Soft Side, James’s 1900 collection. (I couldn’t find it online.) It’s about two old maids (James’s words), second cousins to each other who’d never met until a house is left to them in a will to sell so they could benefit from the proceeds. The story’s introduction paints the two women, Susan and Amy, one 10 years older than the other (the fact seems irrelevant to the plot), essentially as losers who “had drunk deep of the cup of singleness and found it prevailingly bitter.” In other words, they were defined by their singleness, as if no woman in James’s universe would have an identity separate from a man. “The Third Person” will make the point again, though it’s still a very funny ghost story that spoofs James’s own conventions of the genre, making its less attractive flaws more bearable. One other detail: there’s mention on the first page of Tauchnitz novels. It’s no longer a reference anyone would recognize. I had no idea what Tauchnitz novels were. Tauchnitz was a German publisher of English-language novels before the days of copyrights who, nevertheless, paid his English authors for the rights, agreeing never to market the books in England. But people loved to smuggle them in, and did. The two women decide to keep the house even at the cost of having to live with each other. They discover that a man executed by hanging for smuggling (that was back when they hung anyone for “a trifle,” as a local priest tells the women) is haunting the place. They each see him in turn, standing in their room, his head bent where the rope snapped it. They’re not frightened in the least. They develop an attachment, then get jealous when he spends more time with one over the other, and give James the chance to drop his inanities: “They say, you know, that when women do quarrel it’s usually about a man.” At least James has the skills to make fun of his own cliches: “Well then, let there first be one,” Amy tells Susan as the jealousies corrode their living arrangement. They decide it may be time to give the ghost his freedom, his “absolution.” Susan donates a sum of money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for “conscience,” hoping it’ll clear the ghost’s conscience and he can be on his way. It doesn’t work. He’s not looking for absolution. He’s looking for one last fling–one last smuggle. Amy figures that out somehow, disappears to Paris for ten days, then smuggles back–what? a Tauchnitz novel. That does the trick. The ghost departs, and James has the last laugh. It’s a long way to go for the smuggle of a far-fetched punchline. Maybe the women weren’t so stupid after all, except for believing in what they saw leering at them. But so do we.
—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.
May 2025
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
Pool Safety Day
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
SunBros Cafe Celebrates the Life of Travis Sundell
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
“Was there ever anything like the avidity of these dreadful girls?” said Mrs. Mason to the Doctor. “They’ll let a man swoon at their feet sooner than abridge a tête-à-tête that amuses them. Then they’ll have up another. Look at little Miss McCarthy, yonder, with Ferdinand and George Stapleton before her. She’s got them contradicting each other, and she looks like a Roman fast lady at the circus. What does she care so long as she makes her evening? They like a man to look as if he were going to die, it’s interesting.”
–From Henry James’s “A Most Extraordinary Case” (1868).
Global punchline says
Aren’t the magas happy about the plane crashes? They saved a dollar from terminating hundreds of senior officials, which they bought swatsticars with. It’s almost like people don’t know what treason is. Read the constitution even though agent orange took it from the Whitehouse website lol.
Sherry says
Speaking of DOGE/DOUCHE firings at the FAA. . . you’ve just gotta watch SNL’s portrayal of the trump/vance Zelensky sh%$ show:
Ray W, says
Haltbakk Bunkers, Norway’s largest privately owned maritime fueling company, owns “a series of fueling stations”, both land based and at multiple Norwegian ports; it also owns bunker vessels and fueling tankers.
Last year, it provided 3,300.000 liters of marine-grade fuel to U.S. naval vessels.
Its owner stopped selling fuel to Russian ships in 2022 after Russia invaded the Ukraine.
After President Trump’s and Vice-President Vance’s performance with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, the company announced it would no longer fuel American naval vessels.
A statement posted to the company’s website reads:
“We have today been witness to the biggest shitshow ever presented ‘live on tv’ by the current American president and his vice president. Huge credit to the president of Ukraine restraining himself and for keeping calm even though USA … put on a backstabbing tv show. It made us sick. …”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
In three short weeks, we have been transformed from a reliable ally into an extortionist street thug.
Just another day in the Great Russian Appeasement of 2025.
Ray W, says
After Friday’s shouting match in the White House, the Fortune publication reported that the EU’s most senior diplomat, Kaja Kallas, went on record as saying, “The free world needs a new leader. … It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
In three short weeks, we have gone from the leader of the free world to a loser on the world stage.
Just another day in the Great Russian Appeasement of 2025.
Ray W, says
This past Thursday, Russian President Putin reportedly spoke to Federal Security Service (FSB) chiefs.
The HuffPost UK reports that President Putin the chiefs that Russian agents must “disrupt” any attempts to undermine Russia’s new bonds with the U.S. government.
“We understand that not everyone is happy with the resumption of Russian-American contacts. … Some western elites are still determined to maintain instability in the world, and these forces will try to disrupt or compromise the dialogue that has begun. … We need to be aware of this and use all possibilities when it comes to diplomacy and our intelligence services to disrupt such attempts.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
The irony that Putin can disrupt the world by ordering his forces to invade the Ukraine and then blame western elites of maintaining the instability he initiated cannot be ignored. Putin is a danger to world peace and stability. Any effort to help Putin is a danger to world peace and stability. The Ukraine should not cede one square meter of its soil.
Just another day in the Great Russian Appeasement of 2025.
Ed P says
Ray W,
Your are factually correct. My only wish is before you surmise what’s happening on the world stage, you pause a bit, let it breathe like a fine red wine, and then editorialize.
Europe will now step up as they should have 3 years ago. NATO allies will increase their own military budgets, bringing them up to where they should be. There is talk of an alliance of peace keepers other than the United States. Europe finally has realized they have to have skin in the game.
In the end, this might be the correct reset for this region of the world. This “thug” as you call Trump has done what no one has been able to do and these actions might end the Ukrainian war sooner rather than later.
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game” Trump is simply dealing with the situation in the quickest fashion possible. Ask yourself if we would be at this stage if normal diplomacy and the US continued support “for as long as it takes”
Peace through strength
Sherry says
Thank You Ray!
Joe D says
for Ed P…..
Yes Trump wants to end the war as fast as possible….of course that probably means giving Putin the territory he’s taken in the past 3 years ( we aren’t even discussing Putin’s invasion and take over of the Crimea region of Ukraine back in 2012. At that time , President Obama …who was trying to deal with the sub-prime home interest recession disaster he inherited from George Bush), decided, unfortunately , since NATO at the time wasn’t very invested in saving Crimea at the time , and the US couldn’t manage Putin’s Crimea invasion by itself).
Putin wants all the territory in southeast Ukraine from the Russian border Along the Red Sea ( including the Ukrainian ports along the Red Sea) so he can “own” the land route to Crimea.
The issue was when Trump decided (to the exclusion of Ukraine, NATO, and the European Union) to independently start peace negotiations with Putin, already saying up front that Ukraine should give away the invaded territories! You don’t give away negotiating points, before you even START peace talks! And in the Oval Office you don’t berate the President of a FREE Democracy, who has dealt with his country being overrun by Putin (after MONTHS of Putin saying he had no plans to invade Ukraine….that was just WESTERN PROPAGANDA)! Zelenskyy has asked for post peace talk guarantees of security ( given Putin has spent other ceasefires to move equipment in place, replace supplies, and rebuild damaged bridges, only to help them prepare for ANOTHER INVASION ). Trump has not offered any guarantees of any post peace talk security against Putin regression in the future.
How would Trump feel if Canada invaded and took over Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire or if Mexico took over Nevada and New Mexico?
I too am pleased that European leaders have stepped up to the plate, financially and politically.
Yes there has been a large US investment in equipping Ukraine….however Trump keeps tossing around out of THIN AIR…something like $350 billion! That’s ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE! In reality it’s more like an (AUTHORIZED by Congress) $125 billion in equipment (with only $86 billion actually disbursed at the moment). Not that even $125 billion is an insignificant amount.
I’m old enough to remember how (before World War II ) the US stood by as Hitler invaded country after country, saying Hitler was EUROPE’S problem…then Pearl Harbor was bombed!