To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Sunny, with a high near 65. Thursday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 44.
- 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:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
Flagler Beach City Commission Workshop on Beach-Management Plan, 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street. The City Commission will hold a special workshop to flesh out the proposed county beach-management plan ahead of a joint meeting of local governments on March 12.
The Beach Management Plan in Details:
- Flagler County’s Coastal Erosion and Management: Comprehensive Report
- Flagler County’s Coastal Erosion and Management: Executive Summary
- Flagler County’s Coastal Erosion and Management: Slide Presentation to Local Governments
- After Qualms from Palm Coast and Bunnell, County’s Beach-Saving Plan Gets a Much Warmer Reception from Flagler Beach
- Palm Coast Throws Cold, Brackish Water on County Beach Tax and Management Plan, Calling for Referendum
- Flagler Beach’s Days Are Numbered. That’s No Reason for Palm Coast to Assist Its Suicide.
- Flagler County’s $114 Million Beach Management Plan Depends on Raising Sales Tax and Winning Cities’ Buy-In
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library, 11 to 11:30 a.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach. It’s where the wild things are: Hop on for stories and songs with Miss Doris.
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
Read Across Flagler, 4 to 6 p.m. at Central Park in Palm Coast’s Town Center, presented by the school district’s media specialists and Celeste Ackerman. The event features a storywalk, free books, a petting zoo, food trucks, and student-authors’ published works.
‘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.
Byblos: The latest from the Library of America is another writer I would have not otherwise heard about but for LOA’s judicious curating of literary figures well beyond the conventional consensus: Joanna Russ: “An incandescent stylist who emerged from the experimental ferment of science fiction’s New Wave and against the backdrop of the women’s liberation and LGBTQ+ rights movements,” LOA tells us, “Joanna Russ upended every genre she worked in.” I don’t know what an “incandescent” style is, though that word seems to be in extra vogue these days, since Marilynne Robinson decided to use it three times in Gilead (a book I am finding definitely on the dim side of incandescence). Incandescence is a nice word, a tough, obviously luminous word, but it means something very definite: the radiation of visible heat. Is LOA suggesting that we will be sizzled by Russ’ style? LOA also calls her “a beguiling, darkly comic writer of speculative fiction,” then quotes Samuel R. Delany, who called her “one of the finest and most necessary-writers of American fiction.” Necessary: another hectoring word that has come into vogue regarding books and authors. Instinctively I am attracted to whatever may be between Russ’s hardcovers, but LOA seems to be overselling her while telling us little about her otherwise. Wikipedia says she was born in The Bronx in 1937, died in Tucson in 2011. “Drew Women to Sci-Fi,” is how the Times obituary summed her up. “Ms. Russ,” Margalit Fox’s obit says, “was best known for her novel “The Female Man,” published in 1975 and considered a landmark. With that book, which told the intertwined stories of four women at different moments in history, she helped inaugurate the now flourishing tradition of feminist science fiction. She also published essays, criticism and short fiction.” The LOA volume, running a meager 711 pages with back notes, includes The Female Man, and also We Who Are About To…, On Strike Against God, and the complete Alyx stories, plus other stories, but no criticism, no non-fiction: the incompleteness seems odd for LOA. “As a scholar, she was known for a study of Willa Cather that invoked Cather’s lesbianism, long a taboo subject,” the Times writes. The volume will have to go on the year’s maybe list, though the Alyx story titled “The Second Inquisition” has an incandescence about it that turns me on. She fronts the story with a quote by John Jay Chapman: “If a man can resist the influences of his town folk, if he can cut free from the tyranny of neighborhood gossip, the world has no terrors for him; there is no second inquisition.”
—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.
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Flagler Beach City Commission Workshop on Beach-Management Plan
‘The Drowsy Chaperone,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
Friday Blue Forum
First Friday in Flagler Beach
Free Family Art Night at Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens
‘The Drowsy Chaperone,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
Quote: “Finding The Man. Keeping The Man. Not scaring The Man, building up The Man, following The Man, soothing The Man, flattering The Man, deferring to The Man, changing your judgement for The Man, changing your decisions for The Man, polishing floors for The Man, being perpetually conscious of your appearance for The Man, being romantic for The Man, hinting to The Man, losing yourself in The Man. ‘I never had a thought that wasn’t yours.’ Sob, sob. Whenever I act like a human being, they say, ‘What are you getting upset about?’ They say: of course you’ll get married. They say: of course you’re brilliant. They say: of course you’ll get a PhD and then sacrifice it to have babies. They say: if you don’t, you’re the one who’ll have two jobs and you can make a go of it if you’re exceptional, which very few women are, and if you find a very understanding man. As long as you don’t make more money than he does. How do they expect me to live all this junk?”
–From Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975).
Jim says
It is just amazing to me that we can all watch the same video (great TV according to Trump) and walk away with completely different views.
Trump and Vance appear to have purposely attacked Zelenskyy while the reporters were there. Trumpers say Zelenskyy instigated the whole thing. How did he do that? Well, it appears that when JD Vance claimed that Zelenskyy hadn’t thanked them (Trump or the USA?) for all the aid provided and went on from there, that was Zelenskyy’s fault. Yet, according to news reports, Zelenskyy has thanked the USA over 190 times for all our help in this war. Zelenskyy appeared to try to insert some reality into the “conversation” and neither Trump nor Vance were having that. Zelenskyy is 100% correct, Putin does not honor agreements. Anyone who fact checks that will see that is true. And Zelenskyy’s country has been attacked by Putin since 2014. That’s 11 years. I don’t think it’s “warmongering” for Zelenskyy to be extremely skeptical of Putin’s “word”. So Trump says “you have no cards, no cards” for the world to hear and see. But Zelenskyy did have cards until Trump gave them all away. Maybe in a negotiation with Putin, the West would have to agree to not allow Ukraine into NATO. Maybe the West would have to agree to allowing Putin to keep all Ukraine’s land that he’s occupied. Maybe. But Trump has already stated both of these are not going to be part of the negotiation. Instead, Trump sends one of his minions to Zelenskyy, lays a document giving 50% of Ukraine’s minerals to the USA, provides no security guarantees, provides nothing actually and tells Zelenskyy he has one hour to sign it. Zelenskyy didn’t do that and Trump screams about how “ungrateful” Zelenskyy is.
And now, Trump has cut off all military aid and all access to intelligence information that is critical to Ukraine’s defense. Trump calls Zelenskyy a dictator with low popularity ratings and that Ukraine started the war. For Putin, Trump and his minions have nothing but praise. Check the Russian response -nothing but glee!
Those are all facts. I challenge the Trumpers and MAGA crowd to refute any of that. Yet, all of them support Trump’s actions like he is “making America great again” by doing this. All he has done is tell the entire world that America is not the “leader of the free world” anymore. We don’t support transparency, we lie constantly to support our “cause” and no one in the world should ever expect us to stand with them when they need us (except Israel; they’ve got some great real estate available – oceanfront!)
And don’t say he’s “playing 4-dimensional chess”. He’s not even a good checkers player. And as far as a great “negotiator”, no one gives up their aces before the game begins – except Trump.
I don’t know if Europe can provide enough support to keep Ukraine free. I pray they can. I do know that this is a dark, dark stain on America and I do not think we will ever recover from it. (Oh, and before you spout the BS about Europe providing less aid than the USA and getting paid for it, that’s not true either. Macron set Trump straight on that to his face although you can tell Trump doesn’t accept that and too many of you blindly follow that.)
And just because it’s true, MAGA’s and Trumpers: You do not see that allowing the richest man in the world to wreak havoc on the government is a disaster in the making. Does government need stream-lining? Yes, absolutely. But this is not the way to do it. It has not been transparent, Musk has lied repeatedly about the “waste and fraud” he’s uncovered and there is going to be damage to US citizens for years to come. Musk has billions of dollars in contracts with the government yet we’re supposed to accept that he won’t do anything unethical – give me a break…
And, finally(!), if America does not get PAC’s and the oligarchs out of politics quickly, our democracy is dead. I keep seeing that – privately – Republicans hate what’s going on because it damages their districts, yet they say nothing – in fact, they stand up and cheer like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened! And why? It’s simple; if they step out of line, Trump will go after them and Musk (alone) has the money to primary them in the next election. So they are in a position of standing up for what they think is right and losing their job (money/power) or ride the train as far as it goes. That is not Democracy. We need to get back to where there were limits on how much money an individual or company could give a politician. PAC’s should be outlawed. I’d bet a lot of money (pun intended) that if that happened, Trump wouldn’t last a month. Politicians would regrow part of their spines and we’d all be better off. But I know that won’t happen. Congress is dysfunctional and will remain so regardless of which party is in power.
In short, I think we are all screwed. I just wish MAGA would make fact-based decisions before it’s too late; maybe it already is….
Ray W, says
The editorial cartoonist, Monte Wolverton, has it right. In mere weeks, we have been transformed from trusted ally to street thug extortionist, demanding rare earths in exchange for life itself. We all watch as the Great Russian Appeasement of 2025 slowly unfolds itself.
Yesterday, the administration announced that it has cut off all military intelligence sharing with Ukrainian military and government officials. We no longer provide electronic data that allows Ukrainians to fire ATACMs over long ranges.
For months, I slowly set up the argument, perspective by perspective, that Russia has lost the war. When I thought the ground firm, I posted Churchill’s May 1943 speech to the American House, and via radio, to the American people, during which he set forth the argument that Japan, Germany and Italy had already lost the war two years before they actually surrendered and that, like the Gettysburg of the American Civil War, the tipping point of WWII was already behind the Allies and that only the killing remained before unconditional surrender.
The Atlantic just posted an article titled: “Russia Is Not Winning.”
The author relies in part on the perspectives of two sources. One, an analyst for the Institute for the Study of War who has been assigned the task of studying the Russian position for the past three years. The other, a manager of a charity focusing on non-lethal aid to Ukrainians who theorizes that the military that best supplies its soldiers with items other than bullets, such as battery packs and radios, will likely win the war.
The story starts:
“Last year, Russia made slow progress in Ukraine: Tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Russian soldiers were killed or wounded, and whole mechanized divisions were lost, in exchange for Ukrainian territory slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. At that rate, Russia will control all of Ukraine in about 118 years.”
He goes on to write that the Russian people, by now, have to be tasting “the extra bitterness that comes with the knowledge that they could, in February 2022, have just stayed home and not started the war.”
He characterizes President Trump’s claim that the Ukraine is not winning the war and that the country is in “a very bad position”, as if the Ukraine is the only combatant who is losing, as a “peculiar choice.”
Russia, he writes, is “not slogging through an urban environment. These are largely unpopulated steppes, with a handful of villages and only two operationally significant towns last year. That’s all they have to show for it.”
In what might be described as a “major” Russian effort in the Donetsk, Russia “lost about 500 tanks and 1,000 armored personnel carriers — roughly a division for every 10 klicks of movement.” Russia has been seen to be “using pack mules in lieu of mechanized equipment.”
The Russian tank factory in Uralvagonzavod, and its ammunition factory in Tula, have been working without break since the invasion, yet satellite imagery reveals the emptying of motor pools of reserve Soviet era armored vehicles to the point of “eventual depletion.” The Russians “are on course to run critically low in the next 12 to 18 months.”
The tactics of war, too, have shifted.
At first, Ukrainians armed with Javelins (provided by Obama, Trump and Biden) hunted Russian tank columns. Then, it became an artillery contest. Now, no one hears about artillery shell shortages; it has become a drone war, with Russia having greater resources and the Ukraine possessing the quality of innovation and cleverness.
With Russian tanks having been destroyed in such large numbers, now Russian attacks are mainly infantry advances. With deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands, though no one knows exactly the number, Russian recruiting efforts are “completely busted.”
Russian oblasts (regions) are responsible for recruiting. Samara Oblast now offers signing bonuses of $36,000, the equivalent of two- or three-year’s pay, not including regular pay and benefits. “In a poor country like Russia, handing out fistfuls of rubles is the very definition of desperation.”
Even that is not enough, as Russia continues to empty prisons and hire mercenary soldiers.
“Russia has inflation rates approaching 20 percent (officially they are about 9 percent), and it has been sucking its own sovereign wealth fund dry.”
“The very fact that there is a debate to be had about which country has the advantage in this war shows a remarkable inversion in expectation. Early on, even after Ukraine’s initial Javelin-enabled repulsion of the first wave of Russian invasion, pessimists noted that time favored Russia, the larger and richer of the two countries, and the one whose military had more experience with slow, grinding wars. ‘In 2022, all the analysts assumed that Putin and Russia would be better equipped to weather a long-term, protracted war against a smaller Ukraine,’ Barros said. ‘That assumption has been invalidated. Protracting the conflict now actually hurts the Russians more than the Ukrainians.'”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
President Trump is offering a calculation that a peace deal will stop the war, when in reality it will only mean a future of more death and destruction.
Russia is fighting for plunder. Giving it time to regroup will only end in more fighting for the same plunder.
The Ukrainian people are fighting for their land and for their lives and for the lives of their families and loved ones and for their freedom.
There is a difference.
NANCY SKADDEN says
I absolutely can relate to the quote from “The Female Man.” It’s lucky I broke free. I don’t read science fiction, but I’ll give her a try.
Pogo says
@Coming soon by popular request
… the modern language Book of Revelation
https://www.google.com/search?q=Social+Security+will+suspend+payments+for+90+days
Praise! Duh trump and duh shout are upon thee!
Ray W, says
The Hill just published an opinion piece titled: “Opinion: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was never about NATO expansion”
Here are some of the bullet points of the opinion piece.
– A week or so ago, American special envoy Steve Witkoff declared to a CNN audience:
“This war did not need to happen — it was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians.”
The author interpreted Witkoff’s message as being “clear”, that Russia had been “backed into a corner, forced to act in self-defense when it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.”
The author disagrees with Witkoff’s assessment, writing that the evidence “tells a different story — one of imperial ambition, not self-preservation.”
As foundation for his argument, the author writes:
“The truth is that Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO. There was no Membership Action Plan, and key NATO members had made it clear they were unwilling to admit Ukraine anytime soon.
“Ukraine’s NATO aspirations were not a provocation. They were a response to Russian aggression: the illegal annexation of Crimea, the Russian proxy war in Donbas, and Moscow’s long-standing efforts to control Ukraine politically, economically and culturally.”
Bolstering the author’s foundational argument, he refers to a 2021 essay written by Russian President Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in which Putin “denied Ukraine’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation.”
Prior to invading the Ukraine, Putin insisted not only that the Ukraine never join NATO, but that NATO must completely withdraw from Eastern Europe, “rolling back security guarantees for Poland, the Baltics and other frontline states. This was never about Ukraine. It was a broader push to reassert Russian dominance over its former empire.”
On February 21, 2022, three days prior to the Russian invasion, President Putin addressed the Russian people, and the world. In the author’s description, Putin “barely mentioned NATO.” Putin did declare the Ukraine an “artificial state, an accident of history, a wayward part of the so-called ‘Russian world.'” The author characterizes this language as “an assertion of imperial entitlement.”
The author concludes that Russian actions refute the “NATO expansion” myth. He writes:
“Georgia, attacked in 2008, was not on the verge of NATO membership. Ukraine, invaded in 2014, has no realistic path to joining the alliance. Russia was not and is not defending itself against NATO — it is targeting neighbors seeking independence from its grip.”
Make of this what you will.