Weather: Mostly sunny, with a high near 70. Friday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 51.
- 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:
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM, 1550 AM, and live at Flagler Broadcasting’s YouTube channel.
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, 6400 North Oceanshore Blvd., Palm Coast, 10 a.m. Join a Ranger the First Friday of every month for a garden walk. Learn about the history of Washington Oaks while exploring the formal gardens. The walk is approximately one hour. No registration required. Walk included with park entry fee. Participants meet in the Garden parking lot. The event is free with paid admission fee to the state park: $5 per vehicle. (Limit 2-8 people per vehicle) $4 per single-occupant vehicle. Call (386) 446-6783 for more information or by email: [email protected].
The Friday Blue Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Flagler Democratic Office at 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214 (above Cue Note) at City Marketplace. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
First Friday in Flagler Beach, the monthly festival of music, food and leisure, is scheduled for this evening at Downtown’s Veterans Park, 105 South 2nd Street, from 5 to 9 p.m. The event is overseen by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and run by Laverne M. Shank Jr. and Surf 97.3
‘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.
Notably: A story coincidentally glimpsed during one of those researching scrolls through old New York Times issues, this one from July 21, 1991: “Sex Survey of Students Angers Conservatives.” “The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, temporarily blocked a Government-financed survey on the sexual behavior of teen-agers after objections were raised by a number of conservatives, a Government health official said today. “This is one of those times when science and politics cross paths,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The five-year, $18 million study, to be conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina, would question about 24,000 junior and senior high school students on their sexual activities, their knowledge about sex and their family situations, the official said. John Gibbons, a spokesman for the Department, confirmed that Dr. Sullivan had not yet approved the study. “He wants to become familiar with it,” Mr. Gibbons said.” Or its subjects. Naturally, the Moony Washington Times, Fox in print, had initially reported the story. The first George Bush was president then, back when teens did not have sex and all aspired to be Barbara Bush, according to whoever assigned that Washington Times scoop. Haven’t we done the same with pot and, not so curiously, with guns? Fastest way to civilizational stupor: shoot the messenger. Damn, how I miss Dr. Ruth.
—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.
In [Frank] Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen (Spring’s Awakening), first effort of a playwright who was to exceed all the rest, the discovery of sex by adolescents conflicting with the prurience of adults produces total catastrophe: the fourteen-year-old heroine, being with child, dies, apparently of a mismanaged abortion; the boy is expelled from school and sent to a reformatory by his parents; his friend, unable to bear life, commits suicide and reappears in a graveyard with his head under his arm in a closing scene of opaque symbolism. In the course of the action a third boy, in a scene of explicit auto-eroticism, addresses a passionate love declaration to the picture of a naked Venus which he then drops down the toilet. First produced in 1891, the play was a sensational success and in book form went into twenty-six editions.
–From Barbara Tuchman’s Proud Tower (1966).
Ed P says
Message to Clay Jones.
Does it really matter which news agency is included in the press pool or is it more important that “news” gets disseminated to the public? You are disingenuous when complaining which agencies are included, for multiple reasons.
First, during the last administration, the conservative wing of the media was rarely able to even ask a question if they were present. The liberal media was the administration’s shill at times. Biden didn’t or couldn’t even take questions. Forget about answering one.
Second, technology is changing and people receive their information from many different sources beyond network “news”. Some of these alternate outlets are being rotated in and physical space is an issue.
Finally, “news” has never been been “just news”. Sure the lean was more subtle 50 years ago but today there aren’t any news reporters, they are all news journalists. That’s where the real moneys at. For example, Rachel Maddow has a $25 million dollar contract for 1 show per week. Shaun Hannity is a multimillionaire.
Maybe, you fear your base is dwindling and irrelevancy is knocking. What if you’ve been wrong all this time? Dang, why weren’t you like successful comedians and poke fun at both the right and the left? Maybe it’s not too late for that, did you see the tik tok video of the lefts- “choose your fighter”? The flailing left provides unlimited cannon fodder if you simply accept the reality of change. Your core beliefs won’t be impacted, but your wallet might.
Pierre featured your article back on September 22,2024. It’s filled with contradictions.
You acknowledge times are changing, clients ask for change, yet you will defiantly continue the course. Survival and eating can do strange things to people. It has a way of providing clarity.
In business, make no mistake sir, you are in business, the client could care less if you thrive, survive, or die. If they can’t use you or you disappear, the next victim will take your place. Don’t let your ego overwhelm your sensibilities. You’ve got a talent, expand it. It’s not a case of selling out.
Pogo says
@Clay Jones (and FlaglerLive) 👍👍
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
— Montesquieu
https://www.google.com/search?q=Montesquieu
Ibid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montesquieu
Sherry says
Clay Jones. . . excellent cartoon! A great message about what happens when a narcissistic megalomaniac dictator will only take the questions from the reporters in his “Maga” Silo! SAVE THE FREE PRESS! Keep up the great work!
Jim says
Hey Ed P says, you made some good points.
But just for the sake of “balance”, the new press pool courageously asked the most substantial question I’ve ever heard in the meeting Trump and Vance had with Zelenskyy. When the meeting was opened up to questions from reporters, one came from Brian Glenn, chief White House correspondent for conservative cable network Real America’s Voice.
“Why don’t you wear a suit?” Glenn asked. “You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit.
“Do you own a suit?” he continued. “A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the dignity of this office.”
And I, for one, applaud this new approach to hard hitting reporting! Why Zelenskyy has been wearing military style clothing while his country is at war with Russia has been bothering me for three years now. I was so glad Mr. Glenn was brave enough to ask.
Maybe Germany could have won WW2 if Mr. Glenn was around to ask Churchill what his problem was…..
Endless dark money says
This whole thing is gonna crash hard! Haha who cares though I for one have no loyalty to a bunch of fascist ! Feel bad though for all those who will suffer that didn’t vote for this treasonous fool. Cruelty is the point with these criminals.
Ray W, says
A conservative politician addressed the French National Assembly:
“Mr. President,
“Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers,
“My dear colleagues,
“Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is evading, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.
“Washington became the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester under ketamine in charge of the purification of the public service.
“It’s a drama for the free world, but it’s first a drama for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, that he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and threaten you to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.
“The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is on a flat stomach. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down in front of Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is undoubtedly accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
“Never in history has a president of the United States capitulated to the enemy. No one has ever supported an aggressor against an ally. No one has ever trampled on the American Constitution, made so many illegal decrees, revoked the judges who could prevent it, dismissed the military staff at once, weakened all counter-powers took control of social networks.
“It is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of confiscation of democracy and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war against a dictator, we are now fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.
“Eight days ago, at the very time that Trump passed a hand behind Macron’s back at the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against Europeans demanding the departure of Russian troops.
“Two days later, in the oval office, the military hide-and-seek gave moral and strategy lessons to the war hero Zelensky before dismissing him as a brother-in-law by ordering him to submit or resign.
‘That night, he took a step further into infamy by stopping the promised delivery of weapons. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.
“And first don’t make a mistake. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltics, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is the return to Yalta where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.
“The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.
“What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with the first principle of prohibiting the acquisition of territories by force.
“This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans voted in favor of the aggressor and against the (victim), because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to the spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
“To me Greenland, Panama and Canada, to you Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe, to him Taiwan and the China Sea.
“This is called ‘diplomatic realism’ in the evenings of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago.
“S0 we are alone. But the speech that we cannot resist Putin is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is doing badly. In three years, the so-called second army in the world has only managed to grab crumps from a country three times less populated.
“Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, and demographic collapse show that is it on the edge of the abyss. The American boost to Putin is the biggest mistake ever made during a war.
“The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans come out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and they have three imperatives.
“Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American release, to make it hold, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.
“It will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to bypass Moscow’s accomplices even within Europe by a coalition of only voluntary countries, with of course the United Kingdom.
“Secondly, require that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what the agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
“Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we would have to build the neglected European defense, for the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and sunk since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.
“Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. It is to recognize that France was right for decades in pleading for strategic autonomy.
“It remains to build it. It will be necessary to invest massively, strengthen the European Defense Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonize weapons and ammunition systems, accelerate Ukraine’s entry into the Union, which is today the first European army, rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence from French and British capacities, relaunch anti-missile and satellite shield programs.
“The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And it will take much more.
“Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be applied. For good.
“But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.
“We must convince public opinion in the face of weariness and fear of war, and especially in the face of Putin’s companions, the extreme right and the extreme left.
“They pleaded again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr. Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defense.
“They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is the capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Petain in Putin’s boot.
“The peace of the collaborators who have refused for three years any help to the Ukrainians.
“Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, Zelensky’s public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have ended up making American’s react.
“Polls are falling. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News becomes critical.
“The Trumpists are no longer in majesty. They control the executive, Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.
“But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They begin to raise their heads.
“The fate of Ukraine is played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means of their common defense, and to make Europe the power it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.
“Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of all sacrifices.
“The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarians of the 21st century.
“Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”
Ray W, says
As foundation for this comment, ADP publishes a monthly jobs report based on the number of people who are on business payrolls during an assessment period.
The BLS also publishes its own monthly jobs report based on the number of people who receive paychecks during an assessment period.
The February BLS jobs report issued today.
Here are some bullet points.
– Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 151,000 people receiving paychecks.
– The rolling 12-month average increase in the number of people receiving paychecks was 168,000.
– Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 10 cents per hours, or 0.3% to $35.93 per hour. Year over year, average pay per hour rose by 4%, which, by the way, is greater than year over year inflation. On average, then, American worker pay beat inflation over the past month and over the past year.
– Average workweek hours in manufacturing remained the same, at 40.1 hours per week. Overtime hours in manufacturing rose by 0.1 hour to 2.9 hours per week.
– Total non-farm payroll for December 2024 was revised upwards by 16,000 jobs added to 323,000.
– Total non-farm payroll for January 2025 was revised downward by 18,000 jobs added to 125,000.
– The unemployment rate rose by 0.1% to 4.1%, a number that BLS economists consider healthy.
– The number of unemployed changed little from January, at 7.1 million.
– In the FAQ section of the report, the BLS explains that it does not look for the number of undocumented immigrants who are receiving paychecks for the month.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Month after month for four years now, BLS reports on jobs added has been positive. This is just another positive jobs added report. President Trump inherited an economy that is the envy of the developed world.
As an aside, I need to add a warning to all FlaglerLive readers. The Trump administration announced a few days ago, allegedly for purposes of “transparency”, that it would begin stripping away the government portion of the nation’s GDP. From now on, future published GDP figures will only reflect private sector gross domestic product.
From one perspective, that is all fine and good. GDP reports have always had in the body of the report private sector GDP figures with government GDP stripped away.
But since the administration also just fired employees of the government agency that had the duty to ensure that government economic reports follow statistically valid methodology, there will no longer be statistical reliability supporting any future government economic report.
And, due to the nature of statistics, comparisons between new GDP reports and old GDP reports will become worthless, because the statistical methodology now differs between the old and new reports. For many decades, GDP reporting has been based on one statistical methodology. No more.
Sherry says
trumpian thinking: Don’t like how the data makes this “Perfect Emperor” look. . . it’s simple, just change how the statistics are calculated. Many of my Maga Cult loyalists won’t understand. The others won’t care.