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Weather: Sunny. A slight chance of showers in the morning, then showers likely with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 90s. Chance of rain 70 percent. Saturday Night: Partly cloudy with showers likely with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the evening, then mostly clear after midnight. Lows in the lower 70s. Chance of rain 70 percent.
- 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:
Bunnell History Day: Join us from 10 to 4 p.m. all over Bunnell at this historic event and enjoy food trucks, history displays and demonstrations, DJ music, many vendors, history re-enactors, important Florida humanities speakers, tours of local landmarks, the kid zone, a farmer’s market, a wine and beer tent and the always popular mechanical bull experience. The speakers will be James Abraham on 100 years of voter suppression, Pat Mitchell Hines, a writer who will speak about her forefather, who was an enslaved person, and Chris Kahl, who will take us on a musical journey. Here’s the schedule:
10:00 – Carver Center – Opening Ceremony, Giving Thanks, Reverend Giddens, Historical Sign Dedication, Student Scholarship Presentation, Sponsor Announcements and Appreciation.
10:00 – 3:00 Edward Johnson City Park – Kids Zone, Vendors, Wine/Beer Tent, DJ music, Mechanical Bull Riding, Food Trucks, Historic Displays, Discussions, Exhibitions
10:00 – 3:00 – Holden House Museum – Historic Tours All Day
10:30-11:30 – Carver Center, Speaker #1 – James Abraham – Bloody Streets and Crooked Lines: 100 Years of Voter Suppression in Florida
11:00 – 1:00 – Little Red School House Tours
11:45 – 12:30 – Carver Center, Speaker #2 – Pat Mitchell – Growing up in Bunnell as a 5th generation African American
1:00 – Edward Johnson City Park Pavillion – Cake Cutting
1:30 – 2:30 – Bridges – A United Methodist Fellowship Sanctuary, Speaker #3 – Chris Kahl – A Musical Journey Through Florida
3:00 – DJ Tent – Raffle and Closing Remarks – The raffle supports student scholarships and the winner. You don’t have to be present to win but it would sure be fun if you were!
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today on the east side of Wickline Park on Daytona Avenue, 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 Flagler Beach All Stars hold their monthly beach clean-up starting at 9 a.m. in front of the Flagler Beach pier. All volunteers welcome.
Sunshine and Sandals Social at Cornerstone: Every first Saturday we invite new residents out to learn everything about Flagler County at Cornerstone Center, 608 E. Moody Blvd, Bunnell, 1 to 2:30 p.m. We have a great time going over dog friendly beaches and parks, local social clubs you can be a part of as well as local favorite restaurants.
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.
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: Flannery O’Connor once wrote that critics had lumped her into the “School of the Gratuitous Grotesque (along with Paul Bowles),” as she wrote (her parenthesis: she must not have thought much of Bowles to unparenthesize him). Bowles is not as well known as he should be, and ought to be better known than O’Connor. He is the author of The Sheltering Sky and some of the 20th century’s best American short stories, always sharpened to cut. He was also a composer. He lived most of his life in Morocco. He wasn’t nearly as fond of the United States as Gore Vidal was fond of him. He died in 1999. “When he was six weeks old,” his Economist obituary began, “Paul Bowles was undressed by his father and placed naked in a wicker cot on the third-storey windowsill of a brownstone in Queens during a snowstorm. Only the intervention of his maternal grandmother, who heard his cries of distress and rushed to the rescue, saved “the only American existentialist” from certain death in babyhood. This may or may not have actually happened. Young Paul so hated his father Claude, a New York dentist whose “mere presence meant misery”, that he was prepared to believe him capable of anything, even attempted infanticide. It was also just the sort of horror story that excited Paul Bowles’s imagination.” Like, for example, “A Thousand Days for Mokhtar,” first published in his collection, The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950), later to become the title story of a larger collection. Mokhtar lives above the shop he runs. He hangs out with people in a nearby cafe. He smells the “bloodlike smell of the sea.” His life “was only in the nature of a warning.” He is an uneasy man, and lonely, since his wife died ten years before. As you read, you expect to hear him say that his liver hurts, like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. He is not so much worried about a feeling that he’s going to die as he is anxious about having to ask himself the question. “And Mokhtar wondered if really he had the right to go on living and watching the world change, without her. Each month the world had changed a little more, had gone a little further away from what it had been when she had known it.” He nights are just as unsettled. That particular night he wakes up horrified from a dream where he chokes his friend the butcher Bouchta to death, and enjoys it. He gets up, goes to Bouchta’s shop to tell him of the dream, to warn him of the omen. When he meets him, Bouchta is angry: Mokhtar hasn’t paid his debt of 22 douros. Mokhtar insists that he has. He is absolutely convinced that he has, just as Bouchta is absolutely convinced that he has not. They argue. People stopped to watch. They fight. Mokhtar grabs him. Bouchta is wielding a cleaver. Mokhtar is convinced Bouchta is going to kill him. He restrains him. It’s a violent struggle. Bouchta is old and not as strong as his friend. He suddenly goes limp. He is dead. Mokhtar appeals to all the passersby who watched the fight: he didn’t kill him. He just dreamed it, he tells the witnesses, and Bouchta just died from the struggle. The witnesses agree, and say so to the court. “‘I have heard from the witnesses what happened in the market,’ said the Qadi impatiently, ‘and from those same witnesses I know you are an evil man. It is impossible for the mind of an upright man to bring forth an evil dream. Bouchta died as a result of your dream.’ And as Mokhtar attempted to interrupt: ‘I know what you are going to say, but you are a fool, Mokhtar. You blame the wind, the night, your long solitude. Good. For a thousand days in our prison here you will not hear the wind, you will not know whether it is night or day, and you will never lack the companionship of your fellow-prisoners.” And in his new solitude, Mokhtar remembers: Bouchta had been right. He’d not paid his 22 douros debt after all, that debt he’d incurred, buying a lamb’s head.
—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.
June 2025
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Food Truck Tuesday
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Contractor Review Board Meeting
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee 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
Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board
For the full calendar, go here.
A young man appeared from the farther side of the closed-in space. His shirt and pants were tattered; the brown skin showed in many places. He was singing as he walked toward her, and he continued to sing, looking straight into her face with bright, questioning eyes. She smiled and said, “Buenos dias.” He made a beckoning gesture, rather too dramatically. She stopped walking and stood still, looking hesitantly back at the other huts. The young man beckoned again and then stepped inside the hut. A moment later he came out, and still staring fascinatedly at her, made more summoning motions. Aileen stood perfectly quiet, not taking her eyes from his face. He walked slowly over to the fence and grasped the wire with both hands, his eyes growing wider as he pressed the barbs into his palms. Then he leaned across, thrusting his head toward her, his eyes fixing hers with incredible intensity. For several seconds they watched each other; then she stepped a little nearer, peering into his face and frowning. At that point with a cry he emptied his mouth of the water he had been holding in it, aiming with force at Aileen’s face. Some of it struck her cheek, and the rest the front of her dress. His fingers unclenched themselves from around the wire, and straightening himself, he backed slowly into the hut, watching her face closely all the while. She stood still an instant, her hand to her cheek. Then she bent down, and picking up a large stone from the path she flung it with all her strength through the door. A terrible cry came from within; it was like nothing she had ever heard. Or yes, she thought as she began to run back past the other huts, it had the indignation and outraged innocence of a small baby, but it was also a grown man’s cry. No one appeared as she passed the huts. Soon she was back in the silence of the empty mountainside, but she kept running, and she was astonished to find that she was sobbing as well.
–From Paul Bowles’s “The Echo,” Harper’s Bazaar, September 1946.
Dennis C Rathsam says
As the economy grows, & the private sector is creating more jobs. The inflation is all but disapeared. Food prices are down, tariff moneys coming in. The senate is tweeking, the B.B.B. It should be on TRUMPS desk shortly. Musk is pissed, because there are no tax credits for electric cars…. Lets see how many folks buy them now, at full price. I was talking to a service writer, at an auto dealership the other day. They have to remove the battery, before the body work could start. I didnt know that…. seems like more money to me. Democrats still have no plan for the future, no direction. As they constantly bash our president, he gets things done. America is sick of all the democrat lies, Bidens iner circle will have to testify soon, one way or another, the real truth will come out. We cant move foward, til we uncover the past.
Deborah Coffey says
It’s also Pride Festival 2025 at Central Park from 1:00-6:00.
https://www.mobilize.us/flaglercountydemocrats/event/794804/
Ray W, says
I wonder whether Dennis C. Rathsam is ever going to internalize the coinciding facts that American women have been birthing babies at a rate below that necessary to increase the native-born population for almost 20 years (the native-born population number in America has flatlined in the past few years), and that the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.2% in May as compared to April.
From these two coinciding facts is it reasonable to infer that many if not most of the 139,000 additional workers who began receiving paychecks in May had to have come from the ranks of the many new immigrant workers constantly arriving in our country, documented or not, and that these new immigrants are needed for our economy to continue to properly function?
On the other hand, the national Fed, comprising of 12 district Feds, publishes a “Beige Book” each month.
This from the May edition of the Beige Book, under the category of Prices:
“Prices have increased at a moderate rate since the previous report. There were widespread reports of contacts expecting costs and prices to rise at a faster rate going forward. Districts described these expected price increases as strong, significant, or substantial. All District reports indicated that higher tariff rates were putting upward pressure on costs and prices. However, contacts’ responses to these higher costs varied, including increasing prices on affected items, increasing prices on all items, reducing profit margins, and adding temporary fees or surcharges. Contacts that plan to pass along tariff-related costs expect to do so within three months.”
Make of this what you will.
Laurel says
Two idiots that mock America, lie to Americans, and their reality show.
I cannot believe that the Supreme Court said it’s okay to give DOGE (who are these people, and what are their clearances?) our private Social Security information, including our medical histories. What happened to HIPAA?
HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a U.S. law enacted in 1996 that establishes standards for protecting sensitive health information and ensuring the continuity of health insurance coverage for workers who change or lose their jobs. It includes provisions for the privacy and security of personal health information.
Why is Congress, and the political Supreme Court allowing this? This, in the name of fraud and abuse, is fraud and abuse at the highest level!
Laurel says
Ray W: I’ve asked Dennis where he shops as he claim food prices have gone down, but he didn’t answer. I sure would like to know! We were just in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea and went into Publix near our room to get paper towels. One pack rolls was $17.99, another group of rolls was $19.99, and the cheapest single roll was $7.99. So, after standing there for five minuets with my mouth hanging open, I left and went a few doors down to Dollar Tree. There I got a four pack for $5.00. It’s flimsy, but it’s also the principal. Better than getting robbed. I wonder if Dennis gets his eggs there.
The dude says
Dennis can’t even internalize reality… or the truth… much less any facts not considered “alternative”.
He did finally manage to make a post without entirely brutalizing the English language though . Good job Dennis.
Ray W, says
Chery, the Chinese carmaker that has led that nation’s automotive export category for 22 straight years, recently unveiled its Fulwin A8 hybrid EV model, a four-door compact-sized sedan with a 110-inch wheelbase and a curb weight of 3739 pounds that closely resembles a Toyota Camry.
The Fulwin A8 comes in five variants, with the three more basic variants having a relatively small battery enabling 43 miles of range before the turbocharged 1.5-liter gas engine starts up to power the vehicle through a highly efficient continuously variable transmission that converts 98.5% of the engine’s power output to the ground. Having a transmission means that the vehicle is not an extended range EV; it is a hybrid EV that can have the gas engine driving the wheels at the same time that the electric motor is driving the wheels.
Horsepower is claimed to be 353 for the engine, but that is an extraordinary number for that size of engine, and with no horsepower rating for the electric motor listed in one of the several articles I found, it may be that the 353 HP figure is the combined total for the two powerplants.
Combined range for these models is 870 miles, with a fuel efficiency estimate of 51.8 mpg over the entire distance. Since most daily drives are shorter than 43 miles, the gas-powered engine would seldom start in ordinary use, so actual mileage figures would be much higher if one fully charges the battery before driving.
The upper two category variants have a slightly larger battery that allows for a few more miles of pure electric driving range before the engine starts up.
Prices range from the base model’s $11,100 to the top-line model’s $15,300.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
The Chinese auto marketplace price war continues. Carmaker after carmaker seeks greater market share as industry competition shakes out the weaker carmakers. According to one source, Chery recorded a 38% increase in overall sales in 2024 (2.6 million units) over 2023 sales.
There is a reason that in 2024 former President Biden imposed a narrowly targeted 100% tariff on all Chinese-made EVs. Our big three automakers just can’t compete right now with these low levels of prices.
Sherry says
The TRUTH about trump’s big beautiful bill from Robert Reich:
Herewith, the Trump Republican lies about Medicaid, followed by the truth.
1. “We’re not doing any cutting of anything meaningful. The only thing we’re cutting is waste, fraud and abuse. With Medicaid, waste, fraud, and abuse. There’s tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse.” (Trump on May 20).
Rubbish. Here’s the truth: The bill passed by the House will reduce federal spending on Medicaid by at least $600 billion over a decade and reduce enrollment by about 10.3 million people, according to a preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
Most changes to Medicaid have little to do with waste, fraud or abuse as defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service.
The single largest source for savings — estimated to be about $280 billion — comes from a new requirement for Medicaid recipients to provide proof of employment.
But about 64 percent of adult recipients already work; those who do not work can still qualify under current eligibility criteria.
Work requirements in pilot programs have done little to encourage employment and instead create an impediment for those who already work or have qualifying exemptions like a disability, but struggle to meet the new reporting requirements.
See this video that my colleagues and I posted today:
2. “We are not cutting Medicaid in this package. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this …. The numbers of Americans who are affected are those that are entwined in our work to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse. So, what do I mean by that You got more than 1.4 million illegal aliens on Medicaid. (Speaker Mike Johnson.)
Utter BS. Here’s the truth: Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federally funded Medicaid, except in emergency situations. States are required to verify immigration status to determine eligibility.
3. “The One Big, Beautiful Bill also helps get our fiscal house in order by carrying out the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.” (Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary.)
Baloney. Here’s the truth: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill will increase the deficit of $3.8 trillion; the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates $3.1 trillion including interest; the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates $2.8 trillion; and the Tax Foundation estimated $1.7 trillion when factoring in economic growth.
What you can do: Please share this.