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Weather: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Partly sunny, with a high near 86. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Wednesday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 73. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
- 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:
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee meets at 9 a.m. at the Airline Room at the Daytona Beach International Airport. The TPO’s planning oversight includes all of Volusia County and the developed areas of eastern Flagler County including Beverly Beach and Flagler Beach as well as portions of the cities of Palm Coast and Bunnell, with board member representation from each of those jurisdictions. The committee is responsible for reviewing plans, policies, and procedures and rank priority projects as they relate to bicycle and pedestrian issues within the TPO planning area. See the full agendas here. To join the meeting electronically, go here.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
Diary: A few days ago my son Luka asked me if I knew Aznavour, the French singer who died in 2018, well into his 90s. Do I know Aznavour? We grew up on Aznavour in Lebanon. Aznavour, Becaud, Montand, Piaf, Joe Dassin, Charles Trenet, Maurice Chevalier and the rest of them, though remembering my parents’ tendency to hierarchize everything (an old and very lousy Lebanese habit), they placed Aznavour below Becaud and Montand and Jacques Brel (especially Jacques Brel, Baudelaire of the 20th century who, like my dad, just couldn’t lay off the fucking cigarettes and died at the same age, 46, two years after mine did, in 1978). Aznavour was actually Armenian, and his songs just a bit too popular, even though we loved him as much as the others. We just pretended not to. My maternal grandmother invariably made snarky remarks about his looks. He was more Belmondo in old age than Delon in his Adonis days. Once we’d moved to the United States, nostalgia pushed him up to the top of our tastes’ charts. We couldn’t get enough of him in those pre-internet, pre-streaming days when a 33 LP was a miracle of memories. So the other day Luka asks me if I knew Aznavour. He’d discovered him, all by himself, on Spotify or whichever creepy logarithmic spider had woven a thread from his appreciation of Sinatra (which I share less) to Aznavour. For some reason I found his discovery among the most endearing things of our year of living so distantly. It was as if through song, though “La Boheme,” through “Que c’est riste Venise,” through “Comme ils disent” (Aznavour’s story of a transvestite torch song singer’s double life), we had somehow glided back to my childhood in Lebanon, the childhood he might have had but that maybe, just maybe, he was fortunate enough not to have had. I ran into Gus Ajram the other day at the City Hall dedication in Bunnell. Gus is the owner of GEA Auto Sales. If John Cheever had written a story about him it would have been called “The Enormous Heart.” He is Lebanese like me, one of the earliest supporters of FlaglerLive. Still is. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. He had visited Lebanon recently, and pined for the way people lived life there. “They know how to live,” he said. “They live. They love life. We don’t live here.” It’s all work. He’s right. This is the life–the Lebanese life–I think Luka has never known, and that I knew long enough to know what I am missing–the life of a Mediterranean, as epicurean in its pleasures as it is Homeric in its tragedies. I am pretty secure in the sense that we, Cheryl and I, have done better by our children to have raised them in the United States than in Lebanon. Not just pretty secure, but certain, even though I occasionally wonder what they have lost in not having that Mediterranean soak in them, hopelessly polluted as the Mediterranean can be, and not just metaphorically. But they’re not entirely disconnected–at least Luka isn’t. Gravity’s pull can be irresistible. Aznavour was no Mediterranean but was the lullaby to our Mediterranean years, and he was Armenian, like most of Lebanon’s best and brightest (descendants of the exiled from Turkey’s genocide). So Luka discovering him had the feel of the latest edition of our origin story, if also something all his that somehow touched my origins, without my presumptions getting in the way. As for my daughter Sadie… well, it’s been all Taylor and Travis, and I can safely say that whatever Mediterranean DNA these two share is still a quest of mine that may have no better end point than Voyager I and II’s, while the distance between my two children sometimes feels as vast as that between the Voyagers. At least they are Voyaging, and we can scarcely ask for more. Non, je n’ai rien oublié.
—P.T.
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.
October 2025
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Founders’ Day
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
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
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
As I have grown older I see myself as fortunate in many ways. It is fortunate to have had all my life this passion for studying and enjoying literature and for trying to add a bit to it as interestingly as I can. This passion has given me much joy, it has given me friends who care for the same things, it has given me employment, escape from boredom, everything. The great gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
–From Elizabeth Hardwick’s Paris Review interview, Summer 1985.
Pogo says
Skibum says
The pedo pee pee prez has just called the sexually suggestive birthday card he wrote to his pal Jeffrey Epstein that is in the newly released birthday book “a democrat hoax”. First he denied over and over again that there ever was such a letter from him to Epstein in the first place. Then when drumph’s “non-existent” birthday letter was released to the public by members of the Congressional committee looking into the Epstein files that are in possession of DOJ, he changed his story to “I didn’t sign it… that’s not my signature”.
His Speaker of the House sycophant Mike Johnson tried to cover for him by making up a story that the pee pee prez was “an FBI informant for the government” and that is why he is in the Epstein files so many times and was so closely acquainted with him for many years. Then Johnson was forced to backtrack on his lie, saying oops, sorry that was a mistake when confronted and asked how drumph could have been an FBI informant to a hoax???
Then the letter’s signature itself, simply signed “Donald”, provides more clarity and validity to drumph’s letter. More sycophants have been paraded out to microphones and TV cameras in a vain effort to try to cover for the pee pee prez, saying they know drumph’s signature, they have seen his signature thousands of times, and they are absolutely certain the signature on the letter looks nothing like drumph’s signature and is fake. OMG! Well, within the past few days, a number of people who received personal letters from drumph over the years revealed their letters to the media showing a nearly exact same hand written signature at the bottom that says “Donald” that looks the same as in the pee pee prez sexually suggestive birthday letter.
When confronted with their maga lies, drumph and his sycophants just lie more, lie bigger (bigly) and make their attempts to cover up the truth more laughable, more outrageous… and more telling. There is no shame, no remorse, no apology… and no depths to which they will go to try to deceive the American people, all in reverence and obeyance to a man who definitely is a sexual predator himself and may even be one of Epstein’s accomplice child molesters.
If the pee pee prez truly IS innocent and has absolutely nothing to hide, no involvement in Epstein’s circle of pedo friends who preyed on little girls, then all he has to do is stand up like a man and tell the world that he has nothing to hide and he demands that ALL of the Epstein files be released from his own DOJ so the American people, as well as the rest of the world, can once and for all see that he really did not have anything to hide and is not guilty of the despicable sexual acts that Epstein and his pedo friends committed. He can do that… but instead the pee pee prez continues to deny, cover up, lie, obstruct, distract in his efforts to confuse the American people.
Who would do such a thing? Well, it is obvious to me at least: ONLY A GUILTY PERSON ACTS THAT WAY!!!
So, it is up to Congress to do the right thing, because obviously the pee pee prez will NEVER do the right thing. Release the files! All of the files. Let the chips fall where they may. All sexual predators of little girls need to be revealed for who and what they are! No more secrets! No more getting away with raping underage girls! No more paying or receiving silence money for child molesting and thinking money will make justice and accountability go away for rich predators!
Release the files!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jim says
MAGA, explain this to me….
– Trump is president. His DOJ is completely compliant with his every wish. Do you not believe that everything that is in the Epstein files has been given to him?
– If there was ANYTHING in those files that implicated Joe Biden or Hilary Clinton or any other Democrat (maybe Bill Clinton and, if so, he can explain that or take the heat – I’m fine with that..) you don’t think that Trump wouldn’t have already had those files released to each and every pro-Trump blogger in the country? You don’t think Fox News would be trumpeting that 24/7???
– If Trump is squeaky clean on this, why did the DOJ transfer Ghislaine Maxwell from a low security prison in Florida to a minimum security prison in Texas? You think they met with Maxwell and, since she knows nothing about DJT and Epstein that might be incriminating, they just decided to move her out of a general kindness that they don’t show to anyone else?
– If Trump has no concerns about what the Epstein files say about him, why would he call it a hoax? Why would he call it fake news? Why would he refuse to answer any questions about it at all? Maybe that seems normal to you but outside of MAGAland, that kind of behavior is generally recognized as the guilty trying to hide the facts.
Donald J. Trump is a sick SOB and if the Epstein files do ever get released (and if the DOJ hasn’t heavily redacted or edited them), the truth will finally come out and you’ll see -once again – what a low life creep your hero really is. And the worst thing about it all is, even if that happens, you’ll just find a way to excuse his behavior and continue genuflecting at his picture daily.
No go on to church and make sure the good Lord knows you are a true Christian….
Ray W. says
I deplore the violence, however motivated, that led to the death of Charlie Kirk.
Sherry says
Jim and Skibum. . . Superb Comments!
Let’s see which Maga sycophant tries to excuse and explain away the whole epstein debacle first.
Ray W. says
According to a CNN story covering an interview of Dr. Joseph Lapado by Jake Tapper, Dr. Lapado said “absolutely not” when asked whether he had done any data analysis or whether he had engaged in projections of how many new cases of vaccine-preventable disease would arise should vaccine mandates be lifted for everyone in Florida, including children.
The CNN reporter then approached a group of infectious disease forecasters at Stanford University who had recently published a paper on the effects of declining vaccination rates in various regions of the country.
A researcher told the reporter:
“Unvaccinated groups in the United States are sort of like tinder, and vaccinations are sort of fire protection, and so every imported case is like throwing a match into the fire. … For most of them, nothing is going to happen, but what you don’t want is a situation where one happens and then it comes roaring back like a wildfire.”
Florida is vulnerable to the spread of disease because of its large populace and its “brisk” tourism industry.
According to the Stanford University forecasters, “a 15% decline in vaccinations against measles over 25 years would lead to 1 million additional measles cases.” And, “[f]or every 1,000 measles cases, there are between 1 and 3 deaths from breathing complications or brain swelling.” Doctors consider every measles death preventable.
University of Florida researchers at the Center for Statistics and Quantitative Infectious Diseases engaged in a study of measles spread, because measles is the most transmissible of viral diseases. Measles had been entirely eradicated as a spreadable disease from the U.S. in 2000.
The University of Florida researchers told the reporter that they had found that a drop in Florida’s current 89% MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination rate by just four percentage points, to 85%, “could raise the risk of measles spread and the size of outbreaks in the state.”
The researchers state that at current levels of vaccination, measles will reestablish itself as a spreadable disease within 20 years.
Herd immunity against the spread of measles exists at a 95% vaccination rate.
Should the vaccination rate in Florida drop to 85% from the current 89%, the chance of an infected child spreading measles to others would rise from 85.5% to nearly 93%. Finally, should a measles-infected child attend a school with an enrollment of 200, the average outbreak among the children would not be 20, it would be 32.
Should childhood vaccination rates be cut in half, a not-inconceivable scenario, there would occur 51.2 million measles cases in 25 years, 9.9 million rubella cases, 4.3 million polio cases, and 200 cases of diphtheria.
Make of this what you will.