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Weather: Sunny, with a high near 82. Wednesday Night: Clear, with a low around 64.
- 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:
In Court: Kermit Booth, the former Palm Coast resident facing two capital charges for sexually abusing a girl when she was between 7 and 9, is scheduled for his first pre-trial before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 1:30 p.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse. Booth was extradited to Flagler County from Franklin, North Carolina, on Sept. 5.
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) meets at 9 a.m. at the Airline Room at the Daytona Beach International Airport. The TPO’s planning oversight includes all of Flagler and Volusia counties, with board representation from each of those jurisdictions. 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.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
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]
Byblos: There would be no sitcoms, SNL, George Carlin or Coluche without Aristophanes, no slapstick, no locker-room humor, no bad puns and no alliterations. I’m exaggerating, but not by more than a lump of coal. Aristophanes is part of the quartet of the great Greeks–with Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides–but on the later side, born in 446 BC, a war-hater (if a conservative one) who was merciless to and about Euripides, who is satirized to no end in his Acharnians, one of his earliest surviving plays among the 40 he wrote. We have 11 of them. I read The Acharnians (named for the farmers who lived in Athenian suburbs and who had their crops ravaged by Spartans almost as frequently as Israel ravages South Lebanon’s crops, to keep them from competing with Israeli oranges and other citrus) for the first time and was struck by the immediacy of the play–not just the anti-war theme (the whole play hinges on one joke: the Athenian Dikaiopolis winning a separate peace with Sparta just for himself) but the freshness and contemporary feel of the slapstick humor, which would work better than most of the crap on cable TV these days. Dikaiopolis holding a bag of coal hostage (and passing it off as a child) is an unforgettable scene, the freewheeling use of words like “cocksuckers” and ridiculously phallic symbolism reminds you how apt it is that men born for those words and symbols are now in charge of our own Department of War and whiter house (words and symbols Aristophanes would have demolished with laughter), and the whole sendup of extremism in all its forms tells us that, alas, nothing in American aberrance is reinventing the wheel so much as aping Athens or Sparta, depending on the day, with neither having much to honor it once hubris is in play. It always is. There is a bit of irreality in all this of course, especially in the Athens that killed Socrates–not so much for diddling little boys, as every other man, men of means especially, did back then, but for talking back, and making others look like fools. (For a man as smart as Socrates, it’s a fundamental flaw of his intelligence: to not have gauged the unlimited potential of human stupidity.) The irreality is that Dikaiopolis is not stoned to death for his separate peace, though there is an attempt to do almost that. He ends up setting up a lucrative market, making boatloads of money and getting happily drunk while his warmaking compatriots plod on in misery. Hitler and Stalin must’ve read their Aristophanes before signing their non-aggression pact, as must’ve Lenin when he quick wanting to kill Germans in 1917. That’s no slight on Aristophanes. In the wrong hands, even the Beatitudes turn Christians into cocksuckers. Cue George Carlin.
—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.
May 2026
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Palm Coast Spring Arts Festival
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
Caleb Hathaway on Antebellum Flagler: A Palm Coast Historical Society Lecture
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Meeting
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
‘The Curious Savage” at Daytona Playhouse
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
‘The Curious Savage” at Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
No comic dramatist has ever displayed such a versatile control of all the de vices of comic and satiric art-spirit and swiftness of movement (what the critics call “comic power”), lampoon and execration, witty abuse and subtle rapierlike thrusts, unexpected situations and unforeseen turns of events, slapstick farce, and wild burlesque, as well as a high-spirited and Gargantuan use of obscenity. As a consequence his plays still make fascinating reading and his humor shines through the quiet and euphemistic paraphrases of English country clergymen who have “translated” him. But that is not all. Swinburne speaks of “the half divine humorist in whose in-comparable genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley.” Aristophanes was not only a political satirist, an incomparable master of parody, satire, and burlesque; he was also a lyric poet of superb skill endowed with a gift of exquisite expression that com-pares favorably with the finest lyrical passages in the entire history of literature. This is not a phase of his talent that can be adequately indicated in English: the reader may care to turn to Swinburne’s attempt (inadequate as it is) to render the Grand Chorus of The Birds into English poetry. For this reason, and for many others, to be effective on the modern stage, Aristophanes has to be pruned and edited to fit our conception of choralless drama. The last two plays of Aristophanes, which are somewhat more shapely in plot and less stinging in satire, probably exemplify the middle comedy, about which little else is known.
–From Harry Elmer Barnes’s Intellectual and Cultural History of the Western World, vol. 1, From earliest times through the Middle Ages (1937).
Dennis C Rathsam says
As the democrats face the Schumer shutdown, many in the party are not happy. Speaker Jefferies, a Pelosi hand picked puppet, is losing his party. Mean time, back at the White House all is wonderfull, with a Rose garden luncheon. The new ballroom has finally started. Obama didn’t open his wallet for a ball room, but he complained about it. Biden…. 1/2 the time he cant find his wallet, yet open it. Once again it was TRUMP, too foot the bill, & his friends to make the ball room possible.Stocks are up, inflation is down. Tariff money,s are making America rich, The military was paid, yet the Dems threaten to sue???? WHY????? Because TRUMP did it! The folks & children on WICK, got thier money, so they could eat once again thanks to TRUMP. The no kings rallys were a bust 3/4s of the protesters bused in and payed. Ice is cleaning up all the big cities, as the party of hate has no leader, a runaway train to no where. American,s see lower food prices, lower gas prices, as the interest rates start to fall! I told you all months ago this would happen, but you Dems all snickered! The Golden age of America is now becoming a reality, all thanks to TRUMP.
Laurel says
Did Trump get a permit for his monument to himself? Hey Dennis, are you invited to the ball?