The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Donors Wanted to ‘Keep the Holiday Lights On’ for Struggling Families
Flagler Cares is in the midst of its Second Annual “Keep the Holiday Lights On” campaign. The health and social care coordinating organization is inviting residents and businesses to support local families in need of a modest financial bridge to keep their power on this holiday season. This initiative encourages neighbors to help neighbors by sponsoring homes to ensure struggling families can keep their lights on through December. The goal is to sponsor 100 homes at $100 per home, covering one month’s electric bill for families who might otherwise face utility cut-offs during the holidays. Supporters are welcome to contribute any amount to help brighten the season for their fellow residents. Donations can be made now through the end of the year on the “Keep the Holiday Lights On” webpage at www.flaglercares.org/holiday. Check donations may also be mailed or dropped off at Flagler Cares, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B302, Palm Coast, FL 32164. As homes are sponsored, donors can watch the campaign’s progress online as homes on the page light up — a symbol of the community’s shared compassion and care.

Notably Serendipitous: One does not often, if at all, think of Kingsport, that city on Tennessee’s far eastern snout that caused Bob Dylan to leave it with a sheriff on his tail, though it was in its shroud of Kodak-factory chemical fumes that I spent my first summer on American soil in 1978. It was my first landing spot, my first experience of America. It was strange, it was a bit depressing, it was at times pretty awesome, especially when I rode the Interstate, which to a 13-year-old just exiled from Lebanon seemed like a magic carpet that happened not to leave the ground. The town of 55,000 people seemed much larger, though even then its downtown was dying, its malls briefly sucking the life out of it (they’re now dying in turn). My late uncle lived there. A few years later my Updike binge began, and Updike more than Kingsport became my guide to the United States and my way around and into and out of the American language. There could not possibly be a connection between Updike and Kingsport. But how there was! Flipping through the Selected Letters of John Updike, just released, I came across this footnote: “All of Updike’s published books by Knopf, until 1976, were composed, printed and bound by Kingsport Press of Kingsport, Tennessee. The company also printed its own type manuals.” I was there two years too late, and of course i’s gone now. I just glimpsed this message on Facebook: “Any photos of the Kingsport press? My dad started working there at 20 years of age and retired from there when Québecor shut it down!” Then this: “My brother crossed the picket line to get his job and was the head computer programmer. He worked there till it closed.” Someone posted the photo and postcard below. And someone wrote: “I still have my Papaws tool box from there.” We’re lives of heartbreak. I just looked at the back of Picked-Up Pieces, Updike’s second collection of essays, published in 1975, and sure enough: “This book was composed, printed, and bound by Kingsport Press, Inc., Kingsport, Tennessee.” By the time Problems, the 1979 collection of stories, rolled off the presses, the work had moved to American Book-Stratford Press, Inc., in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Not the same.

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