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Weather: Sunny. Highs in the lower 60s. Friday Night: Partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 40s. Highs in the lower 70s.
- 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:
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock, 2 to 5 p.m., Picnic Shelter behind the Hammock Community Center at 79 Mala Compra Road, Palm Coast. It’s a free event. Bring your Acoustic stringed Instrument (no amplifiers), and a folding chair and join other local amateur musicians for a jam session. Audiences and singers are also welcome. A “Jam Circle” format is where musicians sit around the circle. Each musician in turn gets to call out a song and musical key, and then lead the rest in singing/playing. Then it’s on to the next person in the circle. Depending upon the song, the musicians may take turns playing/improvising a verse and a chorus. It’s lots of Fun! Folks who just want to watch or sing generally sit on the periphery or next to their musician partner. This is a monthly event on the 4th Friday of every month. (Make sure it’s on today before you go.)
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn, at Athens Theatre, 124 North Florida Avenue, DeLand. 386/736-1500. Tickets, Adult $37 – Senior $33 Student/Child $17. Book here. Celebrate the magic of Christmas with Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn—a heartwarming holiday treat packed with show-stopping dance numbers, dazzling costumes, and a treasure trove of timeless tunes. When Broadway performer Jim leaves the bright lights behind for a quiet Connecticut farmhouse, he ends up transforming his home into a seasonal inn, open only on the holidays. But with love in the air, rivalries heating up, and performances for every festivity, the holidays get a lot more exciting than he ever imagined. Featuring 20 beloved Irving Berlin classics—including “White Christmas,” “Happy Holiday,” “Blue Skies,” and “Cheek to Cheek”—this delightful musical delivers all the laughter, romance, and seasonal sparkle of a Christmas card come to life. Presented through special arrangement with Concord Theatricals.
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.
Byblos II: In Henry James’s “Traveling Companions” yesterday we left off with Brooks and Charlotte after Charlotte ordered him on a three-day sabbatical from her. He wanders the streets and museums, counting the hours, and they meet again. They are then inseparable companions, to the extent that conventions allow. Lounging in a grassy garden, he professes his love. She demurs: “It’s not with me you’re in love, but with that painted picture. All this Italian beauty and delight has thrown you into a romantic state of mind. You wish to make it perfect. I happen to be at hand, so you say, ‘Go to, I’ll fall in love.’ And you fancy me, for the purpose, a dozen fine things that I’m not.” He is politely crushed, and James’s next Station is a superb analysis of Tintoretto’s “Crucifixion,” where “There is no swooning Madonna, no consoling Magdalen, no mockery of contrast, no cruelty of an assembled host. We behold the silent summit of Calvary.” James’s heavy-handed symbolism is lightened by the moving homage to the painting, which leaves Charlotte in sobs. Do we not miss the centuries when paintings and musical works, for lack of commercial overuse and memed cheapening, could so shake us to our core as to leave us helpless to the emotions they evoke? Movies and TV can still do that, but it’s sentimentality, not sentiment, as Charlotte would say. She tells Brooks, after he laments their not having the good fortune of being like a young couple they see together in church: “we ought to learn from all this to be real; real even as Giotto is real; to discriminate between genuine and factitious sentiment; between the substantial and the trivial; between the essential and the superfluous; sentiment and sentimentality.” It’s a set-up to the final scene, when they are in front of Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love,” which colors Charlotte’s very words. In between, they spend a day in Padua, miss the train back to Venice and have to contend with the ignominy of breaking convention even though they spend the night in separate rooms at a hotel and Charlotte really doesn’t much care for convention. (They are directed to the hotel by their “Murray,” what used to be the first British travel guide of the century and the equivalent to the better known Baedekers.) When he proposes to marry her, she rebuffs him, taking the proposal as motivated by the desire to correct the Padua misstep, not by love. “Don’t fancy that I think lightly of your offer. But we have been living, Mr. Brooke, in poetry. Marriage is stern prose.” She orders him to leave her. He does. He writes her and her father, gets no response. He wonders whether he truly loved her. Then he runs into her again in Rome as she stands in front of the bronze statue of St. Peter in the basilica as pilgrims walk by to kiss St. Peter’s foot. Charlotte watches what Brooks describes as “the grotesque deposition of kisses” before the two recognize each other. Later, in the last chance encounter of a story with more chance encounters in its 50 pages than in 10 of Dostoevsky, they are in front of the Titian, and we are to understand that Charlotte recognizes herself in the two women: “One may stand for the love I denied,” she said. And the other? Calvary over. Brooks is resurrected. They marry. I didn’t find the story as convincing as the museum tour, and James’s refractions of the paintings’ symbolism in the characters. I come away better remembering the paintings than either Charlotte or Brooks, who are really forgettable characters in the James universe, or like those distant figures Titian and Correggio and the rest of them painted in their canvases’ backgrounds the way they put fillers in seats at awards shows while the real stars are pissing or shooting coke. But it’s all right. Remember to live and let live/Best we can do is forgive/Riding around on the breeze/If you live the life you please…
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.
December 2025
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Flagler County Cultural Council (FC3) Meeting
Friday Blue Forum
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Democratic Women’s Club
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity’s Roundup of Standups from Around Central Florida
For the full calendar, go here.
The little boy arrived with the sacristan and his key, and we were ushered into the presence of Tintoretto’s Crucifixion. This great picture is one of the greatest of the Venetian school. Tintoretto, the travelled reader will remember, has painted two masterpieces on this tremendous theme. The larger and more complex work is at the Scuola di San Rocco; the one of which I speak is small, simple, and sublime. It occupies the left side of the narrow choir of the shabby little church which we had entered, and is remarkable as being, with two or three exceptions, the best preserved work of its incomparable author. Never, in the whole range of art, I imagine, has so powerful an effect been produced by means so simple and select; never has the intelligent choice of means to an effect been pursued with such a refinement of perception. The picture offers to our sight the very central essence of the great tragedy which it depicts. There is no swooning Madonna, no consoling Magdalen, no mockery of contrast, no cruelty of an assembled host. We behold the silent summit of Calvary. To the right are the three crosses, that of the Saviour foremost. A ladder pitched against it supports a turbaned executioner, who bends downward to receive the sponge offered him by a comrade. Above the crest of the hill the helmets and spears of a line of soldiery complete the grimness of the scene. The reality of the picture is beyond all words; it is hard to say which is more impressive, the naked horror of the fact represented, or the sensible power of the artist. You breathe a silent prayer of thanks that you, for your part, are without the terrible clairvoyance of genius. We sat and looked at the picture in silence.
–From Henry James’s “Traveling Companions” (1870).
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Pogo says
@FlaglerLive
Today’s cartoon is on point; a wisp of smoke compared to the conflagration it heralds. When libraries become kindling for heating and cooking — will these glad days be recalled?
Yabba Dabba Doo!
Bo Peep says
Lol Christmas sales are expected to rage better than ever this year. Stop listening to leftist drivel and look around.
Ray W. says
Yesterday, according to The Associated Press – Business News, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and Alberta’s provincial Premiere, Danielle Smith, signed an agreement to, in the reporter’s words, “work toward building a [second new crude oil] pipeline to the Pacific Coast to diversify the country’s oil exports beyond the United States, in a move that has caused turmoil in Carney’s inner circle.”
Alberta’s northern region contains “one of the largest oil reserves in the world, with about 164 billion barrels of proven reserves.”
Canada’s Liberal government’s policy goals had previously been to improve trade relations with the U.S. PM Carney, elected in March 2025, has reset Canada’s policy goals to include a future doubling the nation’s exports to countries other than the United States, stating that as the U.S. transforms all of its trading relationships, Canada must react.
PM Carney then added:
“Over 95% of all our energy exports went to the States. This tight interdependence, many of Canada’s strengths – based on those close ties to America – have become its vulnerabilities.”
As an aside, PM Carney, Harvard graduate in economics, with both a master’s and doctoral degree in economics from the University of Oxford, previously served as Governor of Canada’s central bank, the Bank of Canada, with oversight of Canada’s economic response during the Great Recession. He then, in an unprecedented move, was appointed governor of the Bank of England before leaving to enter the Canadian government.
The reporter then explained that Steven Guilbeault, a member of Carney’s Cabinet, opposes the pipeline, citing to increased risk of tanker spills off the western coast of Canada and to potential damage to the Great Bear rainforest. Yet. Mr. Guilbeault said he understands the need to keep Canada united in its need to diversify its exports.
British Columbia Premier David Ebey argued that the agreement is a “distraction” to other real projects already in the works, saying the project has no coastal First Nations support and as yet has no company with financing ready to advance the project.
Coastal First Nations President Marylyn Slett commented:
“We have zero interest in co-ownership or economic benefits of a project that has the potential to destroy our way of life and everything we have built on the coast.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
When a nation treats allies like crap, allies will pivot away from that nation. Simple as that.
Ray W. says
The Associated Press reports that a Louisiana Death Row inmate has been released on bail pending additional court action after he served more than two decades behind bars. A judge ruled that there existed clear and convincing evidence in the record that the inmate, Jimmie Duncan, was factually innocent of the charge.
Mr. Duncan was the boyfriend of the mother of a 23-year-old girl who had a seizure history. The daughter was found drowned in a bathtub. There was an allegation of rape. The boyfriend became a suspect. During the investigation a mold of the suspect’s teeth was taken.
A Mississippi-based forensic dentist and a pathologist examined her body, with a video-camera recording their actions. The dentist, having obtained the mold of the suspect’s teeth, was recorded as he pushed the mold into her body, creating a post-mortem bite mark impression. During the suspect’s trial, a state-appointed expert, not knowing that the “bite mark” had been created after the girl’s death, testified that the bite mark matched the suspect’s teeth.
Decades later, a district judge threw out the conviction after he admitted into the record testimony from forensics experts that established that the trial evidence on which Mr. Duncan’s conviction was based was not “scientifically defensible”, and that the the young woman’s death was the result of an “accidental drowning.”
The deceased’s mother said after the recent proceedings:
“The horror story that they put out and desecrated my baby’s memory makes me infuriated. … I was not informed of anything that would have exonerated Mr. Duncan at all. … Had I been then, things would have turned out a lot different for Mr. Duncan and for our families.”
The reporter included in the article “[a]n Associated Press review from 2013 [that] found at least two dozen wrongful convictions or charges based on bite mark evidence since 2000.”
The Mississippi forensic dentist had also testified in two different Mississippi cases that led to the imprisonment of two men for a combined three decades before DNA results “cleared” them of the crimes.
According to the story, more than 200 death row inmates have been cleared of their convictions since 1972. I have repeatedly commented that 30 of Florida’s Death Row inmates have been exonerated of their crimes since 1976.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
This is for those several incredibly gullibly stupid FlaglerLive commenters who insist that death row inmates need to be killed as quickly as possible.
Each of you is a fool.
Since the beginning of time, malicious people have been framing others for crimes they did not commit. Ambitious prosecutors can easily be fooled by detectives and state-paid experts that competent and reliable exists to support guilt, even though the evidence has been fabricated. Since 1972, more than 200 people have been released from death row because they didn’t commit the crimes.
Again, any commenter who presents to the FlaglerLive community that death row inmates need to be killed as quickly as possible is forever showing themselves for the fools that they are. One can never apologize to an inmate who was wrongfully convicted of something he did not do after he is dead.
I have told this story several times. At a death penalty conference, a young woman gave the keynote speech. She told attendees of the horror she experienced when she learned that DNA results had established that the man she had accused of a brutal rape was not the man who had raped her. She urged us to continue our work.
I already knew of the case out of Brevard County.
The woman had reported the rape that had occurred in her darkened apartment bedroom; she described her assailant as a six-foot-tall rapist.
A week later, while in a convenience store with a friend, she saw Wilton Dedge enter the store. She told her girlfriend he was her rapist. Police soon arrested Mr. Dedge. He repeatedly denied involvement and took the case to trial, at which he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Nineteen years later, and after efforts opposed by the prosecution, the evidence in the police evidence room was tested. DNA results established that Mr. Dedge, about 5′ 6″ tall, had not raped the woman.
Despite the prosecution acknowledging on the record that Mr. Dedge had not raped the woman, the state argued to the trial judge that the sanctity of a jury’s verdict was more important than Mr. Dedge’s innocence; he should remain in jail for the rest of his life. The trial judge agreed. The appellate court reversed Mr. Dedge’s conviction and ordered his immediate release.
Even after a prosecutor told a trial judge that Mr. Dedge was factually innocent of the crimes charged, Mr. Dedge spent an additional four years in prison.
I am going to repeat this over and over again over time.
Only the extraordinarly gullibly stupid among us think that we should kill people as fast as possible after a jury renders a verdict of guilt. There is no other way to describe such people other than as extraordinarily gullibly stupid. Prosecutors lie. Detectives lie. Witnesses lie, including expert dentists. Why they lie is seldom discerned, but they lie. Do they lie for money, prestige, vengeance? Who knows, but we know people lie. Everyone is capable of lying, including me and you.
Do not be too quick in acting on vengeful imaginings of retribution on an actually innocent person. The man you imagine as worthy of death may not have done anything wrong at all.
I am reminded of a grave marker in Tombstone, Arizona. A man stole a horse. Another man bought the horse, thinking the seller owned the horse. The buyer was accused, convicted and hanged as a horse thief, despite protestations of innocence. Later, it was discovered that he had, indeed bought the horse in good faith. The original grave marker read: George Johnson Hanged by mistake. The grave marker has come to read: “Here lies George Johnson Hanged by mistake 1882 He was right We was wrong But we strung him up and now he’s gone.”
We cannot ever let the more gullibly stupid among us decide who deserves to live or die.