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Weather: A slight chance of thunderstorms. Showers. Highs in the lower 70s. Chance of rain 80 percent. Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy. A chance of showers, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 50s. Chance of rain 40 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:
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
Handel’s Messiah the Music Ministry and Concert Series of Palm Coast United Methodist Church will present the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah, concluding with the Hallelujah Chorus. With professional soloists, a large Festival Chorus, accompanied by an orchestra, this concert is free and open to all. The performers will be accompanied by the Chamber Players of Palm Coast, directed by Paige Dashner Long. Please invite family and friends as well as pass this info onto anyone interested. Palm Coast United Methodist Church, 6500 Belle Terre Pkwy. 4 p.m.
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students: 9:30 to 10:25 a.m. at Grace Presbyterian Church, 1225 Royal Palms Parkway, Palm Coast. Improve your English skills while studying the Bible. This study is geared toward intermediate and advanced level English Language Learners.
‘Greetings,’ A Christmas Comedy, Daytona Playhouse, 100 Jessamine Blvd., Daytona Beach. 2 p.m. Box office: (386) 255-2431. tickets, $15 to $25. A comedy about a young man who brings home his Jewish atheist fiancée to meet his very Catholic parents on Christmas Eve. With the inevitable family explosion comes an out-of-left-field miracle that propels the family into a wild exploration of love, religion, personal truth, and the nature of earthly reality.
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre, Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. 2 p.m. The beloved musical about the optimistic orphan who captures hearts (and maybe even saves a billionaire). Perfect for families and the holiday spirit. Book here. (Note: all Sunday matinees are sold out, but there is a wait list you may join.)
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn, at Athens Theatre, 124 North Florida Avenue, DeLand. 2:30 p.m. 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.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Nightly from 6 to 9 p.m. at Palm Coast’s Central Park, with 57 lighted displays you can enjoy with a leisurely stroll around the pond in the park. Admission to Fantasy Lights is free, but donations to support Rotary’s service work are gladly accepted. Holiday music will pipe through the speaker system throughout the park, Santa’s Village, which has several elf houses for the kids to explore, will be open, with Santa’s Merry Train Ride nightly (weather permitting), and Santa will be there every Sunday night until Christmas, plus snow on weekends! On certain nights, live musical performances will be held on the stage.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 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.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at the Bridges United Methodist Fellowship at 205 North Pine Street, Bunnell (through the gate, in room 8), and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
Byblos: Sophocles’s Ajax is the first of his seven surviving plays, performed around 442 BC in Pericles’s Athens, as the Parthenon was rising and the first Peloponnesian War (with Sparta) had ended. Greece was prosperous, powerful, at peace, like Eisenhower America. Like so many Greek tragedies, Ajax’s plot is absurdly simple, if not absurd. The dramatists were not interested in plot. It was a device, a coat hanger. The coat was the thing, as Gogol reminds us. The setting is in a literary suburb of the Iliad. Paris has killed Achilles with that arrow to his heel, outside of Troy, where the Greeks have spent 10 futile years warring over a whore. Achilles’s armor is to go to the next-greatest Greek warrior. Agamemnon and Menelaus, the two kings, award it to wise Odysseus, that “man of many turns.” Hotheaded Ajax is pissed. He thought he should have the armor. He decides to kill Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus, because really, when you’re an honorable warrior in the middle of a war, how best to show your honor than by decapitating your leadership over a personal slight. (What was dueling but a perversion of honor codes?) Not for Ajax, Hans Castorp’s notion that “although honor had its advantages, so did disgrace, and that indeed the advantages of the latter were almost boundless.” As Ajax chomps off to his assassinations, the goddess Athena tricks him, making a herd of animals look like his three enemies. The slaughter is merciless, gleeful, like a Hutu’s slashing in 1994 Rwanda. Ajax drags remains to his tent to better enjoy blood as good as wine, he thinks. The animal cruelty is unbound. Ajax is mad. Blame Ajax’s jealousy, and Athena, who boasts of the gods’ power to Ulysses. He is more godly than the gods: “Though he is my enemy,” Ulysses tells the shrew, “I pity this wretch now that he is bowed down by a terrible error and I think of myself more than of him. I see that we, the living, are but a phantasm and a vain shadow.” Ulysses makes two brief appearances, one at the beginning and one at the end of the play, bracketing fanaticism in a savvy of empathy and humanity. In between, Ajax comes to his senses, realizes what he’s done, and is ashamed—not over the slaughter of the innocent animals, not over the realization that he would have been a low-life assassin had he murdered the three men, not that he would have single-handedly ensured that the Greeks lost Troy, but over looking foolish. His pride is hurt. He’s made an ass of himself by failing to murder the men. After what he’s done, or rather what he’s failed to do, Ajax thinks he can’t face his father. So he must die. He must kill himself. “Don’t cure evil by evil,” the coryphee tells him, but no one ever pays attention to the chorus, the only voice of sympathy for innocent animals. He plants his sword, point side up, and falls on it. He summons his slave wife Tecmessa and their mute son Eurysaces. We should all be speechless at Ajax’s madness. Tecmessa’s abjection before her “master” is a bit hard to take, but so it is in so much Greek drama, the founding frat house to the misogyny of Paul, Augustine, and Thomas. Ajax dies barely offstage, hidden by a bush but for the point of the spear, after delivering an ode to suicide almost methodically how-to, that had any of those illiterate moms for liberty read it, would have demanded that all Greek tragedies be removed from shelves. In the event, I don’t think the Greeks are taught anymore in our schools, only enacted. The second part of the play is about Ajax’s body. To bury or not to bury. Here comes Menelaus, one of the three Ajax sought to kill. He wants Ajax’s body to rot in the sand. Teucer, Ajax’s half brother, wants it honorably buried. The two insult each other like two juvenile delinquents in a DJJ waiting room in Daytona Beach. Menelaus insults Teucer’s origins, Teucer tells him he could whip his ass without a weapon (“I could stand unarmored against you fully armed.” For Menelaus, too, it’s entirely personal. It’s a wonder these Greeks could hold it together for 10 years against Troy (“to the great shame of Greece,” as the chorus says). Not enough for Menelaus to act like Andrew Dice Clay. Here comes Agamemnon, outrapping Menelaus: “You there—I’ve been told you’ve dared to mouth foul threats against us with impunity. I’m talking about you, the son of a mere slave, a battle trophy.” Teucer calls Agamemnon’s father a barbarian, defends his own birthright, and in walks Ulysses, separating the two idiots and delivering that sublime speech that will make anyone think twice about insulting the memory of the dead, Charlie Kirk included:
Then listen. In deference to the gods
don’t be so unyielding you throw Ajax out
without a burial. You should not let
that spirit of violence at any time
seize control of you, not to the extent
that you then trample justice underfoot.
This man became my greatest enemy
in all our army on that very day
I beat him for the armor of Achilles.
But for all the man’s hostility to me,
I would not disgrace him. Nor would I deny
that in my view he was the finest warrior
among the Argive men who came to Troy,
after Achilles. So if you dishonor him,
you would be unjust. It would not harm him,
but you’d be contravening all those laws
the gods established. When a good man dies,
it is not right to harm him, even though
he may be someone you hate.
He offers to bury Ajax with Teucer, but Teucer declines the help, his superstitions taking the better of him. Ajax is buried honorably.
—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.
December 2025
Holiday Plant Class Series
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre
‘Greetings,’ A Christmas Comedy
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn
Al-Anon Family Groups
Handel’s Messiah at Palm Coast United Methodist Church
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
In Court: Ex-Firefighter James Melady Trial
Groundbreaking for Flagler County Fire Station 51
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Nar-Anon Family Group
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No.
What is honour? A word. What is in that word “honour”? What is that “honour”? Air. A trim reckoning!
Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.
’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it.
Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism.
–From Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 (Act 5, Scene 1).
Ray W. says
Thank you, Mr. Tristam.
As I have commented before, in academia, Aeschylus’ Oresteia marks the oldest reference to a societal substitution of a respect-based law, as against the existing honor-based law of the debt of blood vengeance.
Honor-based law demands vengeance.
Respect-based law commands justice.
The two are not the same; they are not interchangeable; they are not equal.
Vengefulness degrades us all.
When Ryszard Kapucinski writes of the three plagues that afflict mankind, nationalism, racism, and religious extremism, he is describing forms of thought based on vengefulness against the other, not on respect for the other.
In a respect-based society, we do not need to behead Democrats. In a respect-based society, we do not need to slit the throats of D.C. bureaucrats. In a respect-based society, we do not need to throw protesters off bridges. In a respect-based society, “some people” do not need killing.
Some 2,500 years ago, the ancient Greeks came to understand through depiction of tragedic consequence that vengefulness harmed them all. These ancient Greeks thought the tragedies worth saving. Their descendants thought the tragedies worth saving. The Arab Muslims thought the tragedies worth saving. The Crusaders thought the tragedies worth saving.
For 2,500 years, pieces of paper were preserved, generation after generation without interruption, because, arguably, ideas of respect and justice are worth saving. Had but one of the many succeeding generations thought the tragedies no longer worth saving, they would have ceased to exist.
Synonyms for vengefulness include cruelty, mercilessness, ruthlessness, vindictiveness, malice, malevolence, jealousy, spite, virulence, resentment, envy, …
Psychology.com defines revenge as “an action provoked by a wrong, unlike other forms of aggression that require no provocation.”
There is a reason our founding fathers in that very first Congress amended the original Constitution with, among many other things, a proscription against cruel and unusual punishments.
Eleanor Coyne says
Right on the money! I’m sure money was involved in the pardon.
Pogo says
@Melatonin
… wouldn’t hurt to try it.
Today is December 7th.
Ray W. says
A news portal named electrive reports in part that a Chinese EV company, Nio, continues to grow customer access to its battery-swap technology.
Nio designs each of its vehicles to enable use of two different-sized battery packs, 75 kWh in capacity and 100 kWh in capacity.
A customer can purchase any Nio product with or without a battery pack.
Those who buy a Nio complete with a battery can charge them at home or at charging stations; they can also swap out their batteries at Nio battery stations.
Those who purchase a Nio without a battery pack lease the battery of their choice. Again, the leased battery can be recharged at home or at charging stations. They, too, can swap out their batteries at Nio battery stations.
Nio now has over 3500 battery stations located around the country. Nio owners can schedule battery swaps in advance. When they arrive at their reserved time, a battery swap can take less than three minutes. Nio owners pay a fee for the difference between the replacement fully charged battery and whatever remains of the charge in the old battery.
In the beginning, when Nio had few battery swap stations, Nio purchasers who either leased or purchased batteries split 50/50 their choice between the larger battery and the smaller battery. Now, with over 3,500 stations available for use, 97% of Nio owners choose the smaller battery.
Twice, Nio has offered the option of 150 kWh batteries with a range of over 600 miles, albeit a comparatively more costly option. Twice, Nio has quickly dropped the option due to lack of demand.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
For much of the past 34 years, I filled up my wife’s car on a weekly basis. We raised four children. Each Saturday, we discussed what we needed during the coming week: food, socks, shirts, home repair and maintenance supplies, car repair and maintenance supplies, video-rentals in the early years, child athletic needs, bank stops, etc. I did the shopping loop each Saturday with her car. And I topped off her car, whether it needed it or not. Only rarely did she drive so much during a week that she needed to buy gas.
I suppose many others did and do the same, but maybe not.
During most weeks, many of us, perhaps most of us, don’t need the full range that a 15-gallon gas tank offers. We just top off our gas tanks whenever most convenient to avert the chance that we might run out when time presses.
Nio is finding out the same thing. 97% of their customers now choose the smallest optional battery, one that offers around 300 miles of range. They know they can schedule a stop at their convenience on the way home from work and get a fully charged battery in three minutes, paying only for the energy that they consume between stops.
Twice, Nio offered its customers a battery with around 600 miles of range, but they didn’t want it. Nio has found a way to eliminate range anxiety without providing a long range battery; the option just doesn’t justify any extra cost.