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Weather: Mostly sunny, with a high near 76. Light west wind becoming northwest 8 to 13 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 20 mph. Sunday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 46. Windy, with a north wind 21 to 24 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph.
- 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]
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.
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre, Limelight Theatre, 3 p.m., 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. 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.)
‘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.
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn, at Athens Theatre, 124 North Florida Avenue, DeLand. 386/736-1500. Tickets, Adult $37 – Senior $33. 2:30 p.m. 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.
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.
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.
Notably: “Presentism,” Joseph Ellis writes in American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1997), is “the presumption that the past can be judged by the standards of the present.” Ellis was discussing another Jefferson scholar trying to distance Jefferson from Bill Clinton’s womanizing, at a time when a majority of American scholars still preferred to think that nothing happened between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the mother of five children by Jefferson. Presentism is a cheap temptation. I’m certainly guilty of it all the time. Politicians are terrible with it. The moment you hear the word founders, or worse, founding fathers, you know you’re in for a soaking of cherry-pricked (stet) presentism. The other day I was writing a paragraph about all the things we universally perpetrated, accepted and applauded as a nation (during the “founding fathers” era and for a few generations after it): slavery, massacring Indians, Jim Crow, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, all those things we are now universally against (not yet for Reagan, alas). Then I read the introduction to a 1775 poem called “To His Excellency General Washington.” The poem itself is standard classical versification with endless classical allusions in a style almost as florid as FlaglerLive’s reports. But it’s the introduction that caught my attention: “Sir, I Have taken the freedom to address your Excellency in the enclosed poem, and entreat your acceptance, though I am not insensible of its inaccuracies. Your being appointed by the Grand Continental Congress to be Generalissimo of the armies of North America, together with the fame of your virtues, excite sensations not easy to suppress. Your generosity, therefore, I presume, will pardon the attempt. Wishing your Excellency all possible success in the great cause you are so generously engaged in. I am, Your Excellency’s most obedient humble servant, PHILLIS WHEATLEY. Providence, Oct. 26, 177s.” And here’s the kicker, which of course you’ve figured out by now: Phillis Wheatley, one of America’s earliest non-native poets (its native poets preceded the “founders” by millennia) was not only Black. She had been a slave herself–born in West Africa, sold in 1761–and had been freed only two years before she wrote that poem, though Washington was still very much a slave-holder at the time. But she wrote him admiringly, reverentially, even lovingly, as she doubtless would Jefferson or Madison or any of the other founders and slaveholders who were to sign the Declaration a year later and draft the Constitution at Philadelphia a few years after that. Don’t let the DeSantis Education Department catch wind of her. They’d have a field day triumphally putting her back in the field and saying: look how her “masters” treated her well, educated her, gave her skills and recognized her talent. (Too late: the White House’s nationalists got to her.) All true, incidentally. But hopelessly tainted by presentism. I’d stick with Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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
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
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
East Flagler Mosquito Control District Board Meeting
In Court: Jermaine Williams Status Hearing
In Court: Kristopher Henriqson
Flagler County Commission Evening Meeting
Nar-Anon Family Group
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Palm Coast Charter Review Committee Meeting
For the full calendar, go here.
To His Excellency General Washington
Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light,
Columbia’s scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom’s cause her anxious breast alarms, She flashes dreadful in refulgent1 arms.
See mother earth her offspring’s fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven’s revolving light
Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!
The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel binds Her golden hair:
Wherever shines this native of the skies,
Unnumber’d charms and recent graces rise.
Muse! bow propitious2 while my pen relates
How pour her armies through a thousand gates,
As when Eolus3 heaven’s fair face deforms,
Enwrapp’d in tempest and a night of storms;
Astonish’d ocean feels the wild uproar,
The refluent4 surges beat the sounding shore;
Or thick as leaves in Autumn’s golden reign,
Such, and so many, moves the warrior’s train.
In bright array they seek the work of war,
Where high unfurl’d the ensign waves in air.
Shall I to Washington their praise recite?
Enough thou know’st them in the fields of fight.
Thee, first in peace and honors—we demand
The grace and glory of thy martial band.
Fam’d for thy valour, for thy virtues more,
Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!
One century scarce perform’d its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia’s fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom’s heaven-defended race!
Fix’d are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia’s arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive5 head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia’s state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.
Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, Washington! be thine.
–Phillis Wheatley (1775)
Laurel says
“Woke font!” OMG! Who the hell cares? Oh. Rubio. The stupidity is never ending.
Laurel says
Okay, I just got it. Times New Roman is a font that goes back to old newspapers, and to use that font makes the propaganda look more official and believable. Slimey! Poor Rubio, he sold his soul already, so why not go full out?
Dennis C Rathsam says
More Epstien photos released!!! A Bipartisan BUST!!!! Jackasses on a fishing expedition…. they can bait the hook, but they cant catch the fish!