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Weather: Mostly sunny, with a high near 73. Northeast wind 10 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph. Monday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 60. East wind 6 to 9 mph, with gusts as high as 18 mph.
Today at a Glance:
Schools are off all week.
Click here for holiday schedules of government services, courts, garbage pick-up, library hours, etc.
The Bunnell City Commission meets at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 2400 Commerce Parkway, Bunnell. The Police Department swears in new officers Fallon Eibert and Jonathan
Whealton. The commission gets the city’s annual financial audit, and considers adopting a resolution opting the city out of the property tax exemption afforded rental properties under the Live Local Act. To access meeting agendas, materials and minutes, go 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: The French daily Le Monde earlier this month, two days before the first anniversary of the cathedral’s reopening after its $1 billion restoration after the 2019 fire, ran a column by a Michel Guerrin incensed that Notre Dame in Paris is not charging tourists a fee to step inside. “Between 11 and 12 million people will have visited in 12 months (compared to nine million per year before the fire),” he wrote. “The figure is staggering, far outpacing the Sacré-Cœur, the Louvre, or Versailles. The more triumphant Notre-Dame becomes, the firmer my conviction remains: Entry should be ticketed. I have already written this. I reiterate it.” He has a point. The overwhelming majority of people who do step inside want selfies and check marks next to the tourist spots they have “done,” as Henry James sniffed. Notre Dame isn’t charging because the Catholic church refuses to charge. It considers the cathedral a gift from god. “While there is a kernel of truth to this, it is largely false. It is astonishing to witness such blindness, but above all, such bad faith, to the point where a Catholic authority could claim not to distinguish between tourists and worshippers. Numerous churches in Spain or Italy manage this distinction quite well, especially when they are responsible for the buildings and funds are lacking, charging tourists while still reserving generous hours for prayer,” Guerrin writes. The Catholic church didn’t put up the money to restore the cathedral. The church isn’t responsible for maintaining the building. The church is taking the state–and the Cathedral–for granted. I doubt Victor Hugo would mind a modest charge. The charge to visit St. John the Divine in Manhattan? $15. St. Patrick’s doesn’t charge, but asks for donations. But St. Patrick’s is no Notre Dame.
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.
January 2026
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Flagler County Cultural Council (FC3) Meeting
Friday Blue Forum
‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,’ the Billie Holiday Story, at City Rep Theatre
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Democratic Women’s Club
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
The Rainbow Bridge Dedication at Holland Park
‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,’ the Billie Holiday Story, at City Rep Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity’s Roundup of Standups from Around Central Florida
For the full calendar, go here.
You sure notice how a village burns, even from twenty kilometers away. It was cheerful. A piddling little hamlet you wouldn’t even see during the day, deep in some ugly stretch of country—well, you have no idea what an impression it makes at night when it burns! It looks like Notre-Dame! It takes a good full night for a village to burn, even a small one; at the end, it looks like a huge flower, then just a bud, then nothing left.
–From Louis Ferdinand-Celine’s Journey to the End of he Night (1932).
Laurel says
We’ll be doing a lot of clean up when Big Brother is gone, but it will be worth it. Welcome back to the Gulf of Mexico.
By the way, Trump has put plaques of past Presidents on the wall of the White House that would make a ten year old punk think the *man* is ridiculous.
By the way, by the way, the East Wing of the White House has traditionally been used by the First Ladies. Had to get rid of that, along with the Rose Garden.
dutchman says
Since he wants his name all over, lets put it on “TOILET PAPER”, the whole world will see his name……
Joe D says
Need to clarify the portion of the Notre Dame restoration article, which states the Catholic Church DID NOT PAY for the RESTORATION…true the “CHURCH” did not put up all the Restoration funds…but MILLIONS of international Catholic Churches and non-Catholic organizations donated money towards the restoration from around the WORLD….I PERSONALLY donated $100 towards the Restoration through my own local Catholic Church in my prior home City as millions of others did at the time of the tragedy!
Surprised the article is not basing its information entirely on FACTS! That’s DEFINITELY a departure from this BLOG’s usual FACT BASED reporting?
Pierre Tristam says
There were 340,000 donors, totaling donations of $1 billion. But France’s three richest families (those of conglomerates LVMH Group, Kering and L’Oreal) donated 60 percent of that, French big oil company Total another 10 percent. The Catholic church, which could have paid for the restoraion by itself with a fraction of what it hordes in the caves of the Vatican, did contribute, but even when its individual contributions are included, that total was relatively small. Still, the church refuses to allow for the defraying of costs through a small charge.
Jim says
I know that anyone who supports Trump will be able to rationalize his fixation for naming public buildings after himself. Probably with “Trump being Trump” or some other variation.
But here’s the thing, if any other president did what Trump is doing, the very same people would be screaming at the top of their lungs about it and wanting an impeachment immediately. And if you’re one of those people, you should contemplate that statement and, if you can, explain why it isn’t true.
Trump is a sad, insecure and sick old man. He sleeps through his cabinet meetings and proclamation signings. (Remember sleepy Joe? Well, it looks like Trump sleeps more than that. In fact, you might say Trump sleeps through public events “like no one has seen before”. I guess that’s called “winning” by MAGA.)
He has gathered the most incompetent, corrupt sycophants in his cabinet and other offices of government that have ever been gathered in one place before. And prices are higher on almost everything. Housing is more out of reach now than ever. Our “allies” will not be around when we need them (America First has consequences.). He sucks up to Russia and slurs Ukraine. One is a terrorist state that routinely murders civilians and prisoners; the other is a fledgling democracy fighting an evil dictator for survival. Tell me, MAGA, do you not see that?
I’ll stop there. The bottom line is that the current president and his cronies are weakening this country like “no one has seen before” and many of you are blind to it. Let’s concentrate on getting rid of immigrants (far from the “worst of the worst”), make sure the millions of kids subjected to transgender surgery each year are protected (you believe that also), build the Big Beautiful Ballroom (and destroy a historical building in the process), wage war on Venezuela over drugs that don’t come to the USA (if you’re interested in facts), let Ukraine wither, make deals with Russia and China (they’ll take Tiawan within the next two years) all the while doing virtually nothing to help the American populace improve (or even maintain) a reasonably decent level of existence. All the while kissing the ass of the orange prick who is rapidly destroying our country.
Merry Christmas….
Sherry says
Absolutely Jim! Thank You and Happiest of Holidays!
joe says
The 60 Minutes segment on the CECOT torture prison that got axed at the last minute by the Trump whore in charge of CBS NEWS is available in Canada…they still have a free press
https://youtu.be/IIm66Tsao8s?si=gNqY_Q_HXYPCHrr-
Sherry says
Thank you Joe! I now consider CBS to be “Fascist State Run” propaganda! Boycotting Big Time!