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Weather: Sunny, with a high near 58. Friday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 46. Breezy.
- 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:
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County: The AARP Foundation’s Tax Aide provides free tax preparation services at six locations in Palm Coast, Flagler Beach and Flagler County through April 15, but you must make an appointment first and fill out paperwork. To do both, go here.
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. The Flagler County School Board’s Janie Ruddy is the main guest. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM, 1550 AM, and live at Flagler Broadcasting’s YouTube channel.
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, 6400 North Oceanshore Blvd., Palm Coast, 10 a.m. Join a Ranger the First Friday of every month for a garden walk. Learn about the history of Washington Oaks while exploring the formal gardens. The walk is approximately one hour. No registration required. Walk included with park entry fee. Participants meet in the Garden parking lot. The event is free with paid admission fee to the state park: $5 per vehicle. (Limit 2-8 people per vehicle) $4 per single-occupant vehicle. Call (386) 446-6783 for more information or by email: [email protected].
The Friday Blue Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Flagler Democratic Office at 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214 (above Cue Note) at City Marketplace. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
First Friday in Flagler Beach, the monthly festival of music, food and leisure, is scheduled for this evening at Downtown’s Veterans Park, 105 South 2nd Street, from 5 to 9 p.m. The event is overseen by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and run by Laverne M. Shank Jr. and Surf 97.3.
Free Family Art Night: Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens, 78 East Granada Boulevard, Ormond Beach. All art supplies are provided. No art experience is needed, and all ages are welcome. Free Family Art Night is a popular, monthly program typically scheduled on the first Friday of each month to coordinate with the free, family-friendly movie shown outdoors at Rockefeller Gardens. The two programs offer a stimulating evening for families, at no charge, in the heart of downtown Ormond Beach. Our art program takes place in the OMAM Classroom, rain or shine, but the City’s outdoor movies are weather dependent. Movie information can be found here or call The Casements at 386-676-3216.
‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,’ At Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. 7:30 p.m. except Sundays, 2 p.m. A witty, fast-paced musical revue that takes a humorous and heartfelt look at modern love in all its stages-from awkward first dates to long marriages. Directed by Daniel Starling.
Byblos: The Library of America issued its annual “New and Forthcoming Tiles” for 2026. For the first time in memory, it was a skimpy, disappointing preview: just five new volumes for the year, less than half the usual offerings. John McPhee (not to be confused with the interloper of the same name, the Delta Force “Shrek” guy who has entirely displaced what minor footprint the real McPhee had on the web) is entering the Library with four titles in one volume, including his lesser known Pine Barrens, on that out of the way wonder in south New Jersey, and Coming Into the Country, his longer take on Alaska that I devoured as I drove up the Alaska Highway in the fall of 1999, just as Congress was releasing the Starr Report (no relation). The volume also has the much-praised Encounters wiuth the Archdruid and The Survival of the Bark Canoe, neither of which I can say anything about. The Library is issuing the second or third pair of Ursula Le Guin volumes totaling five novels, a few short stories and “related writings.” I have yet to get the Guin bug the way I did the noir bug, so I’ll be quicker to leafing Jim Thompson’s Five Noir Novels of the 1950s and 60s (including The Grifters and A Hell of a Woman). The Library published his Killer Inside Me in a previous anthology. Then there’s three 1970s novels from Peter Straub, who died in 2022, and who is in the Stephen King Mold (the two co-wrote a book). The fifth offer will be William Kennedy’s Albany Trilogy, apparently already available. As Penguin Random House describes it, “Unfolding in Albany during Prohibition and the Depression, here are three intertwined tales of thwarted yearning, doomed ambition, and hard-won resilience that are now “among the most exuberant literary feats of the past half-century,” as Colum McCann writes in this volume’s Introduction.” Ironweed, which won the Pulitzer for fiction in 1983, is part of the trilogy. Kennedy is not dead. He marked his 98th birthday on Jan. 16. I imagined he lives in Albany, but he lives nearby, in Averill Park.
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.
April 2026
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Flagler Beach All Stars Beach Clean-Up
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
2nd Annual Italian Festival
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club, at Flagler Beach Public Library
“My Fair Lady,” at Daytona Playhouse
Celebrating Celine! with Jenene Caramielo, at the Fitz
“Godspell,” at the Limelight Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
“My Fair Lady,” at Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
…the only brotherhood they belonged to was the one that asked that enduring question: How do I get through the next twenty minutes? They feared drys, cops, jailers, bosses, moralists, crazies, truth-tellers, and one another. they loved storytellers, liars, whores, fighters, singers, collie dogs that wagged their tails, and generous bandits. Rudy, thought Francis: he’s just a bum, but who ain’t?
–From William Kennedy’s Ironweed (1983).
Laurel says
The rejection of law and the Constitution, by our current government, is stunning.
Skibum says
All of the manufactured furor and histrionics by the extremist maga cult over the NFL selecting Bad Bunny for this weekend’s Super Bowl’s halftime show is really, really rich indeed. Some of the cult’s sheeple are so inbred and ignorant that they have been repeating the moronic line ad nauseum saying they want American performers, not foreigners. What??? The brainless wonders are deluded enough to believe that Puerto Rican citizens are not American citizens?!
Just laughable, and at the same time a sad realization that far too many maga cultists must have skipped out of school, missing important school lessons beginning with elementary school! And besides, when has anyone complained previously about ACTUAL non-American music artists performing at prior years Super Bowls? I’ll tell ya… NEVER! Nope, not when 13 foreign citizens were the halftime performers, including Phil Collins, Enrique Iglesias, U2, Shania Twain, Sting, Celine Dion, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, on and on and on.
So the extremist maga cultists decided to try to pull viewers away from the NFL halftime show with their own conservative, very political halftime music performance, LOL! And who are they highlighting? The idiot maga cultist Kid Rock of all people! He says his music will be all about America. Let’s see how many people are dumb enough to watch the maga music myopic. Especially interesting is the fact that Kid Rock’s own music history has him singing about having sex with underage girls. Wow, so “family values” of him, right? The lyrics of Kid Rock’s 2001 ‘Cool Daddy Cool’ song go: “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, see some say that’s statutory (but I say that’s mandatory).”
I’m sure that song is particularly endearing and has special meaning for the criminal sex abuser and chief pedophile protector in the WH. So much for “conservative family values”. Now, maga sheeple, just do yourselves a huge favor and tune in American citizen Bad Bunny instead.
Laurel says
I’m looking forward to watching Bad Bunny. I’m not too familiar with him, and I would like to see the reason for his popularity. I bet it’s a good show!
Sherry says
So now Maga, your lord and master trump is posting such atrociously despicable things that even I am running out of ways to describe just how racist and disgusting he is! Posting a video with the faces of beloved President and Michelle Obama’s pasted on top of monkeys bodies is beyond heinous!
This from wonderful Robert Reich:
Friends,
I try to ignore Trump’s posts because every one of them is filled with his noxious bloviation.
But sometimes he posts are so revolting that I can’t just let them pass. The loathsome sociopath in the Oval Office has to be held accountable.
So it was late last night — which happened to be the fifth day of Black History Month — when at exactly 11:44 pm Trump posted a video that included a depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys.
Now, we all know Trump is a loathsome human being. His insults have become an odious staple of his presidency. You may remember his AI-generated video of himself as a fighter pilot dumping excrement on No Kings Day protesters. Or his AI-generated video of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries as mariachi performers.
This morning, White House press secretary hurried into the White House press room with her usual pooper-scooper to clean up the mess from last night’s racist post, calling it nothing but “an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” and adding, for good measure: “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Well, it turns out plenty of Republican members of Congress were outraged, too — and they didn’t fake it. “The most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” posted South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate. “A reasonable person sees the racist context in this,” posted Nebraska Republican Senator Pete Ricketts. “Totally unacceptable,” posted Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker. “Wrong and incredibly offensive,” posted New York Republican congressman Mike Lawler. “Offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable,” posted Ohio Republican congressman Mike Turner.
What happened then? Just before noon today, Eastern Time — some 12 hours after Trump posted this piece of sh*t — the White House said it had been deleted.
No apology offered, of course. The White House blamed an unnamed “White House staffer” for it.
But you and I and anyone who has paid attention to Trump’s outbursts of bigoted offal over the past months knows it came from him.
Three observations.
First, even Republican senators and representatives are now unafraid to publicly accuse Trump of being a bigot. That’s progress.
Secondly, when congressional Republicans make a ruckus, Trump backs down.
Third, this incident adds to the accumulating evidence that Trump is losing his mind.
Skibum says
Thank you, Sherry for sharing another insightful commentary from Robert Reich.
So here’s how it always goes for republi-con members of Congress, who are so offended, so shocked, so supposedly upset by the latest unpresidential display of blatant racism that they 1) want to condemn it, then 2) immediately go back to supporting and doing the bidding of the racist convicted felon sitting in the WH like it was just another day. Despicable all around!
Laurel says
Over the last 25 years, or so, my husband and I have heard someone use the word “n—” a few times. Something we won’t stand for. I can tell you that these different individuals, who don’t know each other, are definitely certifiable ignoramuses. No ifs, ands or buts. Really low IQ. Trump said “I love the poorly educated.” He clearly has chosen his target market. So, If you believe Trump is worthy of support…here’s your sign!
Laurel says
Ooooo, edited! Not one of “The seven dirty words,” but still distasteful. Good to know.
Ray W. says
On May 28, 1788, George Washington wrote the following in a letter to Francis Adrien Van Der Kemp:
“I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong. …”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
The Cato Institute, through a section named CATO AT LIBERTY, released on March 27, 2018, an essay on the intent of our founding fathers toward immigration. The essay bears the title “The Founding Fathers Favored a Liberal Immigration System”
The issue presented in the essay is straightforward. During the Constitutional Convention, Gouvernour Morris sought approval of an amendment to the proposed constitution that would require citizenship status of 14 years before an immigrant could serve as a U. S. Senator.
Much debate among many attending members ensued. In the end, the minimum citizenship term was set at nine years.
From the words of the attendees during the debate, the essay’s authors wrote:
“Yet despite [the nine-year requirement], their statements make clear that the Founding Fathers had a conception of citizenship and immigration that shares little in common with today’s nationalists. They wanted the most open possible society where foreigners could aspire to full citizenship in a reasonable time frame and receive equal treatment to citizens as soon as possible.”
Make of this what you will.