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Weather: Clear. Highs in the upper 60s. Tonight: Mostly clear. Lows in the lower 40s.
- 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:
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at its new location on South 2nd Street, right in front of City Hall, featuring prepared food, fruit, vegetables , handmade products and local arts from more than 30 local merchants. The market is hosted by Flagler Strong, a non-profit.
The Flagler Beach All Stars hold their monthly beach clean-up starting at 9 a.m. in front of the Flagler Beach pier. All volunteers welcome.
Creekside Music and Arts Festival, at Princess Place Preserve, 2500 Princess Place Road, Palm Coast, Saturday and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, admission is $10 per person, kids 12 and under get in free. Free parking. Gather under the majestic oaks for this local tradition that celebrates the natural beauty of Northeast Florida. Bring a lawn chair and enjoy a variety of music including bluegrass, country, rock & classic hits. Shop rows of unique arts & craft vendors. There’ll be historic demonstrations from a blacksmith, a fur trapper and pottery wheel creations. Kids zone with train rides, pony rides, petting zoo, hayrides, bounce houses. Big food court. Fall festival brews in the beer garden. Explore the Princess Lodge and other historic sites. Organized by Flagler Broadcasting.
AAUW hosts Dr. Michael Butler: “A Lesson From Reconstruction: The Political Consequences Of Rewriting History,” a lecture by Dr. Michael Butler, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at Flagler College, 10 a.m. at Cypress Knoll Golf and Country Club, 53 Easthampton Blvd. in Palm Coast. The end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era was a vital, if often ignored, point in American History. The South regained political control of their region and a wave of voting restrictions, Jim Crow laws, and racial violence followed that targeted African Americans. Most importantly, Southerners used a multitude of historical lies to justify their actions, which the nation ultimately embraced as factual. Butler outlines this “Lost Cause” mythology and explains why such lies still matter to anti-democratic forces in 2026. AAUW is a community of more than 170,000 people standing strong for gender equity. Located in Florida’s northeast coast, the Flagler County Branch draws members from throughout Flagler County and serves the communities of Palm Coast, Flagler Beach and Bunnell.
The Friends of the Library host a book sale from 9 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast. There will be Fiction, Non-Fiction, Specialty Books, Children’s Books and much more. Credit Cards accepted, as are checks with valid driver’s license.
Coffee With Commissioner Scott Spradley: Flagler Beach Commission Chairman Scott Spradley hosts his bi-weekly informal town hall with coffee and doughnuts at 9 a.m. at his law office at 301 South Central Avenue, Flagler Beach. All subjects, all interested residents or non-residents welcome. The gatherings usually feature a special guest.
Debbie Boone: A Song for You, at the Fitz, 7 p.m., Fitzgerald Performing Arts Center/Flagler Auditorium, 5500 State Road 100, Palm Coast. Debby Boone is a household name that lights up the Pop, Country, Adult Contemporary and Contemporary Christian charts with her glowing voice and shining performances that are guaranteed to dazzle audiences from all walks of life thanks to her record-breaking debut single “You Light Up My Life,” charting #1 on Billboard for ten consecutive weeks and selling in excess of four million copies, charting #7 in Billboard’s 50th Anniversary All Time Hot 100. In her new show, A Song For You, Debby takes audiences on a musical journey spanning across several diverse genres, paired excellently with her dazzling charm and personal style she seamlessly integrates with stories of show business and working within a famous family. The experience is one you won’t want to miss, as it offers an extremely personable and warm opportunity to hear a variety of expertly performed live music that guarantees something for everyone – even a song for you!
‘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.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 10 a.m. to 1 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.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
Storytime: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Smilers” opens on a Larry David note: “There are times when you almost tell the harmless old lady next door what you really think of her face—that it ought to be on a night-nurse in a house for the blind; when you’d like to ask the man you’ve been waiting ten minutes for if he isn’t all overheated from racing the postman down the block ; when you nearly say to the waiter that if they deducted a cent from the bill for every degree the soup was below tepid the hotel would owe you half a dollar ; when—and this is the infallible earmark of true exasperation—a smile affects you as an oil-baron’s undershirt affects a cow’s husband. WE all have that exasperated moment! But the moment passes.” Not to wealthy, indolent Sylvester Stockton, to whom exasperation and pessimism are the only balm of an empty life. But “he is not the hero of this story. He is the plot. He is the factor that makes it one story instead of three stories,” Fitzgerald tells us in a meta moment. Through him we meet three characters, three lives, whose private difficulties Sylvester can’t see. He’s too busy accusing them of being too happy, of smiling too much. He’d once been in love with Betty Tearle, but she couldn’t take his self-indulgent surliness. He happens by her and accuses: “You smile,” he tells her, “because you’re comfortably married and have two children. You imagine you’re happy, so you suppose everyone else is.” Betty in the next segment hugs her two children goodbye and leaves them, leaving a letter for her husband. He had no idea. He meets Waldron Crosby, a broker, accuses him of smiling as “at something up your sleeve.” Crosby has just been cleaned out, his stock value gone (Fitzgerald wrote the story in 1920, not 1929), and he’s about to have a child: his wife is in labor. He phones a friend and takes a clerking job for $40 a week. Sylvester has no idea. He snarls about smiles in the music he hears, in the songs the orchestra plays, “The Smiles that You gave To Me.” His waiter serves him dinner in his hotel room. “Just oblige me by not smiling when you say ‘thanks’?” he tells him, throwing him coins. The waiter smiles. “Waiters are happy because they’ve never had anything better,” he thought. “They haven’t enough imagination to want anything.” We later find Jerry slinking in the rear darkness of a cabaret, watching the woman–plumped up, shameless now–he loved flirt with a fat old man before she goes on stage. Betty, Crosby and Jerry had smiled through their misery. Sylvester, possibly the most miserable of all, privileged, wealthy, blinded by his narcissism, had mocked them. Here he is in the story’s final lines, “tossed restlessly upon his bed” in a comfortable hotel. “They don’t understand,” he thought. “They don’t see, as I do, the underlying misery of the whole damn thing. They’re hollow optimists. They smile because they think they’re always going to be happy.” He has no idea.
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.
At six o’clock Betty Tearle signed the letter, put it into an envelope and wrote her husband’s name upon it. She went into his room and after a moment’s hesitation set a black cushion on the bed and laid the white letter on it so that it could not fail to attract his attention when he came in. Then with a quick glance around the room she walked into the hall and upstairs to the nursery.
“Clare,” she called softly.
“Oh, Mummy!” Clare left her doll’s house and scurried to her mother.
“Where’s Billy, Clare?”
Billy appeared eagerly from under the bed.
“Got anything for me?” he inquired politely.
His mother’s laugh ended in a little catch and she caught both her children to her and kissed them passionately. She found that she was crying quietly and their flushed little faces seemed cool against the sudden fever racing though her blood.
“Take care of Clare—always—Billy darling——”
Billy was puzzled and rather awed.
“You’re crying,” he accused gravely.
“I know—I know I am——”
Clare gave a few tentative sniffles, hesitated, and then clung to her mother in a storm of weeping.
“I d-don’t feel good, Mummy—I don’t feel good.”
Betty soothed her quietly.
“We won’t cry any more, Clare dear—either of us.”
But as she rose to leave the room her glance at Billy bore a mute appeal, too vain, she knew, to be registered on his childish consciousness.
Half an hour later as she carried her travelling bag to a taxicab at the door she raised her hand to her face in mute admission that a veil served no longer to hide her from the world.
“But I’ve chosen,” she thought dully.
As the car turned the corner she wept again, resisting a temptation to give up and go back.
“Oh, my God!?” she whispered. “What am I doing? What have I done? What have I done?”
–From “The Smilers,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920).
Laurel says
Admittedly, I got away from books for awhile, but I’m back into them again. One major difference between books, and cell phones and computers is books are categorized by facts and fictions (and so on). Not so online. Way too much fiction is passed on as facts.
Ray W. says
Ed P. Was correct when, several days ago, he commented that business decision makers often think differently than the lawyers who advise them. What Ed P. didn’t emphasize is how often business decision makers fail to heed the advice posed by their lawyers, many times to the detriment of the businesses they lead. Externalities often have that effect.
The German language has a word for this very human condition: weltanschauung. It means that through one’s personal life experiences every one of us has a unique worldview that is constantly subject to change. Zeitenweide (literally time turn) is the German word (I left out the n in an earlier comment) for that ever present possibility of worldview change; it means epochal turning point.
No FlaglerLive reader can dispute that the current administration has embarked on a policy of surging immigration officials to city after city to further enable mass deportation efforts. But what have been the externalities to the surges?
In every city, official government acts of hate and vengefulness erupt. American citizens have been unlawfully detained. Immigrants have been denied basic Constitutional guarantees.
Under our Constitution, every person enjoys rights inhering in the concept of procedural due process, which has long been defined as “notice and a right to be heard.”
It is obligatory under this most basic of Constitutional concepts that whenever a person files an “extraordinary writ”, i.e., certiorari, mandamus, prohibition, habeas corpus or others, that a judge, any judge, must hear the issues raised and rule on them.
Everywhere ICE goes, the filing of extraordinary writs follow. Judges repeatedly hold that officials are violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution. Many find that federal witnesses testify less than honestly. The administration responds with claims that “activist” and “rogue” judges are thwarting its policies.
What is just now finally being reported is the strain on the DOJ lawyers who are tasked with defending the administration’s policies in court. Reportedly, of the original 70 authorized prosecutor positions in Minnesota’s single district, as few as nine may remain on the job. Military lawyers have been surged to Minnesota. Federal attorneys from other districts have been transferred.
One such federal prosecutor volunteered to assist in Minnesota. Upon arrival, she inherited 88 existing cases. More were added. She knew that more were coming. During a hearing, she asked her magistrate to hold her in contempt so she could get 24 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
In all my years in courtrooms I have never heard such an expression of despair. This is the human cost of defending an administration’s illegal policies.
Of the many filings of writs of habeas corpus that follow ICE officials wherever they surge, judging from the number of rulings against the administration, most of the writs would never have been filed if only the government could follow the law.
These many federal judges are neither “activist” nor “rogue.” It is the administration that is violating the law.
American people are seeing government-sponsored snuff films in American cities. Judging from comments posted by certain FlaglerLive readers, some approve of the snuff films. Others blame the wrong people. Most Americans do not. Moderate Republicans and Independents are turning away from the current administration. Whether these events come to be seen as an epochal turning point remains to be understood. But there can be little doubt that the current administration knows that they have stepped in it; they viscerally smell what they have done and they are intuitively blaming everyone and everything other than themselves.
Alex Pretti was not an assassin. No amount of lying and lie laundering will change that. People saw what they saw.
Ray W. says
Just two days ago was the most recent day that President Trump claimed that a gallon of regular gasoline at the pump cost less than $2 in a state.
According to AAA, as of today, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.898. A year ago, that same gallon sold for $3.141.
According to the gas buddy site, Oklahoma has the lowest average price at $2.777 per gallon of regular gas.
Ray W. says
$2.277 per gallon, not $2.777. My error.
Ray W. says
According to recent census figures, during 2025, domestic population growth, incoming from and outgoing to other states, was a positive 22,517 persons, down from a positive 183,646 in 2023 and a positive 310,892 in 2022.
A Florida TaxWatch economist told a reporter that Florida’s domestic population growth is expected to “moderate” through 2034.
Make of this what you will.