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Weather: Mostly sunny, with a high near 77. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 60.
- 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 Flagler County Commission meets at 9 a.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 E. Moody Boulevard, Building 2, Bunnell. Access meeting agendas and materials here. The five county commissioners and their email addresses are listed here. Meetings stream live on the Flagler County YouTube page.
The Flagler County Commission meets at 10:30 a.m. in a workshop at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell.
Palm Coast City Council ‘Retreat’ Workshop, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Southern Recreation Center, 1290 Belle Terre Parkway, Palm Coast. The council meets to discuss its goals and dynamics with its new manager, Michael McGlothlin, in an informal setting. The meeting is open to the public.
The Beverly Beach Town Commission meets at 6 p.m. at the meeting hall building behind the Town Hall, 2735 North Oceanshore Boulevard (State Road A1A) in Beverly Beach. See meeting announcements here.
Notably: Just as I was finishing a 1945 Simenon–the excellent Across the Street, or La Fenêtre des Rouet, the crushing portrait of a 40-year-old virgin who lives vicariously through her neighbors across the street–the mail delivered this month’s Library of America volume: Jim Thompson’s Five Noir Novels from the 1950s & 60s. I did not know of Thompson. He was the son of a sheriff who got run out of town for embezzlement. LOA: “Born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1906, Thompson worked as a hotel bellboy, oilfield laborer, and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, an experience that inspired his first published writing, Oilfield Vignettes (1929). In the early 1930s, Thompson served as head of the Oklahoma Federal Writers’ Project and briefly attended the University of Nebraska before leaving school in 1931.” He drank too much. He was a terrific writer of violent, merciless novels, a sort of Cormac McCarthy without the pretentious style. I immediately started A Hell of a Woman, more Dostoevsky than McCarthy, since the novel rushes toward the murder of an old woman (“I don’t know how anyone could have got that ugly in less than seventy years”) who supposedly has a $100,000 stash that Dolly (that’s him, the hero: Dolly, “a hard luck bastard”) and his Sophia, in this case called Mona, whom the old woman pimped for several years, can take and live happily for a day or two. I won’t spoil it because I can’t: I’m only two-thirds through, but taken enough to think Pascal and Camus may have to wait for After Dark, My Sweet (1955), The Getaway (1959) and a couple of other titles included in this collection. He played Judge Baxter Wilson Grayle in a cameo in the 1975 movie version of Chandler’s Farewell my Lovely, two years before he died. (See below.) Thompson called his cat Deadline. That alone deserves him a Nobel.
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.
May 2026
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
“Once on This Island,” At Limelight Theatre
Al-Anon Family Groups
Nar-Anon Family Group
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
For the full calendar, go here.
I got to thinking about that while I was whipping the dead-beats. Or trying to whip ’em, I should say. I thought, well, Dolly, you ain’t changed a bit, have you? You haven’t learned a goddamned thing, you stupid bastard. You couldn’t learn a prayer at a revival meeting. You see something you want, and that’s all you got eyes for. You ain’t watching the road at all, and the first thing you know you’re up to your ass in mud… Well, though, that wasn’t so. It maybe looked that way, but it wasn’t the way it really was. There’s just some guys that get the breaks, and some that don’t. And me, I guess you know the kind I am.
–From Jim Thompson’s A Hell of a Woman (1954).
Laurel says
If people were honest, many would admit they enjoy double standards.
Sherry says
@ Laurel. . . hummmm, it’s all “relative” to those who “are” actually honest and reasonable. The trouble is, so many people are now neither.
BobAnonanonanon says
“…Pascal and Camus may have to wait…”
I think one should go straight to Camus ‘ speech,
“The Human Crisis.”
And then perhaps Antonio Damasio.
Our stories are surface features
of the inexorable drive for homeostasis
that toils till death within our every cell
and which art gives light to
only dimly by reflection.
Pogo says
Mr. Tristam
Here’s hoping you share more like this; damn good company to be in.
Thanks.
Pogo says
The more you know
…the more you know.
Eat up
https://www.jcbruce.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Ray W. says
Per an article published by The Mirror US, yesterday morning, “multiple small craft” attacked a “bulk carrier”.
Earlier today, an explosion on board a South Korean ship was reported. Then, U.A.E. forces reportedly shot down three out of four “loitering” aerial munitions (drones?), with the fourth falling harmlessly into the sea. Later came a report that a fire broke out inside the U.A.E.’s “Petroleum Industries Zone”, near Fujairah. Efforts to extinguish the fire continue.
Next came a report that a fire broke out in the engine room of another cargo vessel. Then came a report of yet another cargo vessel catching fire.
Other media sources report that several small Iranian craft have been struck.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I remain unsure of who or what to believe.
Have insurers begun to offer coverage to ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz? Have ship owners ordered captains to proceed into or out of the Persian Gulf.
Will the U.A.E. respond to Iranian aggression?
Is there some form of naval convoy protection being offered?
The only constant appears to be that after 66 days of war thousands of commercial ships of many differing types remain idled at anchor on either side of the Strait of Hormuz awaiting resolution of conflict.
Blockading Iranian ports does not seem to answer the shipowners’ concerns. Two things can be true at the same time. American forces appear to be able to prevent ships from entering or exiting Iranian ports at the same time that Iranian forces capper to be able to prevent ships from entering or exiting Persian Gulf waters.