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Weather: Mostly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning, then showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 90s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Wednesday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely in the evening, then a chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms after midnight. Lows in the lower 70s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent.
- 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:
Flagler Beach is hosting a Public Engagement Forum on Pier Replacement at 6 p.m. at Santa Maria del Mar Church, 915 North Central Avenue, Flagler Beach. With construction set to begin, the meeting will provide residents, business owners, and other stakeholders with important information about the project timeline, construction impacts, and what to expect during each phase of work. “Residents and business will receive valuable information regarding the upcoming Pier Replacement Project,” Chris Novak, City of Flagler Beach Project Manager, says. “I encourage everyone to attend.” The meeting is open to the public.
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee meets at 9 a.m. at the Airline Room at the Daytona Beach International Airport. The TPO’s planning oversight includes all of Volusia County and the developed areas of eastern Flagler County including Beverly Beach and Flagler Beach as well as portions of the cities of Palm Coast and Bunnell, with board member representation from each of those jurisdictions. The committee is responsible for reviewing plans, policies, and procedures and rank priority projects as they relate to bicycle and pedestrian issues within the TPO planning area. See the full agendas here. To join the meeting electronically, go here.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
Notably: Fascinating though he was, there is at the heart of the legend of Socrates an arrogance difficult to get over. “There is something smug and unctuous about him, which reminds one of a bad type of cleric,” Bertrand Russell wrote. I vaguely remember Russell somewhere calling him a fanatic. If not, “The Last Days of Socrates” makes the case. Admirable if debatable reflections on death aside, he had gathered his disciples to show off one more time, and to be cruel to them, amplifying their grief when he could have simply either accepted a lesser punishment with a mild concession or been willing to escape, as authorities welcomed him to. But he wanted his theatrical exit. “Charlatanisme,” Voltaire called his act. (“You do not go from house to house, like Socrates,” Voltaire also wrote in a 1737 early letter, “telling the master that he is a fool, the tutor that he is an ass, the little boy that he is ignorant: you are content to think all this about most of the animals that we call men, and you still think, despite that, of making them happy.”) The great Dutch historian Hendrick van Loon (1882-1944) in his book on The Arts tells the very “Last Days of Socrates”–like story of Lao-Kung (not to be confused with Kung Lao, the Mortal Kombat figure), found “in an old Chinese manuscript,” says van Loon. Lao-Kung was an ancient artist. He was in his hundredth year, dying, and had gathered all his disciples around him to say goodbye. They are, like Socrates’ disciples, overcome with grief. Unlike Socrates, Lao-Kung does not tell them to rejoice because he’ll soon be with the gods (which is like telling your child not to cry because you’re going to Disney and she’s not). He just tell them, “You’ve been bidden to a feast! you have been invited to share the one sublime experience which the average man is allowed to enjoy by himself! And you shed tears, whereas you should really rejoice.” Still, not much more convincing to just be told the cosmological equivalent of shit happens. But the point of the story really is sublime. His disciples ask him how he could bear the fact that he’s lived in such poverty for so many years, especially compared to others who’ve reaped material rewards they could only dream of. In an unwittingly Whitmanesque gesture (his disciples also bemoan the fact that he has no spouse, no children to mourn him, so he may have been Whitmanesque down to his loins), he points to one of his paintings, a blade of grass, “hastily jotted down with the strokes of his mighty brush,” van Loon’s account reads. “But that blade of grass lived and breathed. It was not merely a blade of grass, for within itself it contained the spirit of every blade of grass that had ever grown since the beginning of time. ‘There,’ the old man said, ‘is my answer. I have made myself the equal of the Gods, for I too have touched the hem of Eternity.’ Thereupon he blessed his pupils and they laid him down upon his couch and he died.” Andre Gide when he was not yet 20 wrote something very similar: “The only science is algebra. After the arts, it is the most splendid, the most colossal creation of the mind. It seems that we touch, as with a new sense, the immutable absolute and the mystery of eternal and divine reality. With the arts, it seems that we participate in it.” I’m sure the thought is as many-faced as the face of humanity, but these stories capture in words a beauty about beauty that’s difficult to verbalize as elegantly. And wouldn’t Socrates have been more consoling, less hubristic, had he passed up the hemlock for art? No, he wouldn’t have. Not this product of Plato’s repressive Republic, this Greek puritan who had more rather than less in common with the fanatics of the Arbella.
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—P.T.
Now this: Roger Federer’s Commencement Speech at Dartmouth, 2024:
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.
June 2025
Wednesday, Jun 11
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee Meeting
Airline Room, Daytona Beach International Airport
Wednesday, Jun 11
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
Wednesday, Jun 11
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Wednesday, Jun 11
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Public Library
Wednesday, Jun 11
Public Engagement Forum on Pier Replacement in Flagler Beach
Santa Maria Del Mar Church Hall
Thursday, Jun 12
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Flagler County courthouse
Thursday, Jun 12
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Central Park in Town Center
Thursday, Jun 12
Palm Coast Democratic Club Meeting
Flagler County Democratic Party HQ
Thursday, Jun 12
Flagler Beach City Commission Meeting
Thursday, Jun 12
Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series
Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium
No event found!
For the full calendar, go here.
Why is it that our modern world insists upon drawing such a very sharp line of demarcation between the arts and the crafts? In the days when the arts were really an integral part of people’s daily lives, that line of demarcation did not exist. Nobody was aware of a difference between the artist and the craftsman. As a matter of fact, the artist (if he were recognized as such) was merely a craftsman of exceptional ability, a stonecutter who could make figures in marble just a little better than any of the other members of the stonecutters’ guild. But today the artist lives on one side of the street and the craftsman lives on the other side and the two hardly speak to each other. I went through that stage of development myself, for when I was young, the absurd slogan of “art for art’s sake” was still very popular among those who were supposed to know about such things. But that was thirty years ago and since then I am happy to say we have learned better. Today we know that the man who conceived the old Brooklyn Bridge was quite as great an artist in his own way as the unknown stonemason who drew up the plans for the cathedral at Chartres, and most of us can now get just as much real enjoyment out of the perfection of Fred Astaire’s dancing as out of the quintet in the last act of the Meistersinger.
–From Hendrick van Loon’s The Arts (1939).
The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.
