The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Saturday, August 24, 2024

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Weather: Partly sunny with a chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then mostly cloudy with showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. Northeast 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:

The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Wickline Park, 315 South 7th Street, 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.

Coffee With Commissioner Scott Spradley: Flagler Beach Commission Chairman Scott Spradley hosts his 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 special guest today is City Manager Dale Martin.

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.

Diary: Some of my ultimate-favorite people in that picture, taken at my Parnassus barely a year ago: my Aphrodite-Anchoress on the left, the only mayor to have a New York City tunnel named after her (it’s about time), the only man I can talk lit with before dawn (and the man who legally made Palm Coast possible. But miracle of life: he endures my atrocious writing), and the reason for this intrusive diary entry: our beloved Colleen Conklin, who’s had a bit of a challenge in the last few days, the kind all of us in that picture, and the one taking it, have had or continue to have–with Milissa’s exception, unless she’s keeping a secret from us–because age at our age is a massacre, as Roth put it, and there’s no let up. It’s a fucking massacre, and there’s no excuse: whoever concocted us had a screw loose. To be so cruel, so sloppy, so cavalier. So damn incompetent, really: you foresee all, but you can’t foresee this? This annual holocaust? “When, as occasionally happens,” writes Bill Bryson, “a cell fails to expire in the prescribed manner, but rather begins to divide and proliferate wildly, we call the result cancer.” Or the greatest literal crime against humanity. We’re all Gazans in its wake. Colleen announced after her surgery that all went well. We cheer, we exult, we raise fists in the air the way Tommie Smith and John Carlos did at the Mexico Olympics did even though it has nothing to do with it, and even the least-believing among us pray, because she prayed for us in our difficult times: Colleen’s heart is the size of Ireland. Incidentally, it’s no secret why she got it: that school board has been lethal for years. (My wife can attest. Those bastards.) She’s leaving just in time, though it was good to see that her seat remains in Conklinish hands. Until the next cell fucks up.

—P.T.

Now this: From the Luka collection (and he had no idea what it would be paired with.)

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Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence. Don’t you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be. Bacteria, never forget, got along for billions of years without us. We couldn’t survive a day without them. They process our wastes and make them usable again; without their diligent munching nothing would rot. They purify our water and keep our soils productive. Bacteria synthesize vitamins in our gut, convert the things we eat into useful sugars and polysaccharides, and go to war on alien microbes that slip down our gullet.

–From Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003).

 

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