To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Mostly sunny. A slight chance of showers in the morning, then a chance of showers in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 80s. Northeast winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent. Tuesday Night: Mostly clear. A chance of showers in the evening. Lows around 70. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40 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:
General Election Early Voting is available today in Bunnell, Palm Coast and Flagler Beach from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at five locations. Any registered and qualified voter who is eligible to vote in a county-wide election may vote in person at any of the early voting site, regardless of assigned precinct. According to Florida law, every voter must present a Florida driver’s license, a Florida identification card or another form of acceptable picture and signature identification in order to vote. If you do not present the required identification or if your eligibility cannot be determined, you will only be permitted to vote a provisional ballot. Don’t forget your ID. A couple of secure drop boxes that Ron DeSantis and the GOP legislature haven’t yet banned (also known as Secure Ballot Intake Stations) are available at the entrance of the Elections Office and at any early voting site during voting hours. The locations are as follows:
- Flagler County Elections Supervisor’s Office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell.
- Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast.
- Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE.
- Palm Coast’s Southern Recreation Center, 1290 Belle Terre Parkway.
- Flagler Beach United Methodist Church, 1520 South Daytona Avenue, Flagler Beach.
See a sample ballot here. See the Live Interviews with all local candidates below.
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.
| In Coming Days: Oct. 30-31: The Halloween Hall of Terror is back at Palm Coast Fire Station 21, 9 Corporate Drive in Palm Coast. Monday, Oct. 30 and Tuesday, Oct.31 from 7 to 10 p.m. This year’s event promises to be better than ever with a ‘Greatest Slashers’ theme, incorporating some of the horror genres biggest icons of the past 50 years. And new for 2024, visitors can indulge in a variety of delicious offerings from food trucks as they await their turn to tour the spine-chilling haunted house. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the firehouse on corporate drive, with overflow parking available in the Kohl’s parking lot. This year, the City of Palm Coast is offering a limited number of ‘RIP’ fast pass tickets again, giving winners front-of-the-line access. To enter, follow the City of Palm Coast’s Facebook page during the week of October 21-25 and answer daily horror film trivia questions. Winners will be announced each day, so don’t miss your chance to skip the line and dive straight into the horror. Last year’s Hall of Terror set a new attendance record with nearly 5,000 visitors over the two-day span, and this year is expected to draw an even larger crowd. As always, the event is free and open to all ages, though adult supervision is recommended for attendees under 13. Please note that the event features strobe lights, fog, and other special effects. Those with epilepsy or sensory sensitivities are invited to join us for a special sensory-friendly walkthrough of the Hall of Terror from 6-7pm on both nights of the event. |
Voltairomania: Of the 75,000 or so pages Voltaire wrote in his 83 years only about 150 are read today: Candide, the novella that follows the title characters from his expulsion from Eden to a final conclusion by way a few dozen reckonings with humanity at its worst. Every chapter is a Lisbon earthquake aftershock. He wrote the book in 1758, when he was 64 and only then settling in for his most productive and influential years in Geneva and Ferney (later to be renamed Ferney-Voltaire) on the French Swiss border, where he built a village of industry, what would today be known as an enterprise zone, or what Palm Coast wishes its Town Center had been. The final and most famous line of Candide, as he dismisses the by-then one-eyed philosopher Pangloss’s latest confabulations, is: “yes, but we must cultivate our garden.” Speculation, metaphysical or otherwise, is pointless. Even ideals are pointless, if we don’t tend to our backyard. Now: could the germ of that idea have been planted by one of Voltaire’s correspondents and admirers–Henry St. John, Viscount Bolinbroke, the Tory politician in England–who 34 years earlier had written Voltaire a long letter of advice on managing his talents and imagination? Bolinbroke had contrasted the needs of the mind with the needs of good land: “The more it rests, the more abundant the harvests become,” he said of land. Not so the mind, which “perishes through rest.” And: “a mind which is left too long fallow, is no longer cultivated with advantage.” Voltaire biographer and scholar Theodore Besterman (to whom is owed the definitive edition of Voltaire’s 50 volumes of letters) notes that “this important letter influenced voltaire’s immediate intellectual development,” but he also asked: “may we not also see in this agricultural homily one of the sources of Candide’s final conclusion?” A seed planted in a letter from June 27, 1724.
—P.T.
Now this:
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.
October 2024
Wednesday, Oct 16
Tourist Development Council Meeting
Government Services Building
Tuesday, Oct 29
General Election Early Voting in Flagler County
Flagler County Supervisor of Elections Office
Tuesday, Oct 29
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Cinematique of Daytona Beach
Wednesday, Oct 30
General Election Early Voting in Flagler County
Flagler County Supervisor of Elections Office
Wednesday, Oct 30
Flagler County Canvassing Board Meeting
Flagler County Supervisor of Elections Office
Wednesday, Oct 30
Future of Flagler Forum 2024
Wednesday, Oct 30
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
Wednesday, Oct 30
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Wednesday, Oct 30
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Public Library
Wednesday, Oct 30
Hall of Terror at Fire Station 21
Palm Coast Fire Station 21
No event found!
For the full calendar, go here.
We may quote from the Zendavesta a wise and benevolent maxim, which compensates for many an absurdity. “He who sows the ground with care and diligence acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he could gain by the repetition of ten thousand prayers.”
–From Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776).
The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.
