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Weather: Sunny. Highs in the lower 70s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Thursday Night: Partly cloudy in the evening, then becoming mostly cloudy. Lows around 50.
- 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:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
John Garrison Sentencing: John Garrison, whose reckless driving caused a head-on collision on State Road 11 in April 2022, killing 59-year-old Debra Ashrafi, is sentenced by Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 1:30 p.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse. Garrison pleaded, and will be sentenced to three years in prison, 10 years on probation, and a lifetime driving ban.
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
Ashley Estevez at The Stage in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Free live music as the City of Palm Coast presents The Holiday Concert at The Stage at Town Center, at 1500 Central Ave, Palm Coast, December 5, from 6 to 8 p.m., featuring singer-songwriter Ashley Estevez performing beloved holiday classics in a cozy, outdoor setting. Ashley Estevez, originally from North Georgia, released her debut album, No Lies, in 2020. Working alongside blues rock musician Dyer Davis and her husband, musician and songwriter Len Estevez, Ashley developed a collection of songs that reflect her life experiences. Ashley’s music combines heartfelt lyrics with the spirit of country music.
‘The Country Girl’ at City Repertory Theatre: CRT features “The Country Girl” by Clifford Odet as a staged reading at 7:30 p.m. Thursday Dec. 5, Friday Dec. 6 and Saturday Dec. 7, and at 3 p.m. Sunday Dec. 8. Performances will be in CRT’s black box theater at City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B207, Palm Coast. Tickets are $25 adults and $15 students, available online at crtpalmcoast.com or by calling 386-585-9415. Tickets also will be available at the venue just before curtain time. Odets’s play tells the story of Frank Elgin, a once-lauded actor who’s become mired in booze even as he’s hoping to return to his past glory, while his ever-faithful wife, Georgie, struggles to keep him from tumbling into an alcoholic abyss. CRT is staging some of its leading stars and veterans, including Director John Sbordone.
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library, 11 to 11:30 a.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach. It’s where the wild things are: Hop on for stories and songs with Miss Doris.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Nightly from 6 to 9 p.m. at Palm Coast’s Central Park, with 55 lighted displays you can enjoy with a leisurely stroll around the pond in the park. Admission to Fantasy Lights is free, but donations to support Rotary’s service work are gladly accepted. Holiday music will pipe through the speaker system throughout the park, Santa’s Village, which has several elf houses for the kids to explore, will be open, with Santa’s Merry Train Ride nightly (weather permitting), and Santa will be there every Sunday night until Christmas, plus snow on weekends! On certain nights, live musical performances will be held on the stage.
A Christmas Carol at Athens Theatre, 124 North Florida Avenue, DeLand, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Adult $30, Senior $28, Student/Child $12; Groups of 8 or more, $25 per ticket. A $5 per ticket processing charge is added to all purchases. As the historic Athens Theatre does not have an elevator, the balcony is not accessible to anyone with a wheelchair or walker. Get ready to unwrap the true spirit of the holidays in an unforgettable experience with A Christmas Carol, a musical adorned with original enchanting melodies by the maestro Milton Granger and performed by a live band. This festive explosion of joy and redemption promises to transport you into the heart of Dickens’ timeless tale. With a live band providing the soul-stirring soundtrack, this production transforms into a captivating celebration of the season, weaving together the magic of music and the power of Dickens’ iconic story. Join the festivities as you embark on Scrooge’s transformative journey.
Readings: One of the great myths of post-1967 Israel, like those many great myths of American history (“the oldest democracy on earth,” etc.) is that while apartheid is a fact of life (and death) in the territories Israel occupies, the 2 million Arabs who live as Israeli citizens in Israel proper, within its non-illegal borders, are equal citizens, and therefore beyond the victimization of apartheid. It’s not true of course. It’s not apartheid as imported from South Africa (a nation with whom, at the height of its apartheid regime, Israel traded with abandon, for arms especially), but it’s apartheid as defined by the basic meaning of the world: Arabs are second or third-class citizens denied most fundamental rights assumed by Jewish Israelis. Jesse Barron in the New York Times Magazine in early November illustrated that reality with a rare piece looking past Israeli propaganda about its “citizens,” a word that should, like Nabokov’s “reality,” always be in quotes when referring to Israeli “citizenship.” “How Four Posts on Instagram Destroyed Her Life” is about an Arab-Israeli college student, an atheist who’s never embraced the Hamas ideology or its misogyny, who believes in Palestinian rights–but not at the expense of Israeli rights. She is the kind of model citizen Israel should be proud of, whether Israeli, Arab, Asian or anything else. Immediately after she woke up in late morning on Oct. 7, 2023, before the extent of the Hamas atrocities were apparent, but with Israeli retaliations already under way, she reposted four “stories” on her Instagram account that repeated the same ideas she’d posted about and believed in the past, along the lines of Palestinian complaints such as “Where were your tears when we were murdered?” and something from an “Italian American socialist” who posted this quote: “Do you support decolonization as an abstract academic theory? Or as a tangible event?” She was arrested, imprisoned, declared a Hamas-sympathizer, and expelled from her university. All for thoughts, because that’s what Israel is prosecuting now: what it deems thought crimes, though in her case it was no crime, and what she posted, but for the day when they were posted, would have validity under any interpretation of rights. To her dismay, she was released from prison in a prisoner exchange with Hamas, which she tried to resist: she did not want to be part of that kind of deal, and she wanted her day in court to disprove the accusations against her. She never got it. Her life is now marked as a Hamas sympathizer. Her life is over.
—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.
December 2024
Wednesday – Monday, Dec 04 – 30
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Central Park in Town Center
Thursday, Dec 05
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Flagler County courthouse
Thursday, Dec 05
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
315 South 7th Street, Flagler Beach
Thursday, Dec 05
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Central Park in Town Center
Thursday, Dec 05
John Garrison Sentencing
Flagler County courthouse
Thursday, Dec 05
Ashley Estevez at The Stage in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Thursday – Tuesday, Dec 05 – 31
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Central Park in Town Center
Thursday, Dec 05
‘The Country Girl’ at City Repertory Theatre
City Repertory Theatre at City Marketplace
Thursday, Dec 05
A Christmas Carol at Athens Theatre
Friday, Dec 06
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Friday, Dec 06
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
Friday, Dec 06
Blue 24 Forum
Palm Coast Community Center
Friday, Dec 06
First Friday in Flagler Beach
Friday, Dec 06
Free Family Art Night at Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens
Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens
Friday, Dec 06 – Wednesday, Jan 01
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Central Park in Town Center
No event found!
For the full calendar, go here.
There are jobs at a strip of factories to the north, making cabinets or truck bodies, but the tax district is drawn so that revenues flow not to the Arab areas, but to Nof HaGalil. This is one reason that the four-lane road that divides the two cities is actually a barrier between one political reality and another. On the Nazareth side, the streets are busy with activity, and seamstresses and electronics-repair shops dominate the first floors of the buildings, but the trash isn’t collected regularly, and there are hardly any public parks or playgrounds. On the Nof HaGalil side, a sterile quiet pervades, but the smoothly paved streets run past children playing in parks, and office buildings and shopping malls loom over the surrounding hills. Murad was in high school when she started taking the bus ride from Nazareth to Haifa — up to 70 minutes each way, twice a week — to attend a gifted-and-talented program at the Technion. A train would have been faster, but the national train service only stops in the Jewish towns and cities, not Arab ones. An American teenager might have described this experience in a college essay, but the Technion doesn’t require essays for admission; the school didn’t care about a student’s personal background at all. The only things that mattered were your scores on a national exam and your grades. Murad had the numbers, so they offered her a place. She thought her degree would put her in the best position to later get a job in tech, a booming field in Israel. “I was proud of being there,” Murad told me. “It’s like Israel’s M.I.T.”
–From Jesse Barron’s “How Four Posts on Instagram Destroyed Her Life,” New York Times Magazine, Nov. 4, 2024.
The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.
