To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Partly sunny. A chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. South winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Wednesday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 60s. East winds around 5 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable. 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 Palm Coast Code Enforcement Board meets at 10 a.m. every first Wednesday of the month at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For details about the city’s code enforcement regulations, go here.
The Flagler Beach Parks Ad Hoc Committee meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 105 S 2nd St, Flagler Beach. The Committee’s six members, appointed by the City Commission, provide recommendations related to the maintenance of existing parks and equipment and recommendations for new or replacement equipment and other duties as assigned by the City Commission.
Connecting to Palm Coast Expo, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, located at 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. The Palm Coast Citizens Academy Alumni Ambassadors are excited to host two more Connecting to Palm Coast Expo, a unique event designed to welcome and support new and recently settled residents. Attendees will find a variety of booths hosted by city departments, local civic organizations and clubs, and social services, each offering valuable resources and guidance to help new residents get acquainted with everything Palm Coast has to offer. Representatives from a range of city departments will be available to answer questions, while civic groups and clubs will provide information on how to get involved in the community.
Event Highlights:
• Informational booths from Palm Coast city departments
• Insights from local civic organizations and clubs
• Access to social services and other important community resources
• A welcoming atmosphere to meet fellow residents and city representatives
The Connecting to Palm Coast Expo is free to attend, and all are welcome. Whether you are brand-new to the area or looking to learn more about your community, this is an event you won’t want to miss!
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.
The Flagler County Republican Club holds its monthly meeting starting with a social hour at 5 and the business meeting at 6 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, 55 Town Center Blvd., Palm Coast. The club is the social arm of the Republican Party of Flagler County, which represents over 40,000 registered Republicans. Meetings are open to Republicans only.
Juxtapositions: Retif de la Bretonne is one of France’s great writers of the 18th century, a more enlightened, funnier, more realistic Rousseau who could bridge the chasm between Rousseau and Voltaire and see his way from the streets of Paris during the Revolution to the 19th century without losing too much hope for humanity. He wrote much too much, was known, simplistically, as a pornographer because a good deal of his writings included detailed descriptions of his sociological explorations of women (and because he wrote Mon calendrier, or My Calendar, a day-by-day account of his conquests), but was in fact one of the most astute analysts of French–and all–societies, human relationships, history and so on. In Monsieur Nicolas, his Remembrance of Things Past (it’s just as long but a lot more fun), a classic of French literature too little known this side of the Atlantic, he describes how, when he was about 10 and 11, in boarding school in paris, the three hours students gotto read on their own every evening were the highlight of his day. Note that he’s writing in 1793, when he’s much older, and not a happy man in Revolutionary, censoring Paris: ” The three hours or so of free and choiceful reading were for me a time I greatly desired! I thought about it in the morning, when I got up; as this happy moment approached, I palpitated with pleasure; when the hour arrived, I enjoyed myself, I found myself happy, as when reading The Good Shepherd, or seeing the tapestries of Saint-Mayeul; the vivacity of my imagination placed me at the site of my reading. It was these three hours of ecstasy that accustomed me to the house and made me cherish the stay, which I still remember with tenderness (it is at these same three hours that, since then, I have experienced the same palpitation of pleasure, seeing the canvas raised, at one of our three shows). What enjoyment remains for me today? What is the happy hour of the day? Alas! all are equal, and my heart now palpitates only with terror!….” There are strange coincidences in life, as we all know. They’re constant, because life itself is coincidental. It is the non-coincidental that should surprise us. The universe is never that neat. So within a day of reading this, I came across this passage in the Max Boot biography of Ronald Reagan, describing how Reaga’s father discovered him reading when he was just a few years old: “This was the beginning of a voracious, lifelong reading habit. ‘I can barely remember a time in my life when I didn’t know how to read,’ Ronald Reagan wrote years later, adding ‘I can’t think of greater torture than being isolated in a guest room or a hotel room without something to read.’ Like other American boys in this pre-broadcast and pre-internet age, he was enthralled by dime novels featuring fictional heroes such as the Yale athletic star Frank Merriwell; the Rover Boys; Tarzan, Lord of the Apes; and John Carter, Warlord of Mars. Young Dutch also spent a lot of time alone in the attic of one of the Reagans’ rented houses in Galesburg, studying a collection of ‘birds’ eggs and butterflies’ left by a previous occupant. He recalled being ‘fascinated’ by these objects, which became ‘gateways to the mysterious’ and ‘symbols of the out-of-doors.’” Of course Reagan never got past dime novels and Tarzan, and when he got older, it got much worse: he became a Reader’s Digest devotee, sealing his fate as a casual fascist. But I’d never imagined him to be a reader to start with. Someone missed a chance there.
—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.
May 2025
Wednesday, May 07
Palm Coast Code Enforcement Board Meeting
Wednesday, May 07
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
Wednesday, May 07
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
315 South 7th Street, Flagler Beach
Wednesday, May 07
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Wednesday, May 07
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Public Library
Wednesday, May 07
Flagler County Republican Club Meeting
Wednesday, May 07
Connecting to Palm Coast Expo
Palm Coast Community Center
Wednesday, May 07
Flagler Beach Parks Ad Hoc Committee
Thursday, May 08
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Flagler County courthouse
Thursday, May 08
Palm Coast Democratic Club Meetings
Flagler County Democratic Party HQ
Thursday, May 08
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Central Park in Town Center
Thursday, May 08
Flagler Beach City Commission Meeting
Thursday, May 08
Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series
Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium
No event found!
For the full calendar, go here.
Dutch’s isolation as a boy was exacerbated by the family’s frequent moves. He seldom stayed in one town or one school long enough to make many friends. This combined with his father’s alcoholism–the source of family shame–to make Dutch wary of other children and reluctant to let anyone get too close to him. Like his reading, this too would become a lifelong habit. “In some ways,” he later conceded, “I think this reluctance to get close to people never left me completely.”33
By the time he became president, he would have no close friends aside from his wife, and he would be emotionally distant even from his own children. He would employ his natural affability and a steady supply of stories and jokes filed away in his photographic memory to keep the rest of the world at a safe, comfortable remove. “He would have made a hell of a good hermit,” said Stuart Spencer, the political consultant who guided Reagan’s rise to the governorship and presidency. “He was content to be alone,” agreed Ed Meese, “but he did like to be popular.” While Reagan was “unfailingly kind” to his staff, noted White House aide James Rosebush, “he was never really personal,” and “when you left his presence, you knew he wasn’t thinking about you-he wasn’t engaged in your life.” Even Nancy Reagan, her husband’s only true friend, would describe him as a “loner” who “often seems remote.” “There’s a wall around him,” she wrote perceptively. “He lets me come closer than anyone else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.” That emotional enclosure began to be erected during his difficult childhood in the rural Illinois of the early twentieth century when, because of his family’s constant uprooting, he would come to believe that no friendship would last long.
–From Max Boot’s Reagan: His Life and Legend (2024).
The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.
