Editor’s Note: Michael Patrick Welch, renowned New Oreans writer, musician, teacher and friend of The Escondido Grapevine, conducted an interview with the provocateur known to Andy Kauffman and Bob Zmuda fans as Tony Clifton. While others have shunned this outstanding piece of informational journalism, we embrace it and re-print this as a public service. “After years of chasing Tony Clifton to get his thoughts on…
Et tu Brute? Beware the Ides of March. It’s a day cloaked in infamy and the assassination of the Emperor Julius Caesar, a turning point in Roman history; March 15, 44 B.C.E. Let that be a lesson to you, Donald Trump. Time for you to go to hell. But we digress. And, according to the Smithsonian Museum, a lot of other notable events have taken…
The official Facebook page of Suññataram California Monastery in Escondido’s Wat Sunyataram at Escondido, California, posted photos and a message on Sunday afternoon, March 9, 2025, confirming the death of Phra Yantra, the President of the temple. The temple’s message read: “With deepest sympathy, we send our respects as we guide Phra Ajarn Yantra Amaro, President and spiritual leader of Wat Sunyataram, to Nirvana. Phra…
Nobody, especially Trump, knows it yet. His fate, his downfall, and his doom is, as we speak, being set in stone. And considering the roll he is on, few will believe what I am writing here. Just as well. Best not to believe or repeat what I’m telling you. Fortunately, Trump is so full of himself and too stupid to see what he is doing…
On a quiet Tuesday, U.S. wildlife officials, with an air of both resolve and regret, unveiled their intent to extend federal protections to the delicate monarch butterfly—a creature whose presence evokes a profound sense of wonder yet whose existence teeters precariously. For years, environmentalists have sounded the alarm, warning that the monarch’s numbers dwindle ominously, their shimmering wings an emblem of a vanishing world threatened…
At the Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard, where the San Diego-based USS Zumwalt—lumbering titan of bureaucratic ambition—lay in drydock, welders and engineers moved with an almost ecclesiastical focus, reworking the innards of a ship that was born both too early and too late. The twin turrets, relics of a system so prohibitively expensive it was abandoned in a silent bureaucratic shrug, were gone now, replaced by…
Sept. 10, 2001 was pretty much like any other day. That is to say honored only in its passing, don’t remember what happened. Sept. 11, 2001, as we all know, was a day seared in our personal and national memories like few others. Don’t know when the carnage began, but at my Del Dios home phones started ringing way too early in the morning and…
Editor’s Note: Updated… HM Alumni Council Shares Statement Regarding Alumni Award for Distinguished Achievement Petition – June 6, 2020 “We have heard concerns expressed by current students, alumni, and school employees regarding the Horace Mann School Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Achievement presented to US Attorney General William Barr in 2011. In response, we are convening our Council to canvass the views of our alumni…
Dr. Emanuel Bronner was born Feb. 1, 1908 and died March 7, 1997 at his Escondido home. His soap company moved to Vista in 2014 after 50 years in Escondido. Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps remain an iconic and distinctively American staple brand and curiosity, their wordy labels ubiquitous from Northwestern co-operative farming communities to the upscale bodegas of gentrified North Brooklyn. The boldly colored packaging…
According to legend, if the groundhog sees his shadow on February 2nd, there will be six more weeks of winter; if not, an early spring is predicted. This year no shadow. Of course groundhogs – also known as woodchucks – don’t emerge at this time just to be furry weather predictors. So what’s the real reason? Research into groundhog biology shows they have other priorities…