The World

Hail Estonia! Wait. What? La Jolla?

Hail Estonia! Wait. What? Estonia opened an honorary consulate at La Jolla on January 24, 2019, later moving it to downtown San Diego. The Estonian honorary consul in the San Diego area is Dr. Michael Corey Chan, and the address of the consulate is 330 13th Street #2111 San Diego, CA, 92101. Give him a shout-out at 858-717-6379. “Honorary consuls with their energy and network…


This Veteran’s Day unremembered: American Expeditionary Force Siberia

Parades rolled through many American cities on Veterans Day, Nov. 11 honoring the anniversary of the end of World War I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, what once was known as Armistice Day. None of those parades, however, featured tributes or remembrance of one of the war’s oddities made all the more poignant by today’s tensions…


Local Escondido ironworker Paul Pursley spent 10 weeks at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11, 2001 attack

Sept. 11, 2001: Local ironworker Paul Pursley spent 10 weeks at “Ground Zero” following the terrorist attack. His major complaint in the years following concerned his inability to get correct, and affordable, treatment due to the costs involved, costs that Congress finally agreed to add funding to the 9/11 First Responders fund almost 18 years later. “Ironworkers worked every day,” Pursley said. “We went on 12-hour shifts…


Controversial Suññataram California Monastery leader has died, was defrocked due to sexual, financial crimes

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…



Monarchs in flight: Saving our fluttering treasures

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…


Hypersonic dreams for a billion-dollar Zumwalt blunder

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…


Sending in the llamas and clowns on 9/11

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…


Bully Barr should be reviled, not given award

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. Bronner’s psychedelic mushroom trip

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…