dan weisman

Featured, History, The World August 27, 2026

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…

History, Media, North County, The World August 26, 2026

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…

Rancho Santa Fe, Surprising and Strange, The World August 24, 2026

29 years ago, Heaven’s Gate couldn’t wait

Dateline Rancho Santa Fe. March 26, 1997. A 911 call came into the San Diego Sheriff’s Communications Center. It was treated as a prank call at first. From what turned out to be a nearby payphone, the caller said something so preposterous that dispatchers took their time in relaying the information to central command. “This is regarding a mass suicide. I can give you the address,” the…

Education, Escondido, Featured, Surprising and Strange August 8, 2026

Idiosyncratic dinosaur ‘museum’ went extinct

Always a bit of an oddity, and itself a colorful exhibition of an Escondido antique dealer’s lifelong hobby, the Roynon Museum celebrating all things dinosaur, went the way of the creatures celebrated within, that is to say, extinct, on June 30, 2019. Applying the lofty title of Roynon Museum of Earth Sciences and Paleontology to its decidedly idiosyncratic exhibit and purpose, museum officials this week…

Blogs, Columns/Blogs, Surprising and Strange, The World, Valley Center August 5, 2026

Where have all the payphones gone?

“A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or a privacy hood, with pre-payment by inserting money (usually coins) or by billing a credit or debit card, or a telephone card. Around the Big Apple, Google Sidewalk Labs is replacing them with free city-wide Wi-Fi. In Ireland, units now are used less than once every…

Editorial, Featured, Media, Opinion August 5, 2026

Welcome to Kevin Breslin’s Harmony Grove rabbit hole

Jimmy Breslin. That’s my lede. Jimmy Breslin. Or rather, AI Jimmy Breslin. Breslin was OK. Not a great writer, but an OK muckraker. So, sue my story tag, you’re it, Kevin Breslin, Jimmy’s apparent self-appointed nepo baby defender of the family jewels. I wasn’t a big Jimmy, and now Kevin, Breslin fan; and sometimes not a fan at all, but considered Jimmy Breslin part of…

North County, Tourism, Valley Center August 3, 2026

Memories of Pikake Gardens

Its gates are forever locked. The koi have died. A lonesome breeze blows through faded gardens overgrown with weeds. The waterfalls have ceased falling and even the roses have faded into wilted dreams. Welcome to Pikake Botanical Gardens at 15515 Villa Sierra Road, once one of the wonders of the horticultural world, now reduced to ashes and memories. A private botanical garden on nine acres,…

Darrell Issa investigations, Politics July 31, 2026

Seriously, what? Issa nominated Trump for Nobel Prize

Folks, you can’t make up this stuff: Former accused car thief who was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon, Rep. Darryl Issa, (R-Bonsall???) said March 4 that he had “nominated President Donald Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.” For real? “Not since Ronald Reagan has an American president better represented the national resolve of peace through strength or the fundamental…

Escondido, Featured, North County, Surprising and Strange, Travel July 27, 2026

Hodgee, friendly Lake Hodges Monster: Fact or fiction?

Go down to Hernandez Hideaway at rural Lake Drive in Del Dios and people will swear up and down the long wooden bar that Hodgee, the friendly Lake Hodges monster, really truly — well, almost definitely exists. “The Lake Hodges Hodgee monster is kind of like the Loch Ness monster,” said Stan Smith, a long-time Del Dios resident. Smith, a cowboy poet and man about…