May 27, 2017 (San Diego) --Dr. Tom Deméré, curator of paleontology and director of PaleoServices at the San Diego Natural History Museum, was our guest recently on the East County Magazine Show on KNSJ.   Deméré vigorously defended his team’s conclusions that  bones from an ancient mastodon skeleton found locally were broken and sharpened with stones onsite by early humans 130,000 years ago.  

Click the audio link to hear our full interview, and scroll down for highlights.

Update! Hear our interview with author Diana Lindsay, originally aired on KNSJ radio, by clicking the audio link.  She discusses her book, the Anza Borrego Foundation and its anniversary,  as well as the colorful lore of the Anza Borrego Desert.

Coast to Cactus: The Canyoneer Trail Guide to San Diego Outdoors, by Diana Lindsay (Sunbelt Publications, Inc., San Diego, California, 2016, 595 pages).

Book Review by Dennis Moore

In the end, we will conserve only what we love

We will love only what we understand,

We will understand only what we are taught.

• Baba Dioum, Senegalese Conservationist

March 3, 2017 (San Diego) - The beauty and splendor of outdoor life in San Diego County is exemplified in this book by Diana Lindsay, managing editor of Sunbelt Publications; Coast to Cactus: The Canyoneer Trail Guide to San Diego Outdoors. Along with Paula Knoll and Terri Varnell, of the editing team of this groundbreaking book, it is an indispensable guide for hikers and all others interested in the outdoors of this beautiful area called San Diego County.

March 29, 2015 (San Diego)--Connecting with Nature is the theme of the 2015 Explore Mission Trails Day at Mission Trails Regional Park on  Saturday, May 16^th from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. This popular event features free guided nature walks, talks and programs throughout the park, including live animals and special programs for children from pony rides to a climbing wall.

February 8, 2014 (San Diego County) - The Canyoneers from San Diego Natural History Museum will be leading a nature walk/hike in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park on Saturday, February 15^th starting at 9:00 AM to the Indian Hill area in the park. This walk/hike is rated Moderate with a boulder scramble 6 miles up to 1000 ft elevation change.

“She had an attitude of gratitude,” La Mesa resident Ethel Rudolph says of her mother, Titanic survivor Anna Sofia Turja

By Ellinoa Blake

July 1, 2012 (La Mesa)--In the heart of La Mesa lives a hidden historical gem: Ethel Rudolph, whose mother, Anna Sofia Turja survived the Titanic tragedy. In her cozy home, Ethel sat down with East County Magazine editor Miriam Raftery and I to share her mother’s moving tale.

In honor of this year’s 100^th anniversary of the Titanic sinking after striking an iceberg, Rudolph recently visited Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition at the San Diego Natural History Museum, which runs through September 9.  

She reflected, “It brought back a lot of nostalgia, things Mother had said.”

Scroll down to read her dramatic story, including a video interview describing an eyewitness account of one of history's greatest tragedies.

September 24, 2011 (San Diego’s East County) – Photographer Greg Turok snapped these images of a Nutmeg Mannakin, or Spice Finch, and its mate in the Mission Trails Regional Park area Sept. 5. 

 “This bird is a recent resident to San Diego County,” said Turok, who has had the bird identified by the Ornithology Department at the San Diego Natural History Museum.