Tuesday evening I spent five hours at San Francisco City Hall participating in a public hearing.
During the long wait, four hours before making my presentation past 10PM, I walked the halls of the 4th floor. Decades ago the 4th floor was the courthouse. Working as a journalist I covered trials in those courtrooms. Reporting for The Sun Reporter Newspaper, whose publisher Carlton B. Goodlett, the street in front of City Hall is now named.
Now these former court rooms are used as meeting rooms and offices for local government business.
In the evening City Hall is often empty. The quiet is very peaceful. I took this unique opportunity to memorialize my night in this beautiful building which has seen its share of historic events. Ranging from joyous occasions to political assassinations.
Sinead O’Connor will always and forever stick in my mind for one reason.
“You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart” as the credits roll in the 1993 film ‘In the Name of the Father’ the cinematic recounting of the Guildford Pub bombings on October 5, 1974.
I watched the film at the now closed Northpoint Theater in San Francisco near Fisherman’s Wharf. I was transfixed during the entire movie. When Sinead O’Connor’s song blasted the screening room with its surround sound I was totally blown away.
Sinead O’Connor – RIP
From that moment on the name Sinead O’Connor stuck in my mind forever.
Following are two renditions of the song. A video with Sinead O’Connor appearing. The next. The actual end scene in the movie and the credits rolling with the song in the background.
Sinead O’Connor – You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart
Jane Birkin died a week ago and the story of her iconic life continues to unfold.
At the age of 40 Jane Birkin took a turn in life. Away from the fashion pop star of Je’ Taime persona towards a more politically aware life. A decision which only enhanced her reputation and credibility for the next 36 years.
Maintaining her sense of style while immersing herself in the real World of everyday people.
British singer and actress Jane Birkin participates in a pro-choice demonstration of support for French family planning during an abortion trial in Bobigny. (Photo by Alain Dejean/Sygma via Getty Images)
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 7.24.2023
Following the death of Jane Birkin on Sunday at age 76, Instagram was flooded with photos of the Brit-in-Paris singer in her photogenic 1960s and 1970s youth. She was a style icon everyone could agree on, be they designers such as Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello and Simon Porte Jacquemus to French President Emmanuel Macron. In numerous tributes, we were reminded of her risqué, girlish fashion moments: the lacy dress worn backward, the completely sheer gowns, the denim mini shorts and the straw basket she used as a handbag.
But that leggy, pouty period, coinciding roughly with her relationship with Serge Gainsbourg from 1968 to 1980, will not be Birkin’s only style legacy. Her later decades, particularly her 40s, 50s and 60s, are an inspiration to women hoping to age without succumbing to plastic surgery and conventionality.
After 40, Birkin abandoned her famous babydoll look for menswear, a makeupless face and unlaced sneakers. “As time went by, I did less and less,” she told British Elle a few years ago.
Beginning with her stripped-down appearance at the Bataclan in 1987, at left, Jane Birkin favored menswear and a makeupless face.
Birkin’s turning point from ingénue to self-possessed, confident artist was her 1987 concert at the Bataclan in Paris, when she was 41 years old. She was then dating Jacques Doillon, a filmmaker who encouraged her to leave behind what he called the “gimmicks” of her youth, from the basket (which he ran over with his car) to the makeup and minidresses.
The less Birkin seemed to care about Fashion with a capital F, the more it embraced her as a pinnacle of chic.
In 2017, she sang at the concert hall Le Palace in Paris for a Gucci fashion show, wearing a simple suit as models in over-the-top multicolored lace and sequined looks marched around her. She often wore Saint Laurent alongside her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg in recent years, but stuck to white shirts and black suit separates.
Top photo: The late Jane Birkin photographed in 1989. ‘I think at 40 years old, I was at my best, really,’ she once said. PHOTO: JEAN-CLAUDE DEUTSCH/GETTY IMAGES
Attn: Cheryl Leger – San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (SOTF)
It is important this information be brought before the full SOTF during its July 25, 2023 in which I will participate.
Even though the electoral and judicial battle is over, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) whose De Young Museum stands astride JFK Promenade still needs to be forthcoming and stand in the sunshine of public disclosure. Attached you will find the following:
FAMSF Response to my Records Request dated June 26, 2022 (see pages 2837-2838) in SOTF file.
California Fair Political Practices Commission Form-460 submitted by ACCESS FOR ALL, SPONSORED BY CORPORATION OF THE FINE ARTS MUSEUMS AND OPEN THE GREAT HIGHWAY ALLIANCE-Period 7.16.2022 through 7.31.2022 ( Open the Great Highway Alliance was Plaintiff in the lawsuit which sought in Court to destroy JFK Promenade and The Great Highway Park. The litigation was dismissed by the California Court of Appeals earlier this year. ‘Open the Great Highway Alliance v. Ginsburg, No. A164797’)
The FAMSF report shows that the first contributor was Megan Bourne-Chief of Staff Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums – $250.00. The same Megan Bourne who responded that her employer had “no responsive” documents to my Spring 2022 public records requests.
The crowds at the De Young Museum. The whining by FAMSF that JFK Promenade would ruin attendance was all nonsense
In my earlier Immediate Disclosure Requests I labeled the responses by FAMSF “preposterous”. Language which still holds true today over a year later. Requests which were totally non responsive and resulted in my first hearing before the SOTF in May 2022.
Dede Wilsey – Dow Chemical scion and Political power house in San Francisco with FAMSF CEO Thomas Campbell
In the FAMSF rejection of my subsequent June 26, 2022 IDR the FAMSF is trying to, again, duck its responsibilities by hiding under a technicality. Claiming it has no obligation to provide responsive documents. This may be correct in a court of law. But in the real world of San Francisco politics it’s preposterous. FAMSF was the leader in the attempt to destroy JFK Promenade legislatively. That is the reason I filed my initial Requests.
Leave it to the tabloid style All American New York Post to put into print what I was thinking while watching the Americans grind out a 3-0 win over the tough Vietnamese in a World Cup match upin Auckland, New Zealand.
The Post gushingly reports that the Vietnamese national team, “emphatically crooned their national song “Tiến Quân Ca,” or “Song of a Marching Army.”These women have something to sing for and I am sure what those before them were doing decades ago. Fighting an American aggressor.
VIETNAM – APRIL 30: The Fall of Saigon in Vietnam on April 30, 1975 – The north-Vietnamese tanks cross Saigon on the way towards the Doc Lap palace. (Photo by Herve GLOAGUEN/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
I applaud without reservation the American women who refuse to observe the flag of a country which denigrates women and people of color.
What really struck me during the entire match is the reality that America, in its striving for global hegemony laid waste to this small proud Asian nation for 20 years. Disrupting the fibre of American life forever and causing the deaths of 55,000 young Americans. Killing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. For what?
American pride and ego.
It cheers me that while the American women on the pitch in New Zealand were not thinking much about what happened over 50 years ago, they were thinking about America today.
Kudos to them all.
Excerpted from The New York Post 7.22.2023
Most members of the US women’s soccer team stayed silent during the national anthem before its World Cup opener Friday against newcomers Vietnam — who passionately belted their nation’s tune.
The New Post gushingly reports that the Vietnamese national team, “emphatically crooned their national song “Tiến Quân Ca,” or “Song of a Marching Army.”
The majority of the reigning women’s World Cup champion team stared stoically ahead as the “Star Spangled Banner” blasted across New Zealand’s Eden Park arena.
Only five of the 11 players who stood on the field for the anthem — with young, aspiring players standing before them — placed their hands over their hearts, while their six teammates kept their digits clasped behind their backs, video shows.
Only three USWNT players — Julie Ertz, Alyssa Naeher and Lindsey Horan — sang along with the hundreds of American supporters watching in the stands.
Comparatively, members of World Cup debutant Vietnam emphatically crooned their national song “Tiến Quân Ca,” or “Song of a Marching Army.”
FILE – In this April 29, 1975 file photo, U.S. Navy personnel aboard the USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter into the sea off the coast of Vietnam in order to make room for more evacuation flights from Saigon. The war ended on April 30, 1975, with the fall of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, to communist troops from the north. (AP Photo/File)
Top photo: American women stand silent during playing of national anthem at World Cup opener in Auckland, New Zealand – 7.22.2023
Lee Heidhues 7.21.2023
German authorities now say the lioness on the loose is no lion….it’s a wild boar.
The search ends. The drama is over.
The King of the Jungle continues to roam free.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 7. 21.2023
Police said on Friday that they had found no signs of a lion, or any other large predator, following a massive search around Berlin that was launched after reports of a lioness sighting on Wednesday night.

Two experts who examined the video footage that sparked the search told police that in all likelihood the animal in the video was a wild boar.
“Everything indicates it is not a lioness,” Michael Grubert, the mayor of the town Kleinmachnow where the suspected lion had first been spotted, said at a press conference. https://www.dw.com/en/lioness-near-berlin-likely-a-wild-boar-police-say/a-66284417
A lioness in Berlin has taken it upon herself to take a road trip.
Local authorities are vexed because neither the Berlin Zoo or the Circus have reported an AWOL (absent without leave) feline.
Authorities can only conclude, at this juncture, that the lioness decided to leave her home at a private estate or is, alarmingly, being kept captive by an animal trader.
Let’s hope the wandering lioness is found and safely returnedto her native habitat.Which is not in the urban setting of Berlin but in the wilds of Africa.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 7.20.2023
A “loose, dangerous animal,” suspected to be an escaped big cat, was reportedly sighted in a Potsdam region on the fringes ofthe German capitalon Thursday, police said.
“It’s clear lions can’t drop out of the sky, not in Germany, at least,” said Professor Heribert Hofer, director of the…
A lioness in Berlin has taken it upon herself to take a road trip.
Local authorities are vexed because neither the Berlin Zoo or the Circus have reported an AWOL (absent without leave) feline.
Authorities can only conclude, at this juncture, that the lioness decided to leave her home at a private estate or is, alarmingly, being kept captive by an animal trader.
Let’s hope the wandering lioness is found and safely returnedto her native habitat.Which is not in the urban setting of Berlin but in the wilds of Africa.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 7.20.2023
A “loose, dangerous animal,” suspected to be an escaped big cat, was reportedly sighted in a Potsdam region on the fringes of the German capital on Thursday, police said.
“It’s clear lions can’t drop out of the sky, not in Germany, at least,” said Professor Heribert Hofer, director of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin.
Authorities are using helicopters to track what they believe is a female lion and have called on residents to stay indoors, the rbb public broadcaster reported.
According to the German tabloid BILD, security forces were also using an armored vehicle, drones and infrared cameras in the search.
Police said veterinary specialists and hunters were also taking part in the operation to find the animal.
A police spokesman said drones were being employed where possible to avoid the usual search method of combing forest areas on foot.
Big Cat on the Loose – Residents of Berlin’s southern suburbs were urged to stay home
On Thursday evening, a police spokesperson said that 220 officers were searching near where the animal was last seen in wooded areas near the municipalities of Kleinmachnow, Teltow and Stahnsdorf at the southern edge of Berlin.
The search is expected to continue through the night with the aid of night vision devices, the spokesperson said.
“We will be on the job until the animal is found ,” the spokesperson added.
Although it is illegal to keep big cats in Berlin, it is possible in the neighboring state of Brandenburg, Hofer told DW.
The owner must have an expert certificate, keep and adequate private enclosure, and receive an official veterinarian check from the state.
I am so shocked The New York Times is blowing its sports page to oblivion.
When I first read the news of this inexplicable act by America’s most well known newspaper I didn’t understand. Perhaps, because I did not think such an action was possible.
Sports are integral part of the global landscape. How the Times could do this for what appears financial reasons and nothing else boggles my mind. As a lifelong follower of sports.
I will let the excellent sports journalist Dave Zirin explain it better than I.
Excerpted from The Nation 7.17.2023 – Dave Zirin
I read the New YorkPost more voraciously, but my dream was to be a good enough journalist to write about sports for The New York Times.
It would have felt like getting a work of art into a museum. Now, that sports section is gone. The New York Times shuttered its sports page, a victim of greed and union busting.
New York Times front page – Maris Hits 61st in Final Game – October 1961
This announcement came hours after a similar one from the Los Angeles Times that it would be closing its doors to sports coverage as well. As Boston Globe senior columnist Bob Ryan wrote, July 10 is “a day that will live in infamy” for anyone who cares about sports writing as a profession.
The New York Times will replace its sports coverage with the website The Athletic, which it purchased for $550 million 18 months ago in an effort to boost its own subscription base. Now, another side of the attractiveness of The Athletic purchase is revealing itself. The staff there is nonunion.
New York Times SportsMonday no more
Mere weeks after a contentious labor battle that put Times management on its heels, a section of the union has been gutted. In a rather nauseating statement on the closure, New York Times Chairman A.G. Sulzberger and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said that this was all part of a bigger plan “to become a global leader in sports journalism, which represents a major pillar of our company strategy to be the essential subscription for curious people around the world.”
How one becomes a “global leader in sports journalism” by blithely wrecking your sports page and outsourcing the labor away from deep-dive coverage is a question they should be pressed to answer.
In the fall of 1969 I spent a month in Amsterdam’s Red Light district at the ‘Student Youth Hotel Schreierstoren (Weeping Tower) just minutes walk from the City’s central train station.
The Schreierstoren, filled with international travelers, had a bar and juke box. One of the most frequently played songs was the smash hit Je’Taime by Jane Birkin and her collaborator, lover Serge Gainsbourg.
Jane Birkin died this past weekend in Paris. The French Culture Ministry said the country had lost a “timeless Francophone icon”.
Excerpted from The Independent 7.16.2023 – Helen Brown
Broadcast news of Jane Birkin’s death inevitably came accompanied by clips of her as softcore chanteuse, singing the 1969 single she recorded with Serge Gainsbourg, “Je t’aime… moi non plus”, her breathy, girlish voice wrapping sweet, urgent nothings around an older lover’s weary cynicism.
In 2021 she told me, entirely without self-pity, that her mother “wasn’t one for newborn babies – milk and nappies and all that. I think they were with a lot of nannies who made my parents feel uncomfortable and made my mother feel inadequate. You have to give people confidence that they’re doing it right. You tell people they’re getting it wrong and they’ll step back.”
Ms. Birkin standing between her daughters Charlotte Gainsbourg, left, and Lou Doillon at a Saint Laurent show in 2016 in Paris.Credit…Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images
I asked if that meant that she spent more time on her. “No. Neither of them were like that, and that’s all right. There’s nothing worse than making people do things when they feel uncomfortable.”
Birkin would go on to sing scores of Gainsbourgs’s poetic, playful and provocative songs. Sing? She liked to say she “wore” them. To me, she sounded more like she was smoking them. Inhaling his darker thoughts, holding them in, getting a little sad or high, then breathing them out somehow lighter, more evasive. Teasing both his need to shock and his audience’s need to be shocked.
The British-French actress and singer was a pro-democracy activist for Myanmar and visited several organizations in the region.Credit…Thierry Falise/LightRocket, via Getty Images
At her final London show last year, she didn’t give us “Je t’aime” but its B Side, “Jane B”, on which Gainsbourg gave her licence to play with his typecasting of her as a 2D muse. He listed her vital statistics à la CSI: “Yeux bleus/ Cheveux châtains/ Jane B/ Anglaise/ De sexe féminin/ Âge entre 20 et 21…” The song implied she was already dead, a pretty corpse “sleeping” by the side of the road. But, of course, Birkin would outlive her lover by three decades and carry his legacy – with a pallbearer’s tender stoicism – for the rest of her life.
Because – although some critics dismiss her as the original, 1960s edition of the manic pixie dream girl – Birkin was no passive muse. The fashionista fantasy of her was at sharp odds with the earthy woman I interviewed twice in the final decades of her life.
I last spoke to Birkin on the phone in 2021 and her crisp, Mary Poppins accent still took me by surprise. L’amour? Spit Spot! She’d been out in her men’s corduroy trousers (no Birkin or basket bag, key on a ribbon around her neck) walking by the Brittany coast near her home, she told me. She was about to make a hearty hotpot and was looking forward to watching it “bubble down all warm and red on the stove”. She lived alone with her latest bulldog and seemed quite content with the situation.
Ms. Birkin in 1995.Credit…John Stoddart/Popperfoto, via Getty Images
Birkin is a reminder that the gauziest-seeming human might have sinew they don’t show.
And the woman whose 1969 vocals are often used as a shorthand for physical affection grew up experiencing very little of it. Born in 1946, Jane Birkin is the daughter of (once famous) actor Judy Campbell and ex-spy David Birkin.
Lost in the headlines of America where extreme right wing sentiment is increasingly taking hold ahead of the 2024 Presidential election, the rest of the World is reeling in the onslaught of this political pandemic.
Germany is no exception as the following article in Deutsche Welle illustrates.
We will be in Berlin for several weeks later this year and will have an opportunity see for ourselvescurrent state of right wing extremism in Germany. Mingling with the German people will provide us with insights that the media cannot replicate.
During an earlier trip to Germany we saw Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) posters in the town of Lübeck. Currently the right-wing populist AfD has 78 seats in the 736 seat Bundestag and is represented in state legislatures throughout Germany.
Stop the AfD poster Lubeck, Germany – May 2017 – photo Lee Heidhues
“There must be no place in Brandenburg where right-wingers want to stir up fears and drive out dissenters,” said Brandenburg State Premier Dietmar Woidke.
Max Teske is barred from providing details about the far-right incidents he reported at his school. The local education authority does not want the teacher and his colleague Laura Nickel talking about it.
What Teske can say, based on conversations he has had with fellow educators across the eastern German state of Brandenburg, is that the incidents he reported are not unique.
“Hitler salutes, graffiti, sexism, homophobia. These are issues that affect all schools,” he told DW.
Germans take to the streets to denounce Fascism
As a result, Teske and Nickel have announced they are leaving the school, located in Burg, a small town about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Berlin.
AfD popularity a growing cause for concern
About three months ago, the two teachers submitted an urgent letter that called out incidents at the school. Although the letter was signed anonymous, Teske said he and Nickel were targeted with threats. These included stickers that appeared near the school featuring their photos, urging them to stay away.
Young German in Frankfurt with back pack emblazoned “FUCK AfD” October 2018 – photo Lee Heidhues
Using a vulgar term, the stickers told them to “go back to Berlin.” That was around the time, Teske said, they got in touch with law enforcement.
Burg is located in the Spreewald, a popular tourist destination known for its natural beauty. The area’s politics, however, are less tranquil. In the 2021 federal election, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won more than 30% of the vote in Burg. The AfD’s popularity at local and regional levels has been a growing cause for concern among federal politicians.
In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Brandenburg Education Minister Steffen Freiberg expressed sympathy for the teachers allegedly under threat, but also sounded a note of criticism. He rejected their complaint that their superiors did not give them enough support.
Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) rally
The news has prompted consternation in the mainstream political arena, not only in the state of Brandenburg but also among federal politicians in Berlin. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his concern about the developments at the school in Burg. “We must do everything for those who oppose populism and extremism and stand up for tolerance and democracy in this society,” his spokesperson, Cerstin Gammelin, quoted him as saying on July 13.
Lee's Perspective 