It was just days ago that I wrote about the ‘Parachute Women’ in the lives of the Rolling Stones. Today Marianne Faithfull, perhaps the most famous of the ‘Parachute Women’, has died at age 78and with her death an icon of the 1960’s and beyondpasses into cultural history.
The first day of The Year of the Snake is not a happy one for San Francisco political rabble rouser Man Kit Lam.
Kit Lam is out of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration after less than a month.
San Francisco Chronicle page one announcing Kit Lam’s “joining” Daniel Lurie’s mayoral campaign. March 12, 2024
Last March it was all smiles as then candidate Levi Strauss & Co. scion Daniel Lurie brought Kit Lam aboard as a liaison to the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.
After Lurie’s victory in the Mayoral election last November, Kit Lam joined the incoming administration. It was a short lived tenure in the Mayor’s office.
His fate with Daniel Lurie is similar to that of his brief tenure with Supervisor Joel Engardio. Kit Lam managed Engardio’s 2022 successful Supervisorial campaign. He then came on as one of Engardio’s legislative aides. He left after a year.
Supervisor Joel Engardio and Kit Lam
At the time Kit Lam left Supervisor Engardio’s employ I was told he had a difficult working relationship with fellow legislative aides in City Hall. Then Mayor London Breed’s office also had a difficult time working with Kit Lam.
In both instances, Kit Lam said publicly he left for “personal reasons” and said he still supported both his former employers.
During 2021 and 2022 Kit Lam was active in the successful campaigns to Recall three School Board members and District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Man Kit Lam, campaign manager for D4 supervisor candidate Joel Engardio, argues with Rev. Amos Brown of the NAACP at SFUSD Headquarters at 555 Franklin Street in San Francisco, Calif., on June 22, 2022, regarding Lowell High School admissions. | Camille Cohen/The Standard
Prior to entering the electoral arena Kit Lam did investigative work for the San Francisco school board. He was laid off several years ago.
In Hong Kong Kit Lam worked for law enforcement.
Top photo. Jason Kruta and Kit Lam confront each in the San Francisco Richmond District other during the School Board Recall petition campaign in 2021.
San Francisco MSM trumpeted the settlement of Man Kit Lam’s civil law suit against Jason Kruta. The young man who briefly disrupted his successful campaign to recall three Progressive School Board members in February 2022. An act for which Jason Kruta was fired from his job and was criminally prosecuted. A prosecution which was not enough for vengeful Man Kit Lam. He sued Mr. Kruta in San Francisco Civil Superior Court.A lawsuit which concludedin 2023.
Say goodbye to the the Dragon which has adorned our front door the past year.
Good things may be coming for the Merry Makers of The Chinese New Year celebration, when the Chinese calendar cycles to a new zodiac animal.
A bag of “Peace and Joyz” sweets, apples, a New Year cake and a realistic wooden snake in the blogger’s kitchen.Sunset neighborhood shoppers check out the oranges and tangerines on Irving Street.Flowers are desirable for the Chinese home to invite prosperity, growth and good fortune in the upcoming New Year.
But only pain and suffering are in store for those poor animals destined to be the celebrated delicacies for the groaning tables of the Chinese New Year feast.
I wouldn’t want to be a Dungeness crab waiting for a buyer to take me home and boil me alive for their New Year’s dinner.
A shopper inspects the crabs who are in their painful final throes of life before landing on a New Year dinner table
Last Sunday my gaze was riveted by a crowd of happy people hovering around a makeshift stall outside a market in the outer Sunset District of San Francisco.
I saw a vendor selling live Dungeness crabs, many with legs broken off, to a throng of captivated shoppers.
The shoppers were poking and dangling the crustaceans by a claw up in the air, to inspect whether one of the sentient creatures would be suitable for purchase.
Pulling the crab to its final destination.
Afterwards, they would toss the poor thing back into the box from which it had been plucked — upside down on the heap of its brethren crustaceans stacked like logs — to thrash futilely about, as it tried to right itself and crawl away to escape a cruel death.
The unnecessary pain and suffering the human species inflicts on the animals it kills and eats is enough to stop a thinking person in their tracks.
Screenshot
Sunset neighborhood residents of all ages and types on Irving Street.
I looked at the oblivious faces of the shoppers around me.
Chinese New Year celebrants on their way home with their completed shopping.
I had to force myself to turn my attention back to the purpose for which I had cycled from the Richmond District, through Golden Gate Park, and to the Outer Sunset District for.
I had cycled to Irving Street to find a cardboard cut-out to adorn my front door.
The Snakes hangs atop the store next to a beautiful lantern.
Every Chinese New Year’s, I put the lunar animal associated with the new lunar year on my door to invite good luck and happiness into my home where I have lived 41 years. This time I needed to put the Snake out. To my chagrin, I discovered I was lacking the Snake in the extensive collection of Chinese New Year’s cardboard cut-outs I have saved.
I possessed all the other astrological signs of the Chinese lunar calendar, from the Rat to two versions of the Pig.
Blogger Liz’s stash of Chinese Lunar New Year animals. Carefully collected, embellished and stored over the years.
But I was missing the deepest thinker and the enigma of the Chinese zodiac cycle. The sixth sign in the lunar cycle of the 12 animal signs. The Snake.
I scoured all the stores I knew within hiking and biking distance of our home and finally found a decent facsimile of a Snake. It was hanging in the 22nd Ave and Irving housewares store where I buy my bamboo steamers and toilet bowl brushes.
A housewares store with a cornucopia of merchandise. During New Year’s the traditional red envelopes, fully stacked in this store, are a big attraction.
But this Snake had a happy and cherub-like face that I had never seen on the supernatural reptile that Western culture considers evil and cunning.
I had to buy embellishments to add to this angelic-looking Snake to give it the aura that we all attach to snakes.
When I asked the owner of the Richmond District’s Clement St store, where I have shopped for over two decades to buy my Chinese New Year’s decorations, why was it so hard to find a snake, she said to me: “People don’t like the Snake. They’re afraid of snakes. They won’t buy them. So I sell different kinds of things instead.”
After admiring the Snake and the other purchases I had made on Irving St, while wandering up and down its stretch crowded with shops catering to Chinese culture, palm trees, cars, and shoppers in search of Red Envelopes, I realized it had grown dark.
Oranges and tangerines- round and golden in color-symbolize fullness and wealth for prosperity in the New Year.Sword lilies set the stage for prosperity on the journey through the New Year.
I packed the things I’d gotten into my pannier and rode my 30-year old bicycle back to a dark and deserted Golden Gate Park.
It was peaceful and quiet there after the noise and bustle of Irving Street.
City dwellers had surrendered the space to the dark, a serene and philosophical time when all the people and cars pack up and go home, leaving this natural space to its wildlife and a few unhoused denizens to enjoy.
A quiet scene in Golden Gate Park nestled between the Sunset and Richmond districts of San Francisco. Photo – Lee Heidhues
Top photo. The Snake is a supernatural animal able to wriggle out of its skin to exchange it for a new one as time marches on.
When I was growing up the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite and upended America. Which until that time thought of itself as being a leader in outer space technology.
Today’s toppling of AI stocks is the 2025 version of how America on October 5th, 1957 was impacted forever when it learned the Russians jumped ahead in what was then called the “Space race.”
FIRST SOVIET SATELLITE, 1957. ‘The New York Times’ frontpage, 5 October 1957, announcing the launch of “Sputnik I”, the Soviet Union’s first earth satellite.
Now it’s the Chinese and their Entrepreneurship which is causing an uproar in the political and financial markets.
DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Wenfeng has suddenly found himself catapulted to the top of the global multi billion dollar AI news cycle
Liang Wenfeng at right has found himself catapulted to the top of the global multi billion dollar AI news cycle
Excerpted from The New York Times 1.27.2025
DeepSeek is “AI’s Sputnik moment,” Marc Andreessen, a tech venture capitalist, posted on social media on Sunday.
How could a company that few people had heard of have such an effect?
Tech stocks tumbled. Giant companies like Meta and Nvidia faced a barrage of questions about their future. Tech executives took to social media to proclaim their fears.
And it was all because of a little-known Chinese artificial intelligence start-up called DeepSeek.
DeepSeek caused waves all over the world on Monday as one of its accomplishments — that it had created a very powerful A.I. model with far less money than many A.I. experts thought possible — raised a host of questions, including whether U.S. companies were even competitive in A.I. anymore.
It’s just the beginning. Humans in chains. That’s the Nazi felon Donald Trump way.
This photo provided by the U.S. Dept. of Defense, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agents guide undocumented immigrants onboard a C-17 Globemaster III at the Tucson International Airport, Ariz., Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (Senior Airman Devlin Bishop/Dept. of Defense via AP)
The Nazi felon American President Donald Trump has done more to destroy people’s dignity and human rights than any President in my lifetime.
You won’t read in the mainstream media that Nazi felon Trump is deporting men, women and children to their native countries in handcuffs. The Brazilian government is calling out this wanton human rights abuse.
The inhumane treatment of Brazilian citizens by the US will sour relations between the felon Trump administration and Brazilian President Lula’s government
Earlier the Colombian government harshly condemned Nazi felon Trump for carrying deportees in military cargo planes.And refused permission for the American planes to land in Colombia.
The conduct of Nazi felon Trump has shamed America throughout the world. His obscene performance is reminiscent of Germany beginning in January 1933.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 1.26.2025
The use of handcuffs on migrants is considered controversial in Brazil. Even former conservative Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump supporter, has called for an end to the practice.
Brazil’s government decried the US after dozens of deportees arrived on a plane in handcuffs. The Brazilian justice minister called it a “blatant disrespect” of their rights.
Brazil strongly condemned the US on Saturday after dozens of deportees arrived to the country in handcuffs.
A plane carrying 88 Brazilian passengers, 16 US security agents, and eight crew members, was originally scheduled to arrive in Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, but had to make an emergency landing in the city of Manaus due to a technical error, said a statement by the Brazilian government.
The smirking Nazi felon Donald Trump
Brazilian federal police received the plane at the instructions of Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski and intervened, asking US agents to remove handcuffs from the deportees.
Lewandowski told President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva it was a “blatant disrespect” of their fundamental rights, according to a statement by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and Public Security.
“Upon learning of the situation, President Lula ordered that a Brazilian Air Force (FAB) aircraft be mobilized to transport the Brazilians to their final destination, in order to ensure that they could complete their journey with dignity and safety,” the ministry’s statement said.
What better way than to write about some good old rock and roll. Taking a walk this evening I stopped at a Little Lit Library near my house and found the book ‘Parachute Women’ by Elizabeth Winder. The 2023 tell all about the Rolling Stones wives and companions is a play on their song from the 1968 Beggars Banquet album.
The well received book goes into documentary style tabloid detail about the Stones well chronicled personal lives.
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is the fifth release of the Rolling Stones music by former manager Allen Klein‘s ABKCO Records (who gained control of the band’s Decca/London material in 1970) after the band’s departure from Decca and Klein. Released in 1996, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is a live album that captures the taping of their ill-fated 1968 TV special, which was not broadcast until almost three decades later.
“Mean,” “so-called bishop,” “radical left hardline Trump hater.” Such vehemence is not unusual in President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, but he usually reserves his attacks for the political world. However, his attacks were for Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., whom the new U.S. president harshly criticized January 22, the day after the National Prayer Service held as part of his inauguration.
Bishop Mariann Budd – Episcopal Bishop Washington, DC
Trump’s outrage
Mariann Budde, 65, drew the president’s anger after a sermon in which she encouraged Donald Trump, “in the name of our God,” to show “mercy” toward “the millions of people who are afraid.” “There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” she pleaded before the president and his wife Melania, seated in the front row alongside Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife.
And just as Trump had declared a state of emergency along the Mexican border, Budde also urged the president to be compassionate toward immigrants, of whom, she said, “the vast majority (…) are not criminals.”
Bishop Budde speaks at White House protest for Peace in Gaza – December 2023
Visibly annoyed by these remarks, Trump harshly criticized her on his Truth Social platform. “The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard-line Trump hater (…),” he wrote, accusing the bishop of dragging “her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone and not compelling or smart… She and her church owe the public an apology!”
Mariann Edgar Budde, born in 1959 and ordained a priest before being elected bishop of Washington in 2011, is the ninth bishop of the Episcopal diocese of the U.S. capital and the first woman to hold the position in this church, a member of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Church belongs to the “historical” Protestant tradition, in contrast to evangelical Protestantism.
Established after the American Revolution during the separation from the Church of England, the Episcopal Church stands out for its inclusivity. It was among the first to bless same-sex unions and strongly advocates for LGBT equality.
Previous statements
This is not the first time the Episcopal bishop of Washington has addressed Trump, directly or indirectly. In 2020, after Black Lives Matter protesters were forcefully dispersed by police on the steps of St. John’s Episcopal Church—known as the “Church of the Presidents” in the federal capital—the billionaire posed hours later in front of the building, Bible in hand, drawing the ire of most American religious leaders. Budde said she was “outraged” and “horrified” by this publicity stunt.
Felon US President Donald Trump holds up a Bible outside of St John’s Episcopal church across Lafayette Park in Washington, DC on June 1, 2020. – Felon Trump was due to make a televised address to the nation on Monday after days of anti-racism protests against police brutality that have erupted into violence. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
As a regular feature of http://www.leesperspective.com I will hi-light Felon President Trump’s dismantling of the American system as we have come to know it.
The Civil Rights Division is the first bite of the Department of Justice apple.
“I’ll cut the apple in two. I’ll pray it isn’t True.” Apple of Sodom, Marilyn Manson
What it feels like in Nazi Trump America – ‘Apple of Sodom’ Marilyn Manson
CORONATION OF THE AMERICAN NAZI REGIME – JANUARY 20, 2025
TRUMP CONVICTED – 5.31.2024
Excerpted from The Washington Post 1.22.2025
“It’s beyond unusual — it’s unprecedented. We’ve never seen this before at this scale with any transfer of power, regardless of the ideology of any incoming president or administration,” said Damon Hewitt,president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “This should make Americans both angry and deeply worried. This is more than just a changing course of philosophy — this is exactly what most people [in the civil rights community] feared: a Justice Department that was created to protect civil rights literally abdicating its duty and responsibility to protect Americans from all forms of discrimination.”
Felon President Trump dismantles the Justice Department.
The Justice Department has ordered the civil rights division to halt much of its investigative activity dating from the Biden administration and not pursue new indictments, cases or settlements, according to a memo sent to the temporary head of the division that was obtained by The Washington Post.
Trump said on the campaign trail that police at times must be “extraordinarily rough” to stamp out urban mayhem and endorsed more aggressive tactics from police, including the use of stop-and-frisk to search suspects.
The letter instructs Kathleen Wolfe — designated by the Trump administration as supervisor of the division — to ensure that civil rights attorneys do not file “any new complaints, motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs, or statements of interest.”
Capitalism devours it own. Never mind that ThePeople need to eat.
Empty and abandoned. Where will the Safeway Western Addition shoppers go now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlbertsonsWith 2,253 stores as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 and 270,000 employees as of fiscal year 2019, the company is the second-largest supermarket chain in North America after Kroger. Albertsons ranked 53rd in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. Prior to its January 2015 merger with Safeway Inc. for $9.2 billion, it had 1,075 supermarkets located in 29 U.S. states under 12 different regional banners
Whether it be Safeway corporate greed, an epidemic of non-stop shop lifting or the failure of San Francisco leadership to guarantee a place for citizens to shop the reality is a 40 year neighborhood dining room table necessity is gone.
I took a walk by the site in the Western Addition today and it is a depressing view, indeed.
A large Safeway which would be packed with shoppers at midday now stands forlornly empty.
Empty deli shelves in the shuttered Western Addition Safeway
Safeway planned to shutter the store a year ago. Then Mayor London Breed, born and raised nearby in the Western Addition facing a tough reelection campaign prevailed upon Safeway to keep the store open another year. It was a short lived victory for all concerned. Mayor Breed was defeated last November. The supermarket is now shuttered.
The biggest losers are the customers, many of whom no longer have a readily accessible supermarket to buy their groceries.
Then Mayor London Breed in happier days at the Western Addition SafewayThe sign may read ‘STORE CLOSING – FEBRUARY 7TH (2025). It’s already gone.
ABC 7 SAN FRANCISCO REPORT WHEN SAFEWAY CLOSURE ANNOUNCED – 1.8.2024
Lee's Perspective 