Hillary Clinton pays visit to Palazzo Feinstein Part 1
A Tell-Tale Heart
San Francisco
September 30, 2007

This afternoon, the Democratic Party presidential candidate NY Senator Hillary Clinton paid a visit to the San Francisco home of Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband, Richard Blum. Greeted outside by waiting protesters, the Clinton's rendezvous with Feinstein and invited guests was held inside the mansion dubbed the "Palazzo Feinstein" by Joshua Frank, an investigative journalist, who helped expose how Feinstein and her husband reaped hundreds of millions of dollars from investments in his Perini Corporation which does extensive general contract work in war-torn Iraq.

While waiting for her arrival, I snapped photos of the protesters and listened to their speeches and protest songs. I will post some of these photos in Part 2 of this story here at Indybay.org.

As this was my first visit to the mansion that has been the site of a growing number of protests (mostly because of the worsening war in Iraq), I marveled at the building's fortress-like location accessible by only one street, and by steep stairways hosting a ceaseless trickle of persons apparently devoted to physical culture and their I-pods. The main entrance of the mansion looks over a small classical garden and courtyard abutting a securely fenced, scruffily vegetated hillside of the Presidio National Park. It was in this courtyard, scanned by two video surveillance cameras mounted like devil horns on the roof, that the protesters, composed mostly of women from Code Pink and the Raging Grannies, sang and spoke.

While waiting for Clinton's arrival, I especially marveled at the curious fiberglass sculpture in the center of the garden-- one of 130 hearts commissioned in 2004 and sold to benefit the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.

"Why, it's a bloody bird in distress!" I said to myself.

How strikingly appropriate for the home of persons whose hands are bloodied.