Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris presents... Paris EyePhone

By Contributing Editor Mario C. Servin, iPhone Photographer and Traveling Economist

Summer Is Over...

Erquy, Brittany

A beach scene with a cloudy sky, and stairs that seem to reach for the sky rather than the sand.  It's Labor Day today in the U.S. and this picture reminds of summers in Maine and on the Cape.

Letter From Paris: Meet The Neighbors--Isadora Duncan

Image via Wikipedia

Long about June, our friends Hooker and Greg came to visit us in Paris. The four of us with other dear friends and varied acquaintances had partaken of many high times and jovial dinners together in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the Lone Wolf and I once lived and Greg and Hooker still do. But this was the first time these designing men had come to Paris so we could have a convivial fete on or near the Seine.

A few days before they arrived, I was looking for a movie on TV and happened upon Isadora, the 1968 film about Isadora Duncan in which Vanessa Redgrave starred. I knew a few of the fascinating details about the Duncan family's life in Paris, since our friend Dolly West had known them here. One thing I hadn't realized was that Isadora's two darling children, Deirdre, whose father was theater designer Gordon Craig, and Patrick, whose father was Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer, had died along with their nanny when the car they were sitting in rolled off into the Seine. They all drowned.

The image haunted me. This is a tragedy from which a mother could never recover.

I did a little research on Ms. Duncan and discovered she was one of my neighbors at Pere Lachaise Cemetery. And so when Hooker and Greg were here, we set out to find this diva of dance. What we were looking for was for her name on a marble plate at the columbarium. Ms. Duncan had been cremated, and from what I'd read, her ashes were interred next to those of her cherished children.

And so after following the numbers on the marble plates, we eventually found the place where this wonderfully wild woman was laid to rest.

Letter From Paris: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

September is here, and Paris is cool in the mornings.  A change is in the air.  Fall, as in autumn cool with some people still wearing shorts while others are wearing sweaters and tall boots, which never go unworn in Paris no matter what the season.  Not everything is open again since the August holiday just ended--but almost.  The lines are longer in stores.  The streets don't feel as luxuriously empty.

A few days ago, the Lone Wolf and I were walking up a rue close to our apartment in the 20th Arrondissement, and we found this on the sidewalk.

The image and text on the black background were so striking.  I had to take some photos.