Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: Parisian Bunnyland

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I was actually headed to Galleries Lafayette to hit their gourmet food hall.  For those in the know, Le Bon Marché's sensuous La Grande Epicerie may be the most luxurious grocery in Paris, but I relish the occasional foray to the also lovely Galleries Lafayette.  I'm a sucker to bring home plump dim sum dumplings or some of Eric Kayser's bread (even though I can get it closer to home), Moroccan tagines or Italian Osso Bucco.  I must sit at the Spanish Bar once or twice a year for a lunch of salty Serrano ham with Manchego cheese and a good glass of Rioja.  Yum yum yum...

On this day, I left the metro entrance in front of the Printemps department store and found myself surrounded by Parisian bunnies.  I loved them so!  I was in Parisian Bunnyland. 

Ted Kennedy: A Whole Human Being

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Crossposted at HuffPost.com.  Comments not included.

Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy passed on, and the world woke from its lethargy and paid attention. Homage is being paid to Kennedy across the globe, from Ireland to Bangladesh. But while the good senator from Massachusetts is silent and still, lying in repose in brother President John F. Kennedy's presidential library where thousands are expected to pay their respects, thousands more in an Internet mob has digitally armed itself to seek revenge. They see themselves as Righteous to now go after the iconic dead Kennedy's neck.

When someone dies, is the real impact of his or her life measured by how much passion is shown--pro or con, good or bad? Does this explain how much he or she has expanded consciousness in our Universe?

Letter From Paris: One Day in Le Marais

This is what I saw one day in Paris, while I was walking through Le Marais:

Big Red Doors I Wanted to Open So I Could See Behind Them

Letter From Paris: Day Trip to Senlis

Today I've visited one apartment and have another to go.  The first was called a souplex and had a lower floor--underground--which seems bizarre in Paris.  Why come to the City of Light and hide below ground?  I asked the nice young man if the lower étage had been a cave that was incorporated into the rez-de-chaussée (ground floor) living space.  He supposed it was.  He couldn't pay too much attention.  He was aflutter with his potential clients coming in and out.

The other apartment I'm seeing isn't really on the side of the river I want, which is the Right Bank.  Yes, Paris is a gorgeous city.  I love the Left Bank on my journeys across the Seine, but trust me, when you live here, you usually orient yourself on one side or the other.  Before we moved here, we hardly came to the Right Bank.  Now we hardly leave it.  If you want to live in Paris one day, this is something you'll be considering.

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My dear friend Lock lived in Paris for four years.  It was fantastic for me, because we'd never lived in the same town before.  And for half of that time, Lock lived 10 minutes walk from my soon lost apartment.  How good was that! Lock had been a close friend of my sweet brother Brent Arnold who died of AIDS in 1990.  Besides the fact that Lock is an impeccable gentleman and wonderful human being, Lock = part of Brent and his life = connection, familiarity, comfort, and brotherly love to me.  Lock came to Arkansas and gave the eulogy at Brent's funeral.  What more can I say?

Lock moved away about a year ago but graced Paris with his presence a few weeks back.  And we did what was a fairly regular occurance when he lived here: we took a day trip.  It has been one of my missions and pleasures to see the wondrous sights not just in Paris but within an hour from her, and Lock and I are traveling partners in this.  There are so many lovely venues in this perimeter, and it's a luxury to enjoy them over lazy time.  Lock got to choose our latest adventure, and he picked Senlis.

Senlis was a royal place of residence for Frankish rulers--and where Hugh Capet (image above) was chosen King.  The royal city dwindled from fashion, when the grand chateaus at Compiègne and Fontainebleau became its worthy successors.

We took the train to Chantilly and a connecting bus to the charming village.  Here's a trinity of Senlis photos:

Stained Glass Window in the Cathedrale Notre-Dame

Letter From Paris: Inglourious Basterds & Glorious Murals

Note: Obamarifix is taking a holiday while Beth is searching for a new apartment, but she's looking forward to getting back into the health care fray and delving into the minds of those misguided and misinformed Americans who are calling the people who are trying to help them Nazis.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Speaking of Nazis, go to your neighborhood cinema to see:  Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino is no filmmaking god to me--Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction showed his talent--and then he flopped.  But Basterds is a terrific picture and a whale of a ride!  (So why was it considered a turkey at Cannes?)  Brad Pitt is pure mountain Southern, and Diane Kruger shows starry acting chops.  Inspired performances all the way around.  The whole film is terrifically well done.  The audience we were part of stood up and clapped after it ended.

And now for Paris. 

One of the great pleasures of Paris is walking, and we've been beating the streets in search of apartments.  Along rue L'Agent Bailly in the 9th Arrondissement, I spied this mural:

Letter From Paris: Elvis Still Rocking in Paris

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Just so you know.  Paris is not lacking its own Elvis Presley culture.  In fact, Mr. Swivel-Hips-While-Dripping-Sex (when he was young and hungry) is well represented.  The My Happiness Elvis store on rue Notre Dame des Victoires is a temple to this King of Rock and Roll. 

Whether he's your king or not, Elvis truly changed the world.  And every year in August My Happiness closes its doors for Elvis Week in Memphis, where homage is paid and a vigil is made to remember the death of the king on August 16, 1977.

Imagine him in the above photo with Audrey Hepburn.  It would seem so Parisian...and, girls and boys, who wouldn't want that hair?

Elvis My Happiness on rue Notre Dame des Victoires

My Father's Voice

Crossposted at HuffPost.com.  Comments not included here.

My father, W.J. "Bill" Arnold, died 40 years ago today. This is in honor and in memory of him.

I hadn't heard my father's voice in almost 30 years--until today, when I played an old tape recording. The pace dragged, and the sound quality was scratchy, dating the mid-60's age of the tapes to the audio we have of President John F. Kennedy. Still, Daddy was giving quite a speech.

My father was a lawyer. Among his peers, he was known as a great trial attorney with exceptional oratory skills, and this was a tape of Daddy's courtroom argument that kept his crazy Uncle Clyde, by marriage, not blood--an important distinction in the South--from getting sent to jail. Clyde had feuded for years with his two neighbors over a property line before he finally shot them dead. With a brilliant legal performance, Daddy set Clyde free. But instead of the courthouse packed full of people who'd come to scrutinize the choice event, this time I was my father's sole audience.

My father's voice was iconic. I'd once known it as well as the beating of my own heart, and I thought I would recognize his deep resonance instantly. But now that I heard it again after more long sad years without him than the happy ones with him, I wasn't sure I remembered the music of his words. So I played the tapes over and over listening to the recorded timbre and inflections of his speech, and a thousand thoughts of my father and our relationship engulfed me.

Healing America (and What One Man Is Doing)

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Crossposted at the HuffPost.com.  Comments not included here.

In this new wave of uninformed mass hysteria that conservative forces are whipping up, American citizens are again being led down a twisted garden path. And this time it's about an issue that every single American should support--the reform of the health care system. I look across the ocean to my homeland and I think the same thing that a lot of my countrymen do when they see their fellow Americans going against their own best interests again: What is wrong with you people? How can you be led around by the ring of maliciously contrived lies that's in your nose? How can you not feel your masters' ultimate lack of respect for you? How can you not see the truth?

What's going on in the United States of America culturally to create this masochistic society? It's like a national pact of murder-suicide.

Letter From Paris: Crime Scene Revisited

Cover of To Catch a Thief

Investigators say the man, wearing a suit and a hat, walked into the Chopard jewelry boutique on the chic Place Vendome on May 30. He threatened employees with a gun and, minutes later, walked calmly out of the store with loot worth up to euro 6.5 million.
     ---Associated Press

                                                                                  
Juicy.  A less elegant Cary Grant in the classic Hitchcock movie To Catch A Thief from 1955.  Adorable Cary would never have waved a gun around at anyone. 

The scene of the crime:


Chopard

Letter From Paris: More Paris Mannequins

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I see and notice mannequins in Paris.  I regard them in the French sense of the word, when I'm walking down large and small rues and in passages that feel secretive, whether I'm wandering or marching straight to an appointment.  I find them here and there, and I'm fascinated by these figures that almost come to life: The male and female shapes dressed in the latest fashions. Those for sale and naked to the world. Models in designers' workshops. 

And, in this next photo, they are forms being thrown away.  They look like plaster of Paris, and I can only hope they are.  Where did they go?  Where do they lie, broken and bare?