Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: Back to Obsessions (In This Case, Photographing Food)

I have a confession.  I may be some degree of a research junkie and spend way too much time hurtling down the deep rabbit hole of the Internet, but I can't see it all.  I can't keep up with the run-of-the-mill news much less the well-written pieces I actually want to read and absorb.  Forget the poor jumbles of words and articles that have become commonplace since everyone in the world now thinks of him- or herself as a "writer."  

What we see now on the Internet is a mass of badly written articles with inaccurate information that pass for "expert advice"--and some on "expert" sites though I'll not name any names.  Have you noticed that everyone you come across is an expert these days--including some twenty-two years olds right out of college? 

Some of these youngsters may actually be authorities, especially those on a techie road, but most aren't--even if they have an expensive education with all the internships and jobs mommy and daddy arranged.  At some point in our lives, we all need to do get down and dirty with life.  We need to get our legs knocked out from underneath us to see how that feels--so we have to stand back up, catch our breaths, and reinvent ourselves.  This would go a long way in creating an attitude of compassion and gratitude to replace the greed, narcissism, and manipulation many of us have learned at home, and is now reverberating through the conservative media. 

Learning to negotiate through a materialistic culture and our dysfunctional families have trained us to be chips off the old dysfunctional block. As my friend Greg Elliott says, the apple doesn't fall from the tree. 

But what about this?  What if the apple evolved and rolled away?

***

In iWorld

Crossposted at HuffingtonPost.  Comments not included here.

The promise of yet another fab Apple product in our iLives--the iPad--reminded me of this photo I took in Athens:

I am a huge Apple fan--but couldn't resist taking a snapshot of this T-shirt hanging outside a kitsch tourist shop in the Plaka.

                                                               ---Beth Arnold in Paris

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Letter From Paris: Apple Mania!

Image via CrunchBase

Crossposted at HuffPost.com.  Comments not included here.

Hallelujah!  Three years ago, I was transformed.  I was sick and tired of all the problems I was having with my umpteenth PC, and slowly, over time, several friends finally convinced to try a Mac.  I went to San Francisco for the holidays and went up to the spirit in the Apple sky, the flagship Apple store.  I bought my first MacBook, and I was one happy girl--especially after I got through the totally do-able yet hair-pulling frustration period of throwing my PC knowledge into the poubelle and installing the latest Apple OS into my non-tech brain.

The next year I went back to San Francisco for the holidays, and I immersed myself in Apple classes and personal training sessions.  I was determined to learn how to use the amazing media-producing machine I'd purchased, and that's exactly what I did.  And FYI:  I give that store, and its staff a stellar 10 out of 10 for their work and for their working with me.  After all, I live in Paris and only had a limited amount of time to drill as much Apple info into my brain as possible.  Because unlike New York, London, Sydney, and Tokyo, Paris didn't have a real Apple store.  And sorry, France, and my French friends, but we all know about the almost non-existence of what the rest of the world knows as "Customer Service" in France.  Plus, I'd had a major problem with the "Customer Service" that was here.  It wasn't up to Apple snuff in my book. 

Could Apple do sufficient training so a staff here could pull off Steve Jobs' amazing company concept?  

The Sale of The Century Is The End of The Saint Laurent Era (or Part of What I Did in Northern California)

Image via Wikipedia

I'm back from San Francisco and northern California where I went to celebrate daughter Blair's birthday.  Blair is an angel God sent down to enrich the earth with her big spirit and to make me a more generous person--oh, and to remind me of all the things I could've and should've let her do growing up--that I don't even remember saying no to now much less why I did.  When she occasionally and good naturedly points out these memory chits, I marvel at my parental idiocy. 

More about that later, but we took the spectacular yet nerve-wracking trip up Highway 1 to Sea Ranch Lodge.  The picture?  Think cows in clouds--and enormous bluffs ripping down to the Pacific Ocean as far as you can see.  Big waves crashing against bigger boulders.  Some of nature's eye candy.

While in San Fran, I headed over to my home away from home--Apple SF--and finally put together what I'd started there in December (and didn't have time to finish before this), my first Letter From Paris podcast.  Check it out: some of my footage of Christie's "Sale of The Century," the preview of Yves Saint Laurent-Pierre Berge Collection. Art Deco in this clip.  The Suspension Satellite chandelier is Irish designer Eileen Gray's, whose Dragons chair fetched a world record almost $30 million in the sale.

Gotta say, I have great people involved with the Letter From Paris podcast.  And Apple deserves big kudos all the way around-- especially Apple pro Chris Rebuck who is my trainer and Motion Man, Linda Berland who has moved the earth for me in her store, and Bryan Shawley who has just taken her magic scheduling place.  Direct from Paris, talented composer Robert Alpert is my Music Man.  Working with him to find the sound of the LFP theme was a real pleasure.  The process of his musical ear creating what I described fell exactly in place.  Last but not least, my girls have great ideas and interesting opinions.  They're always on my team.

                                                                                 ---Beth Arnold