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 me to try a Mac. I went to San Francisco for the holidays and went up to the spirit...

This week has been unsettling for both the Lone Wolf husband and me. I may be an antennae that picks up the energy of people all around me while he spends more time ignoring them, but we've both been distracted by "interesting" things that have been happening to our daughters...

I can't think of any better place than the Palais Royal to have an exhibition for the ever chic little black dress. And that's just what you'll currently find if you walk down the rue de Montpensier arcade of the former palace of Cardinal Richelieu. You remember the...

By guest columnist Paul Paradis, Art Historian, Specialist Consultant in French Furniture and Decorative Arts

Note from Beth Arnold: My friend Paul told me this fascinating story about something that had happened at an art auction recently, and I asked him to write about it and use my blog as...

He grew up near Hazard, Kentucky, not far from where my grandmother, Anna Wells, dug coal out of the mountain as a child to heat her home. Where she walked across the holler to go to school when there were no roads. His family's blood is also like part...

Listening to this roaring American furor over Roman Polanski needing to get what he deserves reminds me of the enormous public outcry about Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" on the Super Bowl halftime show a few years ago. Ohmygod, Americans caught a glimpse of a bare breast. The horror...the horror...

There...

I am reading Janet Flanner's Paris Journal 1944-55. She is a luminary to some, including me, for the "Letter From Paris" column she wrote (under the name Genêt) for The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until 1975. I aspire to be a variation on her writer-journalist theme in...

If you can get away for a day or so, it might be a good plan to fly to Paris and spend the evening at Josephine Baker's new Casino show. You would have plenty to think about on the return trip, for the revue contains something of everything...."

There are genres of literature I call "Life in Paris or France" and "Adventures in France." These books are usually fun reads that allow Francophiles to dream their dreams of living in the land of luscious patisseries and Winged Victory--or give readers the space to imagine fulfilling their own...

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...

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,...

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...

We took off our running shoes and walked barefooted along the path, which included the bed of a clear stream of water that I would call a creek. Smiling women in colorful dresses, balancing bundles on their heads, and men and giggling children met us along this liquid footpath. The...

With the crises in the world over the last year or so--the attacks in Mumbai, the cyclone in Burma, protest in Tibet, and now the Iranian elections--information has been reported fast and furiously by everyone with a device to do so. Were the facts accurate? Yes/no/sometimes. At the very least,...

This comment was posted on my blog--www.betharnold.com--yesterday by a friend who is missing a friend--a photographer recording the protests in Tehran. If anyone can help find him, please do what you can! We all need to stand with the Iranian people who need our support--in whatever way possible.

The Obamas are in France -- a land that loves and admires them, individually and as a couple, for their intelligence, philosophies, and, let's not forget, potent style. Barack and Michelle and the First Couple of France Nicolas and Carla (Bruni) Sarkozy are walking the streets of Normandy,...

With yet another round of Dick Cheney disinformation saturating the airwaves, it boggles the mind how the Bush administration controlled the American conversation in the media for so many years. As the public was pounded with fear and loathing of the rest of the world--during the lead-up to the...

It was with great sadness we read that the fashion house of Christian Lacroix filed for court protection from creditors -- bankruptcy -- yesterday. I had actually been tipped of the dismal news last week, so I wasn't surprised -- but sorry that this extraordinary man whose fashions we lusted...

Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi goes on trial in prison today in Burma. What does this mean for us as Americans and citizens of the world? In my opinion, this courageous leader and the Burmese people need our support in their fight for freedom and democracy. Here is...

The rain fell softly as I wound around the tight curves of Highway One, heading north of San Francisco. My daughter Blair and I had left Tony's Seafood Restaurant in Marshall, California--an atmospheric old seafood shack with pine-paneled dining room sitting over the quietly lapping water--to make the swervy...