Paris Parfait

Take the time

Giant ancient clockface at Geraldine Michaelis's stand Une Chanson Douce at the Antiquities Brocante at Place de la Bastille, Paris.

Come With Me
To the quiet minute between two noisy minutes
It's always waiting ready to welcome us
Tucked under the wing of the day
I'll be there
Where will you be?

Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye from her book Come with Me: Poems for a Journey.

Tara Bradford is traveling. In her absence, timed posts should appear. She will post occasional updates from the road.

More photos from Bastille

Images taken at Clement Rosenzweig's Chinez toutes les Tendances stand at the Antiquities Brocante at Place de la Bastille, Paris. The event continues daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. through May 18th. Tickets are available at the entrance. You can also visit Monsieur Rosenzweig's shop at Marche Dauphine, 132/140 rue des Rosiers at Clignacourt, St. Ouen, Paris. It is open from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

A 20th-century spiral staircase model handmade in mahogany.

Two zinc weathervanes and framed prints.

A horse's head and a zinc weathervane within a vintage frame.

Brocante beauty at Bastille

An artful arrangement of urns, sculptures, busts, 18th-century books and a sculptor's model at Sophie Pretelat's Anges et Demons stand at the Antiquities Brocante at Bastille. Pretelat's eye for acquiring unusual antiques and curiosities - and her styling skills - are frequently featured in books, most recently in Secrets d'interieurs by Michele Lalande and Gilles Trillard.

A 19th-century urn filled with lovely seashells. The brocante at Place de la Bastille continues from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily through May 18.

Stone and plaster birds, an antique birdcage and candlesticks and lamps at Anges et Demons. Visit Pretalat's shop at 14 rue Notre Dame in Cunault, France.

An antique column, 19th-century frames, rolled-up tapestry and an embroidered altarcloth.

Mercury glass candlesticks, a hand-etched frosted-glass goblet, 18th-century books and a framed portrait make up this table display at Anges et Demons. Many more brocante photos to come!

Mother's Day / Fete des meres / Dia da la Madre

A vintage wooden toy truck at Geraldine Michaelis's stand Une Chanson Douce at the Antiquities Brocante at Bastille.

To my maman and all mothers and grandmothers who have tried their best to insure children have happy, healthy childhoods, then go on to lead productive lives and contribute something valuable to the world: Thank you. Merci bien. Muchas gracias. Bonne fete! Happy Mother's Day!

A brocante, a sculptor's model and pickpockets

Parts of 19th-century zinc weathervanes, along with an 18th-century wooden religious retablo, a copper figure on horseback and a 20th-century architectural model of a spiral staircase at the Chinez toutes les Tendances stand at the Antiquities Brocante at Place de la Bastille. The event continues daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. through May 18th. Tickets are available at the door. Check back Sunday for more brocante photos.

Be aware the "rakkai" or pickpockets are out in full force on the Paris metro, particularly on Lines 1, 8 and 9. Today I was returning from Bastille, carrying an antique sculptor's model. Two guys tried to grab my handbag, but I'd spotted them already and was prepared. I threatened to hit them with the pot. They grinned and said in French, something to the effect, "You'll break it!" I replied, "Et votre tete aussi (And your head too)." They laughed, but jumped off the train as the doors were closing.

Antique original sculptor's model for a piece ultimately made in silver. I found it at the inimitable Sophie Pretelat's Anges et Demons at Bastille. Thankfully, I didn't have to use it as a weapon against pickpockets on the train!

Spring brocante at Bastille

Early 20th-century advertising poster.

If you're in Paris over the next few days, you may enjoy attending the Antiquites Brocante at Place de la Bastille. The twice-yearly brocante offers some of the best antiques and vintage pieces in Paris, from a wide variety of vendors. Stop by Stand 514 on Boulevard Bastille and say hello to my friend, Monsieur Pettersson. He sells wonderful and unusual antiques and objects d' curiosite - and he speaks English!

The brocante begins at 11 a.m. Thursday - meet me there? - and continues daily through May 18th. Take the Paris metro lines 1, 5 or 8 to Bastille and Quai de la Rapee or bus lines 76, 86 or 91. Parking is available at Opera Bastille. Tickets are available at the door.

A rather weathered toy boat.

A vintage basket contains spools of thread and ribbon. Old tole lampshades are also on offer at a local brocante.

Check back Thursday for photos of Asian-inspired windows at Galeries Lafayette. No time to post them today!

Larking about London

Scaffolding props up the facade of a 19th-century building on Oxford Street, London. Behind the facade, construction is underway on a new space, which will retain the historical facade. In the building at left, a flag is reflected in the window's glass.

A jumble of cooking wares caught in a fisherman's net at Divertimenti in Knightsbridge, London. The Brompton Oratory is reflected in the glass.

The spring-themed window in an upscale charity shop on Brompton Road.

A giant lipstick tube - Heatherette for M.A.C. Cosmetics - in a window display at Selfridges on Oxford Street.

Banners advertising an ongoing exhibition at the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road.

Children and their parents line up for tickets to the giant maze and butterfly house at the Natural History Museum.

Boxed plants suspended from iron railings outside buildings on Cromwell Road.

Sunday morning at Puce de Vanves

An antique dealer entertains shoppers with his guitar skills Sunday morning on Avenue Marc Sangnier at the Puce de Vanves. Susan of Soozphotoz and her daughter Sara and I spent the morning shopping and chatting and shopping and chatting. No, I can't show you my purchases, which are for friends I'll be seeing during my travels in May.

A curious keyboard on wheels on Avenue Georges Lafenestre. The flea market at Vanves is open every Saturday and Sunday morning. Plan on arriving early for the best choice.

A group of cane-bottomed bistro chairs.

Vintage Barbies, complete with original box. Susan and I remember the Barbies in the yellow-and-white lace dress and strapless striped one from childhood.

Brocante basics

I am off to London until Sunday, so here are more photos of the recent brocante at Chatou, France. All being well, timed posts will appear daily in my absence.

A gilt mirror frame and painting from Brittany are among the antiques on offer.

I adore the cherry red wooden chairs!

Vintage drawers and cabinets offer storage space for cuisine or office.

A variety of traditional French pottery on offer at Chatou.

Chairs aged with a paint effect and recovered in a floral brocade.

Two marble Grecian-style panels, a chest of drawers and Flemish chandelier.

A Napoleon I Empire chair and Egyptian-influenced stone urns.

A desk from the British ship HMS Portsmouth.

A small circus ride for children features a horse, bear and elephant.

An alabaster bust, twin vases and a decorative fan-shaped panel adorned with gilt cherubs.

A bow and arrow astride two endtables.

Salvage and pirates

A prototype for a light wing aircraft is among the many salvage items on these barges. Currently, the vessels are floating next to peniches or houseboats along the River Seine.

Speaking of salvage, certain officials are determined to save France's reputation. Some government officials are outraged about the French entry's English lyrics in the upcoming Eurovision song contest. Quel horreur!

And the six Somali pirates who seized a French yacht and held the crew hostage for a week have arrived in Paris for police questioning.

The French parliament has banned websites and magazines that promote anorexia among teenage girls. The French blog, Be Perfect, Be Pro Ana, encourages teenage girls to refuse food, make themselves sick and take laxatives to emulate the body shape of their "thinspirations" such as Nicole Richie and Victoria Beckham.

Government figures suggest between 30,000 and 40,000 people in France suffer from anorexia. Most are female aged 12 -19. French advertisers, model agencies and fashion houses have agreed to sign a government charter to "refuse to publish images, especially of young people, which could promote an ideal of extreme thinness."

Obviously this problem is not limited to France.

Wicked game

A leather case of vintage Bingo and other board games at a French brocante. Chris Isaak sings about the only Wicked Game worth playing.

Pathetic. Is this what Hillary Clinton considers leadership - twisting and manipulating someone else's words, taken out of context - rather than come up with solutions for those people losing their jobs and homes? The ad - and Clinton's focus in her recent speeches - insults voters' intelligence. Oh and one of the so-called Pennsylvania voters in the ad is actually registered to vote in New Jersey."Bitter?" You betcha! Seriously, who isn't disappointed about what's happened to our country under George W. Bush (other than his rich and getting richer cronies)?

John Baer of The Philadelphia Daily News responds to Clinton's latest campaign tactics:

"Some thoughts on the latest diversion of Campaign '08, a campaign apparently hell-bent on keeping the nation mired in its own stupidity. As a native-born, small-town Pennsylvanian, a son of native-born, small-town Pennsylvania parents - one from the coal region, one from Lancaster County - let me assure you that the so-called offensive, condescending things Barack Obama said about the people I come from are basically right on target.

"Bitter" perhaps best describes my late mother, an angry Irish Catholic who absolutely clung to her religion. Dad, also a journalist, wasn't really bitter as far as I know, but he sure liked to hunt. So, despite carping from Hillary Clinton and annoying yapping from her surrogates (really, it's like turning on the lights at night in a puppy farm), I take no offense. What's offensive to me is suggesting that small-town, working-class, gun-toting and/or religious Pennsylvanians are somehow injured by a politician's words.

"Are you kidding me? They're injured all right, but the injury is long-term and from lots more than "just words." They've been injured from decades of neglect by political cultures in Washington and Harrisburg driven by special interests. They're injured by a system of isolated, insulated political leadership that protects itself and the status quo above all else.

"They've been harmed by a lack of political guts to fix a health-care system that works against the poor and forces middle-class families to pay more for less, while at the same time giving politicians the best coverage taxpayer money can buy.

"They've been taken for granted by political parties and candidates who stay in power by - and this was the apparent gist of Obama's remarks - forcing attention and debate on issues tied to guns, religion and race (precisely because such issues resonate) rather than real problems such as health care and the economy.

"They've been consistently made fools of by their own elected representatives who, year after year, pull fat salaries ($169,000 for every member of Congress; $150,000 in salary, perks and benefits for every state lawmaker) with automatic raises no matter how little gets done.

"A new Associated Press poll shows Congress' approval rating at 23 percent. And don't even get me started on the Pennsylvania Legislature. Insulting? What's insulting are the sizes of salaries and perks of politicians in a state where the median household income is $43,714. What's insulting is the ongoing failure of elected "leaders" to deal with long-term, working-class worries while insuring their own futures with hefty, over-rich pensions...

"...So the question is whether Obama effectively defuses this, as he did the controversy surrounding his former minister. And that remains to be seen. Just don't tell me that he insulted a state or, given his background, that he's an out-of-touch elitist. And I especially don't want to hear such arguments from a candidate who spent decades in the bubble of a governor's mansion, the White House and the U.S. Senate and under the blanket of $109 million income during the last eight years.

Pennsylvanians might cling to religion and guns. I hope they don't cling to stupidity."

Here are some excellent points about the disingenuous actions of both the Clinton and McCain campaigns and the media's unwillingness or inability to cover the stories.

Curiosities at Centre Pompidou

Some curious sculptures and works of art at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

This made me laugh out loud.

And I find it so refreshing to hear a politician speak the truth.

Taking us for a ride

Pedicab for sale at a brocante at Chatou, France.

At Truthdig Marie Cocco writes about Seven Years of Scandal. Infuriating and mind-boggling.

Nancy Pelosi takes a principled stand. If only more people in government displayed such courage!

On a lighter note, my friend Tangobaby has posted some great photos taken in the Sunset District in San Francisco - which just happens to be my old neighbourhood. Yes, I am homesick!

When traversing the Paris Metro on Tuesday, I learned a little about the plight of an Iraqi refugee and her young daughter. The contrast of the woman's pitiful state with two American women, dressed in furs and Gucci made me want to scream at the far-reaching and terrible implications of George W. Bush's war. Tonight I opened the book Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds to find Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, which struck a chord:

"Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

"Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

"Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

"Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend."

Vintage dolls and seeds of possibility

Today I have been a busy woman, writing up a storm; chasing away gloom; dispelling doubt and planting magical seeds of possibility. I've also been listening to this song, an old favourite.

Photos of vintage poupees from the recent brocante at Chatou.

Religious icon.

Elfin dolls.

Southern belle.

Two quirky dolls in a wicker wine crate.

Dutch treats in wooden clogs.

Two real live dolls, although one doesn't seem very happy.

Sunday sports

Kodak advertising sign from a photo shop in southwest France, photographed recently at the brocante at Chatou.

Remember film? Amazing how quickly we have adapted to digital cameras, drastically reducing the market for film. For photos of today's Paris Marathon go here. Check back later for additional marathon photographs, as well as pictures from opening day at the races at Hippodrome de Longchamp.

Oh and all that talk about the French president - and various other officials around the world - calling for a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremonies? I don't believe politics and sports should mix. The athletes have trained long and hard and shouldn't be denied a chance to compete because of the host's abysmal human rights record - a key factor that the Olympic Committee should have considered when awarding host nation status to China.

The country has a well-documented history of human rights abuses, both in Tibet and within its own borders. So those advocating a boycott because of China's latest horrendous abuses and crackdown on protestors shouldn't be surprised; this is what the Chinese government does. They are serial abusers of human rights, no matter how hard they try to conceal their true nature when making lucrative business deals with the West. But let's not punish the athletes simply because the Olympic Committee exercised poor judgement.

Meanwhile, racism has reared its ugly head at France's largest World War I cemetery. Read the sad story here.

Industrial chic at Chatou

A tall chest with original numbers revealed by a paint treatment at Julie Isore's Agape, pictured at the recent brocante at Ile de Chatou, France. (Yes, that tall chest came home with me - and there is no room for it anywhere)!

An industrial steel serving cart and hospital sidetables.

Original Tolix stools and blue bobbin chests.

A vignette of bottles and books at Agape.

A zinc industrial barrel turned into a light fixture. Check out the Hermes-orange numbered lockers in the background.

A zinc patterned l'oeil du boeuf from Geraldine Michaelis's Une Chanson Douce.

Oeil du boeuf zinc window casings that once graced a chateau.

An old stove and a hodgepodge of rusty watering cans and other utilitarian items.

Zinc buckets in an iron daybed frame at Chatou. Another brocante at Chatou is scheduled in September.

Good for what ails you

Vintage French pharmacy bottles at the recent brocante at Chatou, France.

Today I received an anti-Obama email from someone with whom I grew up... It was one of the most racist, right-wing, revisionist pieces of garbage I've ever seen. I know I should consider the source: someone who grew up in a wealthy household with a full-time black maid; who has led a privileged life and was a George W. Bush supporter. But these are the kind of deliberately wrong-headed Republican-fueled attacks we can expect as we move closer to the election in November.

No matter what candidate you support in the presidential election, I urge you to pay attention to the facts, not the rumors and innuendo. If you don't know where a candidate stands on certain issues, go to their official website; read a variety of newspapers, magazines and blogs. Check out the candidates' Senate voting records. Think for yourself! Don't accept as fact a distorted bunch of words combined in mean-spirited and ignorant attacks designed to rip the country apart, rather than bring us together.

If there's anything we've learned in the past seven-plus years of an incompetent Bush administration, it's that we must stand together to combat extremists and special interests. We cannot allow further erosion of our civil liberties and Constitutional freedoms by those who stand to profit from our complacency.

And I'm still so upset by that vile message, am off to listen to Earth Wind & Fire's That's the Way of the World, for many years, my favourite peace of mind song - followed by a lap or two around Longchamp.

Joys of spring

Vintage doll repair shop, 17th arrondissement, Paris.

No matter the every-five-minutes fluctuations of Paris weather, I am smitten with spring fever and its accompanying delights:

Anticipating a long, eventful journey that begins in just 42 days - yes, I am counting the days.

Randall LaGro, one of my favourite artists, offers a peek into his studio, while talking about his work.

Thanks to Sharon for sending news about Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the 88-year-old San Francisco legend and founder of City Lights Bookstore. His new poem -with a nod to Khalil Gibran - mirrors our troubled times:

"Pity the nation whose people are sheep
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation
who raises not its voice
except to praise conquerors
and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force
and by torture.
Pity the nation
that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation
whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation - oh pity the people who allow
their rights to erode
and their freedoms to wash away.
My country tears of thee, sweet land of liberty."

On a brighter note, my friend Michelle French sent this Leningrad version of Sweet Home Alabama.

And the ever-entertaining Robin Williams gives an impromptu performance on BBC.

Best of the brocante

My Swedish friend G. Pettersson - who has an extraordinary eye for beautiful and unusual objects - at his booth at the brocante at Square des Batignolles, Paris. While Monsieur Pettersson lives in the Southwest of France, you can telephone him if you're interested in purchasing anything you see here: (011) 33.6.11.19.89.86. If your French is a bit shaky, not to worry - he speaks excellent English! And if you're in Paris in May, you can check out his wares at the antiquites brocante at Place de Bastille.

Meanwhile, the brocante at Square des Batignolles continues daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. through April 6. Take the Metro Line 13 direction Asniers Gennevilliers to Brochant.

A handsome pair of English Chippendale chairs, recently upholstered in plaid.

Another view of the chairs, as well as a small cabinet, perfect for artist's supplies.

The Napoleon III globe, two petite confits de canard and blue pharmacy jar came home with me. Before I'd even paid for the items, two French women offered to buy the confits de canard from me. I declined, as the small ones are rare and will increase in value.

Monsieur Pettersson shows a hat rack to a customer.

A grouping of unusual frames and objets d'art.

An aqua crystal flower chandelier.

A vitrine filled with beautiful frames and precious decorative objects.

Out and about Paris

News kiosk, Paris, March 29, 2008.

Impromptu performance by an all-girl brass band, Square des Batignolles, 17th arrondissement.

Vintage bicycle hoisted over a wooden fence, alongside paintings and a mirror, antiquites brocante.

Wrought iron baby bed draped with purple tulle and flowers. Check back later for more photos. The brocante continues from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily through April 6th at the Square des Batignolles, Metro line 13 direction Asnieres-Genevilliers to Brochant.

Feeding the ducklings, Square des Batignolles park.

A pigeon in the park.

Sign over a doll repair shop, 17th arrondissement.