![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. ![President George H.W. Bush signs into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990 as Justin Dart looks on. [Source: ucp.org]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ada_signing_072690_ucp_2.jpg "ada_signing_072690_ucp_2")
![Shepard Fairey’s “Barack Obama/Hope” image went viral during the 2008 election. Then controversy about the image’s source transformed it into the poster child for fair use in the public debate over copyright and free culture. Now FULAB takes “Hope” as its icon [Image source: Wikipedia]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/shepard_fairey_hope_2008.jpg "shepard_fairey_hope_2008")
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in 
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s 
All the talk about slow food and slow blogging reminds me of this story from the Left Bank. I published it first in September 2007, near the beginning of this blog. It remains one of the most satisfying pieces of new writing that I’ve done here. I was sad the day it dropped off the [...]
Entries Tagged as 'VIe'
Giving Thanks: One Reader Is A Miracle
9
November 26, 2009 at 6:00am
by Mark Willis
Bouquiniste · Ms. Modigliani · Paris · VIe · Ve Add Your Comment
Imaging Paris: Bouquinistes
0
August 15, 2008 at 3:28pm
by Mark Willis
[Photos by lodrorigdzin; all rights reserved]
Alex was in Paris last week, and he kindly asked if he could photograph anything in particular for me. He knew I’d love these images of the book stalls on the Seine. The offer was enough to set me loose in the time-space continuum. Perched on a ladder half a [...]
Bouquiniste · Imaging Paris · Seine · VIe · Ve · blind photographers Add Your Comment
Imaging Paris: Documenting May 1968
0
May 15, 2008 at 6:30pm
by Mark Willis
Protesters march down Boulevard Saint Michel on May 10, 1968. The banner reads: “Sorbonne Teachers Against Repression. [Photo by Serge Hambourg/via Art Knowledge News]
French photojournalist Serge Hambourg documented the turbulent student revolt in Paris in the spring of 1968 for the weekly magazine Le nouvel observateur. His images have been assembled in an exhibition [...]
1960s · French history · Imaging Paris · Paris · VIe · Ve · street Add Your Comment
Imaging Paris: May 1968
0
May 14, 2008 at 12:05am
by Mark Willis
Photos de Paris en 68. Montage: yoy’. Musique: Rosa Park -” la revolte gronde.”
1960s · French history · Imaging Paris · Paris · VIe · Ve · street art Add Your Comment
Paris May 1968: Under the Cobblestones, the Beach
1
May 13, 2008 at 9:10am
by Mark Willis
Students dig up cobblestones to throw at police. The layer of sand below the stones led to the slogan, “Under the cobblestones, the beach.” [Photo by Serge Hambourg/via NPR]
Sylvia Poggioli has an excellent radio story on NPR, Marking the French Social Revolution of ‘68:
Forty years ago, millions of French workers joined protesting students [...]
1960s · French history · Imaging Paris · Paris · VIe · Ve Add Your Comment
Imaging Paris: Pont des Arts
0
March 22, 2008 at 2:41pm
by Mark Willis
Pont des Arts Paris. Watercolor by deneux_jacques.
Thanks to deneux_jacques for sharing this image in the Creative Commons. See his superb photo set, Ah, Paris!
Imaging Paris documents places in the city and the images that inhabit them. “Just as every tried-and-true experience also includes its opposite, so here the perfected art of the flaneur includes a [...]
Art · Ie · Imaging Paris · Seine · VIe Add Your Comment
Fashionista Street : April Can Wait
4
March 16, 2008 at 6:30am
by Mark Willis
[Photo by Bill Cunningham/NYT]
I know this cafe. It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Pont des Beaux Arts foot bridge and the statue of Voltaire. It has a grand view of the Quai de la Seine, where it can feel as windswept as the Russian steppe even in June. Traffic noise on [...]
Bill Cunningham · Imaging Paris · Paris · VIe · fashionista Add Your Comment
Fashionista Street: Valentino at Musée Rodin
1
January 26, 2008 at 2:43pm
by Mark Willis
Valentino’s finale at the Rodin Museum was bathed in red. [Photo by Jean-Luce Huré for NYT]
To the storied history of the Hôtel Biron– Rodin’s studio, Sister of Icarus, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet — add this: Valentino Garavani’s haute couture finale. After a 45-year run, Valentino sold the shop last year for [...]
Paris · Rodin · VIe · fashionista Add Your Comment
Fashionista Street: Bowlers Are Back
0
January 20, 2008 at 6:00am
by Mark Willis
No, not bowling shirts. The hat, a la City of London, René Magritte, and A Clockwork Orange.
That’s the big news from Day 1 of Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. The prattle behind the prance at Jean Paul Gaultier: bowlers evoke smug banker conservatism and punk rebellion, transcending both. Buy one today and touch up your [...]
Paris · VIe · fashionista Add Your Comment
Imaging Paris: Fontaine des Médicis
2
December 10, 2007 at 5:00pm
by Mark Willis
The Fontaine des Médicis in the Luxembourg Garden, Paris. [Photo by a blind flaneur]
I went straight to the fontaine des Médicis. There was nobody there; but the spirit of the place held me at once and I could not go. When I had been in Paris with Anna long ago we had used to come [...]
Edible Dramas · Imaging Paris · Ms. Modigliani · Paris · VIe Add Your Comment