Journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall reports from the the second half of life -- on books, writing . . . her husband, house, aging relatives and grown-up kids.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
I first met Jasmin Darznik back in 2006, and right away she presented a problem.
We were in the same nonfiction workshop – it was led by agent Michael Carlisle – at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.
I had dutifully read Jasmin’s manuscript the night before our class – and for the first time in my workshopping career, I thought I had nothing helpful to say to the writer. [Read more...]
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
Merle Haggard, Bill Graham, Jerry Garcia, Bonnie Raitt — Joel Selvin knew/knows them all.
And I’ve known Joel Selvin for most of his adult life.
My husband knew Joel as a mouthy little kid who used to ride around the Berkeley hills in the Selvin family convertible – standing up on the front seat, hair flying in the wind
Joey’s mom would be arrested for child endangerment today, but no matter, little Joel survived his in-your-face childhood to become one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most knowledgeable, persistent, in-your-face rock & roll journalists.
During his multi-decade career at the San Francisco Chronicle, Joel interviewed Graham, Haggard, Garcia, Raitt and countless others. Many of those interviews are republished in Joel’s newest book, Smart Ass: The Music Journalism of Joel Selvin.
Smart ass. The title suits him. You can always count on Joey to speak his mind, and then some.
Since leaving the Chronicle, Joel has found book-writing even more rewarding than newspapering. The book he coauthored with Sammy Hagar, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, has spent time on the New York Times best seller list.
And Joel’s next project is just as promising.
I think this is one of the T-shirts I bought for Peter. An OK message is this for a mom to a son?
I haven’t bought any of Sammy Hagar’s music but I have bought a couple Ed Hardy T-shirts for my son. Hardy is the famed tattoo artist whose name is all over an edgy fashion brand, and now he’s writing a memoir with Joel for Thomas Dunne Books. I hope there are lots of pix.
In other words, Joel is having even more success with his books than he was as a newspaper journalist.
If I really want to get famous as a book author, maybe I should hang around with Joey a little more at his family’s gatherings. Study his style. Get mouthy.
I could do mouthy.
What I can’t do is ride around in a convertible with the top down, standing up in the front seat.
© 2011 BF Newhall
Smart Ass: The Music Journalism of Joel Selvin, by Joel Selvin, Parthenon Books, 2011, $19.95, paper.
Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, by Sammy Hagar with Joel Selvin. It Books/HarperCollins, $26.99.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
People who are against same-sex marriage often go out of their way to say, “Marriage is between one man and one woman.”
I noticed that while reporting a story about gay marriage for the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, California, some years ago.
Why “one” man and “one” woman, I wondered? Isn’t it obvious that a marriage is between two people? [Read more...]
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
When we are young, we strive, we hope, we want, we do. We are busy with the necessary work of keeping civilization alive and ourselves afloat in it. And that’s OK.
But, says Richard Rohr, there comes a time, in the second half of life, when we realize that we are doomed to failure. [Read more...]
Four abortions kept this book from being written years ago.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
Twenty-two years after the deadly crack-down at China’s Tiananmen Square, Chai Ling, a young leader of the student protests there, finally tells her story.
Why did it take so long?
Because Chai’s story is not simply one of political activism in China followed by escape to a new life in the United States. It is also the story of a woman who has had four abortions. [Read more...]
