Journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall reports from the the second half of life -- on books, writing . . . her husband, house, aging relatives and grown-up kids.
A hidden tree came into view as I worked my way down the canyon. Photos by BF Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
Something big and white and cloudy was lurking in the steep canyon below our house. I stood up from my computer and peered out the window for a better look.
It was flowering tree, growing wild. [Read more...]
My son Peter gets to know the outlet at Lake Michigan. Photos by BF Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The Oakland Tribune, August 9, 1987
Up in Siskiyou mountain country, in the northwest corner of California, there is a spot known to the Karuk tribe as Kota-Mein. In the Karuk language, Kota Mein means “center of the world.” Like their ancestors before them, the Karuk people hike up to sacred spots like Kota-Mein, Chimney Rock and Doctor Rock to talk to the Great Spirit and to receive power.
I have never been to Kota-Mein, but I have been to Bass Lake, Mich.
If I were drawing a map of the world, its center would be at Bass Lake, just where its outlet flows into the great, blue Lake Michigan. [Read more...]
Lake MIchigan sunset. Photo by BF Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
I saw the map and burst into tears. It broke my heart.
Windmills, a hundred square miles of them, are being proposed for Lake Michigan – a couple miles off shore. In the lake. [Read more...]
Orchids
There’s nothing I can say about these orchids.
Except that they were growing in Thailand, on a farm, where there were so many feats of blossoming splendor that by tour’s end Jon, Christina and I were wailing, “No! Please! Not another stupendously beautiful orchid! Get me out of here! Take me to the snake ranch!”
Where, of course, the snakes were beautiful too.
© 2009 Barbara Falconer Newhall
. . . orchids . . .
. . . and more orchids. Photos c 2009 B.F. Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
I confess, I’m not very good at being in the moment, even if — especially if – the moment is a nice one. If I’m having a good time, my mind tends to lurch into the future to the day when this loveliness will be no more. My thoughts sink into nostalgia and sadness at the knowledge that everything ends, especially, it seems, the really good stuff.
Be alive to the moment. Be present to the holiness of this place. Buddhism recommends this. Modern psychology encourages it. Christianity and Judaism know about it. (“Be still and know that I am God.”) In my opinion, it’s what Edna St. Vincent Millay was thinking when she wrote “Renascence:”
God, I can push the grass apart, And lay my finger on Thy heart!
The physical therapist reiterates it as she contemplates my overstressed and overdeveloped trapesezius muscles. I gotta do it, she tells me. Relax those muscles. Let go of that anxiety. Be in the moment. Be here now.
But — and here comes the big but – when I encounter something beautiful, I can’t seem to 
just sit there and be with it. For reasons I don’t understand (yet) I am greedy and grasping when it comes to beauty.
An exquisitely foggy day in the canyon behind my house? A star magnolia blossom battered by yesterday’s rain? Across the Bay in Marin county, a footpath cutting into the steep western flank of Mount Tamalpais? In Florence, the Last Judgement frescoed onto the interior of the Duomo? On a scorching, sun-pierced day in Bangkok, a Thai peddler offering me a hat?
In each instance, I feel I must do something about this wondrous event. Make it last. Make it mine. And so, like a lot of people, I get out the camera and take a picture.
What you see posted here, therefore, is the work of a greedy woman, a person who can’t get enough of that wonderful stuff, beauty. Right now, however, I’m not regretting my greed. As I upload these photos, one at a time, I notice myself lingering over them, studying them, savoring them. I am lost in the moment.
Beauty drove Tess Gadwa to larceny on the way to church yesterday. A Greenfield, Massachusetts, blogger, Tess says she found a painted Easter egg lying on the ground, forgotten and forlorn. Instead of putting the egg back where she found it or handing it off to a deserving child, Tess boldface kept the thing. The Egg Thief’s reasoning: “Beauty is worth stealing when you find it.”
Text and photos © 2009 Barbara Falconer Newhall
