• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • BLOG
  • WRESTLING WITH GOD BOOK
  • CONTACT

Barbara Falconer Newhall

Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life as she knows it.

  • A CASE OF THE HUMAN CONDITION
  • MY EVER-CHANGING FAMILY
  • WRITING & READING
  • MY ROCKY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
  • WIDOWED
  • FUNNY BUTTON

Barbara Falconer Newhall

The Writing Room: To Niche or Not to Niche?

May 1, 2009 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 3 Comments

Where’s my niche – spiritually, philosophically, politically? As a writer? For a writer, nichelessness can be a problem. I’m a hopelessly open-minded, doubting, wondering, yearning skeptic who senses the Holy at work in all sorts of people — Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists.

A Case of the Human Condition: Feminine, Feminist Pink

April 27, 2009 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 2 Comments

Girls wear pink, but grown women like this one opt for daring spike heels. Photo by Barbara Newhall

Christina likes pink. Given a choice, my five-year-old daughter will take the pink balloon, the pink panties, the pink baseball bat. Read more.

A Case of the Human Condition: When Your Six-Year-Old Wants to Talk Money

April 20, 2009 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 12 Comments

A six-year-old boy dressed as a cowboy for halloween. Photo by Barbara Newhall

My six-year-old wanted an allowance. Jon and I debated. Fifty cents a week? 75? “Let’s not talk in cents,” said Peter. “Let’s talk in dollars.” Read more.

Writing Room: The Punch Line Always Goes Last

April 17, 2009 By Barbara Falconer Newhall Leave a Comment

Everyone knows that the punch line goes at the end of a joke, not the beginning. A mystery writer knows to set the story up and get all the necessary events and clues in place before revealing that the pizza delivery guy did it. The same is true of a paragraph and a sentence.

GodsBigBlog: Native American Tori Isner — Want to Find Holy? Go Look at a Rock

April 10, 2009 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 2 Comments

Army vet Tori Isner traces her roots to the Eastern Band of Cherokee of North Carolina. She’s an adopted Lakota Sioux who currently lives in Texas. “Go look at the ocean. That’s Creator. That’s beauty.”

Simone Weil on Prayer — First, Pay Attention. Book Openers

April 6, 2009 By Barbara Falconer Newhall Leave a Comment

retablo-chimayo-joseph

Simone Weil’s life was a short one, but her startling insights into the nature of God and God’s relationship to humanity pertain today.  Read more.

The Writing Room: Is Less More? Or Is More More?

April 3, 2009 By Barbara Falconer Newhall 2 Comments

What’s wrong with this sentence? “It was a letter from my lover; my heart thumped, my stomach sank, my breath stopped, and my hands shook as I opened it.”

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 112
  • Page 113
  • Page 114
  • Page 115
  • Page 116
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

GET MY Riffs on Life BY EMAIL

True stories often told through a humorous lens–because you just can't make them up!

We respect your privacy and do not share your email with anyone.

 

LET’S CONNECT

ON THE FUNNY SIDE

Was I a Tradwife in the 1980s? Or a Liberated Woman in Progress?

Was I a tradwife? family-of-four

Was I a tradwife back in the 1980s?  Or was I a second-wave feminist still figuring out how to make the marriage-family-career thing work?  Read more.

MORE "ON THE FUNNY SIDE"

CATEGORIES

  • A Case of the Human Condition
  • My Ever-Changing Family
  • On Writing & Reading
  • My Rocky Spiritual Journey

 
Need some levity? Push my Funny Button!

TO MY READERS

Please feel free to share links to my posts with one and all and to quote briefly from them in your own writing, remembering, of course, to attribute the quote to me and to provide a link back to this site.

My Oakland Tribune columns, btw, are reprinted by permission of the Trib. With the exception of review copies of books, I do not accept ads or freebies of any kind. Click on the "Contact" button if you have questions. Enjoy!

 

DON’T MISS!

On April 4, 2016, former employees of the Oakland, California, Tribune, had a wake in honor of the paper's last day of publication. Photos by Barbara Newhall

Oakland Tribune: The Trib Is Dead, Long Live the Tribbers

A dream about wrestling. Detail of a column in the Wurzburg Cathedral, shaped in a knot. Photo by Barbara Newhall

A Dream About Wrestling With — Uh, Who Was That Anyway?

8-year-old-girl-living-out-her-fantasies-as-a-swordswoman

Barbie — Sex Object or Blank Slate?

alta-bates-summit-medical-center

Widowed: Did He Die in Anguish?

MORE DON'T MISS!

© 2009–2025 Barbara Falconer Newhall All rights reserved. · Log in