The most powerful place in a paragraph is its last sentence. More precisely, the most powerful place in a paragraph is the last few words of that sentence. Read more.
Barbara’s Riffs on Life
A Case of the Human Condition: Choose Me, Please!
Jury duty is a lot like fourth grade softball. Something in me wants to be on the team. If there is choosing going on, I want to be among the chosen. Read more.
Book Openers: The Emerging, Emergent Church — What’s Up Next for Christianity?
“About every five hundred years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale,” Phyllis Tickle writes in her new book, “The Great Emergence.” In the two thousand years since its founding, Christianity has reinvented itself several times.
A Case of the Human Condition: Banning Barbie in West Virginia
By Barbara Falconer Newhall Ban Barbie? Seriously? Yes, says Jeff Eldridge, a second-term Democratic delegate to the West Virginia legislature. Eldridge asserts that the Barbie doll encourages little girls to develop their physical beauty over their intellectual and emotional development, so he’s introduced a bill banning the sale of Barbie dolls in the state of West Virginia. “I […]
A Case of the Human Condition: James Dean’s Last Day — Video with CHP Officers on the Scene
The highway patrol officers on the scene of the car crash that killed James Dean are interviewed in an excellent new video, along with the officer who cited Dean for speeding hours before his death.
A Case of the Human Condition: Even Barbie Has to Turn Fifty Sometime
Barbie doesn’t look it, of course, but this month the busty, slim-hipped fashion doll turns 50. Read all about it in Mary Jo Murphy’s article in today’s New York Times. Posting here tomorrow — “Dolls and Daughters,” what happened when my daughter, then seven, and I tried to play with her Barbie.