Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life as she knows it.
I’m Barbara Falconer Newhall and I’ve got an incurable Case of the Human Condition. And since you do too, I’m counting on you to laugh and cry along with me as I riff on life as we know it . . . Below you'll read about my creaky, old fifties house, my forays into home gardening, my shopping stories, my spectacularly low-fashion wardrobe -- and more.
Until very recently, when I thought of China, I didn’t think of fun. I thought of the Cultural Revolution of the ’60s and ’70s, when traditional Chinese men were forced to cut off their queues, and intellectuals were banished to the countryside to till the soil and be reeducated into the proletariat.
I thought I was traveling to China to explore the mysteries of China’s storied past — the big dynasties with their poetic one-syllable names: Ming, Tang, Han. But what really caught my attention was China’s storied present: The skyscrapers. The ubiquitous one-child families. The traffic jams. The fashionistas . . . Read more.
China’s one-child families may soon be a thing of the past. But for now, they are very real. Jon and I saw them everywhere during our trip to China in September — and I took lots of pictures of mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers doting on that one child. Read more.
Last weekend I watched the CNN documentary “Blackfish” and saw a Sea World trainer attacked and pulled underwater by an out-of-control killer whale. I had to wonder — could that have been me? “Blackfish” traces the deadly history of killer whales at places like Sea World, and it brought back memories of the day I found myself in a tank of water with a 1400-pound pilot whale named Koko. Read more.
Austin, Texas, is quirky – in a good way. During a recent visit, every bridge, park and intersection I encountered in this Central Texas city made me smile. Read more.
China, Austin, a Religion Newswriters conference — I had a great, traveling September. It started with on my birthday on September 6, which lasted only a few hours because Jon and I were on a plane to Shanghai when somewhere over the Pacific we hit the International Date Line. Read more.
More news from the Religion Newswriters Association conference I attended in Austin – a Public Religion Research Institute survey of Hispanics in America turned up some surprises. For example, 69 percent of Hispanics in general have a favorable view of Pope Francis, but only 54 percent look favorably on the Catholic Church. Read more.