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About Barbara
I’m Barbara Falconer Newhall and I’ve got a serious case of the human condition.
I’ve done it all: career, family, house, garden, and a prize-winning book, "Wrestling with God." The result: I'm a woman of years, lots of them, who can't help seeing things from the funny side.
Tucked away on this website are hundreds of riffs on life. I hope you’ll seek them out – and keep me company as I discover the humor, if not the meaning, in what life throws my way. Learn More
THE LATEST
Widowed: Archiving My Husband and Zodiac, His Scrappy 1970s News Service
Can you archive a dead spouse? Can you stash them away in a temperature-controlled academic repository, to be preserved for centuries? Read more.
BARBARA’S BOOK
★ Publishers Weekly, starred review
Any seeker of any faith will be blessed to read the words of this fine author and observer. Read more.
An inveterate doubter for most of her adult life, journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall embarks upon a quest to find a way to believe in God in the twenty-first century.
The result is Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith, which details her search for the Divine in the lives of diverse Americans – from a fundamentalist Christian to a progressive Muslim to a Buddhist monk.Seekers of all persuasions will feel represented here, from priests, ministers, and rabbis to engineers, physicists, and avowed non-believers . . . a riverflow of a book. — Phil Cousineau, host of PBS’s Global Spirit
Recent Riffs on Life
Happy Birthday, US of A. You Made It to 250.
Happy birthday, US of A! You made it to 250. A little the worse for wear, but still here. Read more.
Sixteen Years Left to Live. How Many Bowls of Froot Loops Is That?
In the sixteen years I’ve got left, how many of the gotta-do items on my to-do list will I get done? Read more.
DON’T MISS!
Journalist Kay Campbell: ‘WWG Bows to the Enduring Mystery of the Universe’
My Religion Newswriters Association colleague Kay Campbell says this about Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith. Read more.
The Writing Room: My Book’s Almost Done, Sorta
[caption id="attachment_4618" align="aligncenter" width="450"]
My computer monitor the day before my mother broke her hip and brought progress on my book to a halt for a year. Photo by Barbara Newhall[/caption]
My book is close to done. I’ve been working on it for nigh on to 13 years now. Can’t imagine what it will feel like to have it done-ish. Read more.
Widowed: The Things My Husband Wanted. (Or, We Are What We Want)
I feel the sharpest grief when I picture my husband alive and wanting something, planning something — picking out artichokes for dinner, making a grandchild laugh. Read more.