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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
Will I Still Be Loveable When I’ve Lost All My Marbles?
Ten years from now, when I’ve lost some — all? — of my marbles, will I still be loveable? Will I even be me? 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
A 1970s Counterculture Bash at Zodiac News Service. Were You There?
It was a 1970s counterculture bash at Zodiac News Service. If you were there, pls help ID these party-goer pix. (Be patient. Lots of photos to upload!) Read more.
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.
DON’T MISS!
Cindy Newhall Weyant — A Bright Light Has Gone Out
My beautiful niece, Cindy Newhall Weyant, died in her sleep Tuesday night. Read more.
Belief Is Seriously Overrated — You Don’t Have to Be a Believer to Believe
Some of my family members were uneasy at the thought of standing up at my mother’s memorial mass to read from the Bible, a document they didn’t believe in. I told them I thought belief was seriously overrated.
Three Photos That Bring My Husband Back to Life. And One That Doesn’t
Now and then I come across a photo that brings my husband back to life, and for one sweet moment, Jon is there in all his ineffable Jon-ness. Read more.