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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: If I Visit His Grave, Will It Help?
I said hello to Jon and his family, and then there was nothing more to do in this graveyard. 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
Maybe I Want a Facelift After All
Facelifts that leave your cheeks looking like you’re facing into 100-mph headwinds are not for me. Or are they? Read more.
Big News — Big Changes for This 2009 Website
Two big changes for my — 2009! — website: a major redesign and a more spacious writing schedule for me. Read more.
DON’T MISS!
Drumroll! I’ve Just Written My 600th Blog Post.
Here’s my 600th post on a blog that’s seen me through births, deaths, a major house remodel, a pandemic, and some dark nights of the soul. Read more.
Armistead Maupin: The Man Who Wrote the Quintessential San Francisco Novel — On a Newspaper Deadline
Army’s assignment was to show up at the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle every weekday morning and produce seven hundred words, give or take. The challenging part was this: Unlike most newspaper journalists, Army did not sit down to his Selectric typewriter fortified with a fat notebook of stats and quotes. Army’s job was not to report the news. It was to make it up. Read more.