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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
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.
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
Was My Mother a 1950s Tradwife?
My mother was a tradwife, a bona fide 1950s tradwife. That’s what she wanted. That’s what she got. Read more.
The Trouble With Poinsettias
The trouble with poinsettias is — they don’t know that Christmas is over and it’s time to make an exit. Read more.
DON’T MISS!
Book Openers: A Heather Donahue Lexicon — Flopsweat and Larfy Defined
Here’s some help with the pot-growing argot in Heather Donahue’s book, "Grow Girl."
Grace Falconer Perlmutter Kleis — How to Be a Glamorous Gal at Age 98
My aunt was tall, red-headed, blue-eyed, self-sufficient and glamorous at a time and place when most women in her hometown wanted nothing more than to get married, have babies and put up green beans and blackberry jam. Read more.
Theologian Harvey Cox: You Don’t Have to Believe to Be a Christian
I’d like to recommend Harvey Cox’s newest book to all my non-believer friends. So many of the sophisticated, highly educated people I know labor under the assumption that they have to believe – to assent intellectually to – the factuality of traditional Christian teaching. They don’t. And here’s why: The idea of a fixed creed to which a true Christian must subscribe dates back, not to the life of Jesus, but to the emperor Constantine. Read more.