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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!
Noah Lukeman on the Colon, That Most Majestic of Punctuation Marks . . .
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Noah Lukeman[/caption]
Ever since I read Noah Lukeman’s treatise on the comma in a 2006 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, I have been a fan. A devotee. No, let’s face it, a groupie. Read more.
Widowed: John Donne, Meet Leonard Cohen — And Send Us a Song, Please, From the Mystery Beyond
I’ve spent evenings with songwriter Leonard Cohen and gone to bed with poet John Donne. I want to say, ‘John Donne, meet Leonard Cohen.’ Read more.
Cheap Thrills at the Glasmuseum Passau — Outrageous, Over-the-Top Decorative Glass.
Spotted at the labyrinthine Glasmuseum Passau — wonderfully outrageous, phantasmagoric decorative glass. Gotta share it with you. Take a look. Cheap thrills. Read more.