Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life as she knows it.
I've written hundreds and hundreds of posts over the years. To help you find your way to the best of the best, I've tagged my favorites "Don't Miss!" Scroll down here to find them.
Another way to locate Riffs on Life that you might enjoy is to click above on your favorite category – "My Ever-Changing Family," perhaps, or "Funny Button." You can also use the search box located way up top to hunt for stories by topic. There's fun reading at "garden," "aging," "kids" and, of course, "Jon."
More news from the Religion Newswriters Association conference I attended in Austin – a Public Religion Research Institute survey of Hispanics in America turned up some surprises. For example, 69 percent of Hispanics in general have a favorable view of Pope Francis, but only 54 percent look favorably on the Catholic Church. Read more.
Who is a Jew? Before it could undertake its 2013 survey of U.S. Jews, the Pew Research Center had to think hard about what makes you Jewish in twenty-first-century America. It turns out that believing in God is not essential to Jewishness, and neither is being married to a Jewish spouse. Having a sense of humor helps a lot, however . . . Read more.
In the process of moving their collection, the librarians at the Illinois State Historical Library came across some boxes of old documents. One of them contained a lost cache of writings by Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, a little known Ojibwe poet from Michigan. Read more.
We remodeled our kitchen in 2000, and we made some design decisions that still make me happy. Read more.
I wrote about my outdoorsy cousin Jeanie a couple of weeks ago. This week it’s my artsy cousin Mary Helen’s turn. She weaves gorgeous rugs from fabrics she gets at yard sales. Read more.
When I was a kid, Pentwater was not the place to be. The place to be was on the beach or in the woods with the wild critters. But now that I am thoroughly grown up, I’m preferring the charms of Pentwater village to the toads and grasshoppers of my 9-year-old self. Read more.
Los Angeles is an awful place. It is 469 square miles of bumper to bumper traffic, sinus clogging air pollution, starless nights and unrelenting summer sun . . . Read more.