Veteran journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life as she knows it.
Need some levity? Read on!
Christmas has gotten to be a scheduling nightmare in our family. Peter lives in Minnesota. Christina lives in Southern California. Jon and I live in Northern California. That puts 400 miles between us and our daughter and 1600 miles between us and our son and daughter-in-law. Not exactly over the river and through the woods. Read more.
Until very recently, when I thought of China, I didn’t think of fun. I thought of the Cultural Revolution of the ’60s and ’70s, when traditional Chinese men were forced to cut off their queues, and intellectuals were banished to the countryside to till the soil and be reeducated into the proletariat.
I thought I was traveling to China to explore the mysteries of China’s storied past — the big dynasties with their poetic one-syllable names: Ming, Tang, Han. But what really caught my attention was China’s storied present: The skyscrapers. The ubiquitous one-child families. The traffic jams. The fashionistas . . . Read more.
China’s one-child families may soon be a thing of the past. But for now, they are very real. Jon and I saw them everywhere during our trip to China in September — and I took lots of pictures of mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers doting on that one child. Read more.
My friend Nancy is a potter – a world-class ceramist to be exact – and a grandmother. Much as she loves her work, Nancy wants to spend time with her grandsons – and not just a Thanksgiving dinner here and a birthday party there. The trouble is, the young boys live a continent away. Read more.
Austin has the reputation of being not your typical Texas town — it’s more liberal and more secular than the rest of this Bible Belt state. Perceptions aside, there’s plenty of religion going on in Austin, and you can see it from the street. Read more.
Last weekend I watched the CNN documentary “Blackfish” and saw a Sea World trainer attacked and pulled underwater by an out-of-control killer whale. I had to wonder — could that have been me? “Blackfish” traces the deadly history of killer whales at places like Sea World, and it brought back memories of the day I found myself in a tank of water with a 1400-pound pilot whale named Koko. Read more.