{"id":20443,"date":"2015-01-01T00:01:22","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T08:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=20443"},"modified":"2015-01-01T00:01:22","modified_gmt":"2015-01-01T08:01:22","slug":"riffs-on-life-your-top-ten-favorites-of-2014-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/riffs-on-life-your-top-ten-favorites-of-2014-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Riffs on Life: Your Top Ten Favorites of 2014 — Sort Of"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Two<\/a>
“Tulips and Sex — Writing As If Everyone I Know Were Dead”<\/a>\u00a0was inspired by the tulips in bloom last spring at Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Here they are, your favorite Riffs on Life, 2014.<\/p>\n

Actually, these might not be your favorites at all. That’s because they are the 2014 posts\u00a0that got\u00a0the most page reads this year, which means that they are the favorites of Internet search engines like Google,\u00a0Yahoo and Bing. Your\u00a0top ten\u00a0might be something else entirely. I know that some of the posts I’m most proud of\u00a0didn’t make the list.<\/p>\n

\"Actor<\/a>
Spotted on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame: My girlhood hero Superman. To his left, Jon, my actual man. Later I wrote\u00a0“Stalking Superman.”<\/a>\u00a0Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two of my favorites that just missed\u00a0the list, for example, were my encounters with Superman<\/a> and with singer-dancer-actor\u00a0Robert Morse<\/a>\u00a0— at Nos. 12 and 14. My righteous rant about\u00a0James Dobson<\/a> and his abusive, allegedly\u00a0Christian, child-rearing philosophy took the\u00a0No. 17 spot.<\/p>\n

“Tulips and Sex — Writing As If Everyone I Know Were Dead”<\/a>\u00a0was a runner up at No. 13. And a\u00a0recent post, “Advent:\u00a0Witnessing to the Light With Tinsel and a Plastic Santa,”<\/a> was way, way down on the list with\u00a0only 52 page reads total — maybe because it was posted so late in the year that it hasn’t had\u00a0time to get much\u00a0traffic .<\/p>\n

A couple of my favorites did make the top ten cut, however: Check out “Dead Stuff — Which I Will Be Too One of These Days”<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0“Nature — We Love It, But Does It Give a Darn About Us?”<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Happy New Year to you! May your 2015 be prosperous,\u00a0and may our tumultuous world find a little peace.<\/p>\n

Top Ten Riffs on Life Posted in 2014<\/h5>\n

1.\u00a0\u201cArmistead Maupin \u2013 The Man Who Wrote the Quintessential San Francisco Novel on a Newspaper Deadline\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0“Little Girls Are Superior to Little Boys — Here’s Why”<\/a><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0“The Institute of Mosaic Art — A Berkeley Spin on an Ancient Art<\/a>”<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0\u00a0“Travel Adventures: The Poop on China — And the Pee”<\/a><\/p>\n

5.\u00a0\u00a0“Oakland’s Jingletown — Arts, Crafts, Cool Kitsch and Cookies”<\/a><\/p>\n

6.\u00a0“Christmas Eve in Mexico — It’s All About the Baby Jesus”\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

7.\u00a0“Nature — We Love It, But Does It Give a Darn About Us?”<\/a><\/p>\n

8.\u00a0“The DeYoung This Week — Bursting With Art and Flowers”<\/a><\/p>\n

9.\u00a0“Atheist to Catholic — Two Brainy Women Get Religion”<\/a><\/p>\n

10.\u00a0“Dead Stuff — Which I Will Be Too One of These Days”<\/a><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
“Advent: Witnessing to the Light With Tinsel and a Plastic Santa”<\/a> — and an angel for the top of our Christmas tree. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/a>
A half-dead valley oak tree inspired “Dead Stuff — Which I Will Be Too One of These Days.”<\/a> Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>Here they are, your favorite Riffs on Life of 2014 — that is to say, the posts that got the most page reads from Google and other search engines this year. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1373,1374,1375,26,1376,1377,1378],"class_list":["post-20443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-1373","tag-favorite-posts","tag-popular-posts","tag-riffs-on-life","tag-search-engines","tag-seo","tag-top-ten-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}