Virginia Buckingham - Marblehead Current

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY: A lifelong desire for fire

27Sep

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY: A lifelong desire for fire

We’re just easing into fall so forgive this Christmas imagery. I’m sitting in front of a roaring fire, little kids playing on the floor in matching holiday pajamas. Norman Rockwell has nothing on me when it comes to imagining warm New England scenes. My childhood had plenty of cozy Christmases. But no cozy fire. We thought the public television channel that displayed a crackling fire-log was pretty cool. And it was. I also accepted my mom’s assurance that Santa didn’t have to come down a chimney, the front door was just fine. Virginia Buckingham Yet. I always wanted one. A fireplace to sit in front of. To read. To nap. To talk with friends. To just gaze. An apartment I once shared in my 20s with a roommate had a working one and I spent plenty of time staring into it.&...

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY: What’s in a name?

20Sep

By Leigh BlanderNo Comments

Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY: What’s in a name?

What name is it under? Uh, try Buckingham? Nope. Try Lowy. Nope. Try Buckingham-Lowy, even though that’s not really my name. Yes, I know that’s what it says on my license. The introduction of the hyphen is a Registry of Motor Vehicles story I’ll tell in a few minutes. Your passport, you say, that’s the definitive answer? The surname on it is Buckingham Lowy. No hyphen. Not my name. Birth certificate – Virginia Beth Buckingham. Used to be my name. Marriage certificate? Virginia Buckingham Lowy. Bingo. My legal name. Except I never use it. Virginia Buckingham My name conundrum is a cautionary tale I share mostly because it’s a pain in the neck. Some 30 years ago when I got engaged, I wanted to keep my maiden name because I already had an established career. I also wanted to have the ...

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: A majestic memorial

11Sep

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Viewpoints, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: A majestic memorial

Travel experts advise getting to the airport two hours before a domestic flight, three for an international one. I know it’s a lot to make happen, but on an upcoming trip, consider adding an hour more. There’s a place I’d like you to see at Logan Airport, and I’m guessing most of you have only glimpsed it from the roadway — not due to a lack of interest, but rather the difficult logistics of it all. The bit of extra time you’ll spend is worth it, I promise. Dedicated in 2008, the 9/11 memorial at Logan is breathtaking as a piece of public art, heart-wrenching as a gathering place of the names of the dead and reverential as a place to reflect on a world changed forever 22 years ago this week. Don’t look for it at Terminal A, B, C or E. Nor does this structure that is part elegy, part...

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Pre-Labor Day musings

30Aug

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Opinion, Uncategorized, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Pre-Labor Day musings

We blinked and it’s almost here. Labor Day. Summer didn’t even get started until August, but I’m doing my best to not complain. Note to those to whom I complained, I’m not perfect! Virginia Buckingham Compared to the weather and natural disasters in the rest of the world, I’m feeling pretty lucky. And I’m guessing, like me, you are not in the mood for deep thinking as the end of summer looms. So, here’s my list of random things I’m musing about as I get ready to store my flip flops. I’m transfixed by a story I read last week in Axios Boston on Massachusetts’ vanity plates. Some 16,000 drivers shell out the extra bucks for a plate they apparently use for self-expression. Ok, whatever floats your boat. But what intrigues me is that nearly 900 requests got rejected in 202...

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY: All sentient beings, great and small

23Aug

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Opinion, Top Stories, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY: All sentient beings, great and small

I’ve officially gone cuckoo. It’s been coming for a while. But the minute I grabbed a plastic cup and a napkin and headed to the garage, it was confirmed. I was off to rescue a spider. Yes, a spider. I’m afraid of spiders. Just like my dad was. A man grown increasingly gentle with the passage of time, my dad loved most creatures, great and small. Except spiders and flies. He could handle a fly swatter as well as his hero Mickey Mantle handled a bat. I don’t remember him killing spiders with it that he came across in the house, but he must have, albeit with a bit more trepidation than he did his fly foes. I find suddenly I cannot. Kill a spider. Virginia Buckingham When did this happen? And why? Back to the spider rescue. The spider did not consider itself at risk, th...

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: The stars in my constellation

16Aug

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Opinion, Views & Reviews, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: The stars in my constellation

One of the best parts of summer is reading. Even if you’re a year-round devourer of books, there’s still something about sitting with no sense of time, in the shade of a tree or with your toes in the sand, and letting a story carry you away. I’m one of the millions who look forward to Elin Hilderbrand’s annual offering of an escape, usually to Nantucket. The author of 29 books, Hilderbrand has announced that it is to be her penultimate, the last — “Swan Song” — to be released in 2024. Sigh. Hilderbrand said she was running out of material to mine from an island that is just four miles wide and 13 miles long. You can only conjure up so much drama there, she noted, and she wants each book to be as good if not better than the last. In an interview on CBS, she was asked if that meant...

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Whose truth is it anyway?

9Aug

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Viewpoints, Views & Reviews, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Whose truth is it anyway?

Truth. It’s a loaded word these days. If aliens popped down to our planet — and according to recent congressional testimony they have — they might wonder what all the fuss is about. The truth is the truth, after all, so what’s the issue? And then there’s the new-agey, Oprah-inspired encouragement to “speak your truth.” Some might find it personally empowering to do so. But if it’s only your truth, by definition it’s not the truth. Truth doesn’t actually belong to anyone. It just is. Virginia Buckingham There are a couple of dynamics causing the truth fuss in my view. One, people are confusing fact with opinion. Two, people are cherry-picking facts that support their opinions. It was the late great U.S. Senator and statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan who wrote in 1983, “Eve...

2Aug

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Views & Reviews, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Pay it forward

The book, "Pay It Forward," by Catherine Ryan Hyde was first published in 1999. That was before the viral promotion offered by Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, yet that one book and later a movie sparked a worldwide movement based on a simple premise. Instead of repaying a good deed to those who did you the kindness, “pay it forward” by performing good deeds for others. By doing so, Hyde posited, you can change the world. Virginia Buckingham I think I saw the movie but I don’t remember reading the book so I recently picked up the 15th anniversary edition published in 2014. Hyde noted in a new introduction how extraordinary it was, given the publishing world’s fickleness, that a market would still exist for one novel out of hundreds of millions that many years after publication. T...

12Jul

By Leigh BlanderNo Comments

Views & Reviews, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Out of control

I do not consider myself a control freak. I have certain little mishegas — Yiddish for silly, er, maybe crazy habits. I can’t tolerate when the front foyer light is left on, I’ll literally drop everything to go turn it off. A kitchen cabinet door left open? That’s akin for me of every fingernail of every child in America scraping a chalkboard. Sometimes to tease me, my kids would leave every cabinet open. Just for laughs. Ha. Ha. Ha.But in general, when things happen outside my control, I try to accept them. Like the weather. By the time you’re reading this, summer might have arrived. I know it’s July 12 and those science-minded folks who chose meteorology as a profession told us summer started June 21. It didn’t. All those high-pressure domes — or is it low-pressure fronts? —...

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Making memories it’s OK to forget

5Jul

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Opinion, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Making memories it’s OK to forget

What memories did you make this past holiday? How long will they stay with you? (“Not long — I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning,” I can hear half of you joking. Or maybe that’s just me.) Celebrating the Fourth of July here in what should be designated the nation’s capital of such celebrations (get on that, elected representatives!) made me nostalgic for the Fourths of my childhood. And it got me thinking about why I don’t remember many specifics about those long-ago moments in time, though I remember I loved them. More on that in, well, a moment. My childhood Fourth of July celebrations were simpler affairs than here. Running barefoot through the darkening backyard holding a lit sparkler. Trying to throw mine farther than my siblings and watching the arc of light...