Virginia Buckingham

I had just about given up on Facebook. Most of the posts in my feed were ads for stuff I was not interested in. But I must have been interested in them at some point, searched or clicked on or paused on an image or video. And that behavior was fed into some big algorithm cruncher in the sky which resulted in ubiquitous ads for deck umbrellas (at one point I needed a new one), flattering swimsuit tops (always looking for those) and candles. Readers…

I was walking near my neighborhood on a recent sunny morning and saw three people standing stock still in the middle of the street, looking up. I followed their gaze. Was it a cool bird? That would get my immediate attention. Nope. So wide it was hanging over the street, nearly touching the branches reaching up on the other side of the road, was a tree. Its cone-shaped canopy was dotted with cone-shaped pink flowers. "Do you know what it is?" one of the gazers…

My dad bought me my first watch for a long-ago birthday. He picked it out of a plastic case which sat on the front counter at the local drug store, aptly named Drug City. The case spun around so you could look at all the choices, and he picked a Timex on a silver link chain that looked like a bracelet. I treasured it, mostly because my dad wasn't one to buy us presents; that was my mom's purview. I kept it for years after…

Readers of this column know I spend a lot of time thinking about how to bridge the political divide and bring people together. This past week I was presented with two sharply different approaches to that work. Or were they? First, Daniel Lubetsky, CEO of Kind Snacks, who has put action behind the work of fostering respectful disagreement and positive connection for years, gave a TED talk last week, a summary of which landed in my inbox. It echoed many themes I had heard him…

Congratulations to all the high school seniors who have just committed to the college they will attend this fall. Maybe it was your first choice, maybe it was your safety, or somewhere in between. Whichever it was, this is the opportunity to buy mom that coffee mug she so desires for Mother's Day and dad his higher-education-branded belt come his day in June. Oh, and set your path for a lifetime. Or, end up on a path you can hardly conceive of now. It's that…

Very few things make my blood boil these days, I'm trying to incorporate a zen-like outlook in life as much as possible. But any intentional effort to increase political antagonism and paranoia, like a movie released last Friday, takes me from zen to 10 on the inner-rage meter, with 10 being the highest. Leave it to Hollywood to try to capitalize on the country's polarized zeitgeist. Don't take your history-interested teenager to the movies this weekend to learn about the events leading to the attack…

This is the story of an 8-year-old boy and a 62-year-old man. One very successful and well-known. One, well, 8. Picture the scene: A crisp, sunny day on the South Lawn of the White House. Rows of chairs set up theater style for a show like no other. The 2007 World Champion Red Sox team arrayed on a riser behind a podium with the presidential seal. Big Papi commanding attention like he’s at bat. The president at the microphone. A little boy, just over 4…