Virginia Buckingham - Marblehead Current

20 Dec

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Untangling traditions

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsColumns, Uncategorized, Viewpoints, Virginia Buckingham

I saw a funny cartoon the other day with two panels. In one, the person is un-decorating the Christmas tree and putting the lights away in a big tangled pile. In the other, the same person is cursing as he is preparing to decorate the tree the following year and opens the box to find, you guessed it, a big tangled pile of lights. That will be me, this year, next year, every year. It’s a tradition. As a kid, we kept our ornaments in…

13 Dec

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Of transitions and trust

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsColumns, Opinion, Virginia Buckingham

If I had a nickel for every time my family rolls their eyes when I say, “trust the universe,” I guess I’d just have a pile of nickels, given that their value wouldn’t get me too far in these inflation-riddled times. However, I do. Trust the universe, that is. And I find as I grow older I do so particularly in times of transition, planned and not. First, what do I mean by the phrase? As one who bristles at the notion that “everything happens…

06 Dec

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: A quiet interregnum

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsColumns, Opinion, Virginia Buckingham

I know that the term interregnum is typically defined as the period of time between royal reigns. But it keeps popping into my head as the right word to describe this brief interlude between Thanksgiving and the start of the heart of the Christmas season. Many, especially those of you who put the tree up the minute the turkey carcass has been picked clean, would argue that the Christmas season is already in full swing, it is December after all. And last weekend’s Christmas Walk…

22 Nov

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Get thee to a fire pit

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsColumns, Opinion, Virginia Buckingham

Lest I be accused of being obsessed with fire, let me share that one of us eight Buckingham siblings once played with matches and lit a neighbor’s yard on fire and subsequently ran away from home. That sibling was not me! But if not obsessed, I am indeed, let’s call it, enthralled. Last year around this time I wrote a column about embracing the onset of early darkness. Wearing it like a cozy blanket. My theory was that if my attitude was one of welcoming…

15 Nov

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: It’s okay to look away sometimes

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsColumns, Opinion, Virginia Buckingham

Initially, I planned to entitle this column “Don’t look away.” The topic is the toll of consuming news during these painful times in the country and the world. And the importance of staying informed, and bearing witness. I still believe those things are important. I also have come to understand that taking a break from doing so preserves our energy to engage at all. I’m a daily newspaper reader and have noted in the past that Twitter (or that platform now known as X)…

08 Nov

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: I was tired, now I’m inspired

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsColumns, Opinion, Viewpoints, Virginia Buckingham

When was the last time you felt inspired? Not momentarily, like when you watch a video or read a story that gives you a temporary morale boost, but inspired deeply, in your gut, in a way that you know will impact you for a long time to come. Virginia Buckingham. Given that the news coming from all corners is so dispiriting, I wish there was some way to bottle pills of long-lasting inspiration so we could all take a dose when we need it. We…

01 Nov

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: The games we play

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsColumns, Opinion, Virginia Buckingham

I recently saw a headline about a new study that showed that running as little as two miles three times a week could extend your life. That seems doable, I thought, until I asked my knees, who immediately protested that it was not doable at all (you idiot, they added!). Thus, I’ll stick with the original guidance I’ve tried to follow in recent years that a regular walking routine is the key to a healthy aging body. Yet, I am reaching that age where the…

25 Oct

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: A mighty heart

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsTop Stories, Views & Reviews, Virginia Buckingham

I find myself thinking a lot about Danny Pearl these days. He was the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan a few months after 9/11. His murder was filmed by his terrorist captives, in which they made him say out loud before beheading him, “My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish.” It was shocking, the brutality of it — all the hate of Jews that sometimes seems so hard to comprehend when contemplating the vast evil of the Holocaust, brought home in the…

11 Oct

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY: What’s in your “go-bag”?

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsViews & Reviews, Virginia Buckingham

Last week, we all received what I thought would be an unnerving alert on our cell phones from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As much as possible, the agency forewarned that the alert was a test only. It seems they did a good job. There were no widespread reports of alarmed callers checking with local police and fire and plenty of funny notes about being in a conference room when hundreds of phones went off at once. The alert still jolted me but, then again,…

04 Oct

EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY: Comfort me with goulash

Virginia Buckingham0 CommentsViews & Reviews, Virginia Buckingham

I devour books by chefs like I sometimes try to make and devour their recipes. There’s something about a chef’s appetite for life that’s alluring. Some favorites are by Bill Buford (“Dirt” and “Heat”), Gabrielle Hamilton’s “Bread Bones and Butter” and anything by Ruth Reichl. Her “Tender at the Bone,” “Garlic and Sapphires” and “Save Me the Plums” are akin to having the opportunity of sitting at the knee of a perfect observer of what matters in life (read: family dinner). Virginia Buckingham Which brings…