Virginia Buckingham

Here’s a radical idea to put into practice this Valentine’s Day: Love your neighbor. Last week, I was newly reminded how far we have strayed from this basic concept, 180 degrees to be exact. Today, “disdain your neighbor” is not only the more common, but actually the preferred, approach to living in a community, a state, this country. First, I don’t mean love your actual neighbor, hopefully you already do, or at least like them a lot. I mean neighbor in the larger collective sense.…

A short but long month, February. Spring is teasingly close in days — 40 as of this publication. But we who are wise to her flirtations know the countdown to spring’s arrival is meant only to assuage our despair with a flicker of hope, like a squirrel climbing on a birdfeeder and shaking free a few kernels of corn. Yes, February has found me reaching for the tortured metaphor along with an afternoon hot cup of tea. I’ve despaired less this winter; remedies of fires,…

I stumbled across the ABC special “Pretty Baby” the other night and came away with a profound respect for the actress Brooke Shields and an unexpected reinforcing of a lesson it can take a long time to learn: the past doesn’t have to be prologue — the most important factors in determining your future are ultimately your own choices. (If you missed it, the special has been streaming on Hulu since April.) It’s probably more fair to say I have a renewed respect for Shields.…

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…

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…

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…